If this information is accurate, Chairman Nunes' apparent public disclosure of an active and ongoing intelligence operation -- one which is further subject to FISA Court oversight -- was an extraordinarily reckless act on his part. Same for his discussion of the matter with President* Trump, given the allegations regarding the Trump campaign's purported ties to the Russian government and related intelligence services. At the very least, his security clearance ought to be suspended.

If Congressman Schiff and other Democrats withdraw their support for Mr. Nunes on the basis of the Chair's untrustworthiness and lack of professional integrity, public pressure for an independent commission to investigate this matter is only going to increase. Republicans appear to be adamantly oblivious to the growing public perception that they're placing party before country. They continue down this particular path at their peril.

His "imprecise language" being just a cover penetrating insights that only his supporters fully understand.

"Maybe This is what Trump meant by.."

It should be obvious by now that Trump could claim we're all the unwitting pawns of the reptilian overlords and he would always have "some support for what he said."

Green26: "Don't think Schiff is correct on the law and procedure, i.e. the 'minimization'."

... his professional credentials on the subject of intelligence and national security, he is a former deputy U.S. Attorney who first came to public prominence in 1990 by successfully prosecuting former FBI agent Richard Miller under the Espionage Act, after Miller had passed secret documents to the Soviet Union "in exchange for a promised $65,000 in gold and cash."

Schiff was first elected to the California State Senate in Nov. 1996 and then to Congress in Nov. 2000, representing my old hometown of Pasadena, CA. (Disclosure: I worked on both his 1996 State Senate campaign and his first congressional campaign.)

As ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Schiff has been a prominent supporter of surveillance reforms, especially in the wake of the Edward Snowden affair, and a very vocal critic of the NSA's bulk collection of telecommunications metadata.

Suffice to say that Congressman Schiff very likely knows what he is doing and talking about here. As for Chairman Nunes, perhaps not so much, given that he's publicly divulged that all the information he has seen to date was collected legally and further, "has to deal with FISA and multiple FISA warrants."

I raised the possibility previously that this could be what Trump had been referring to regarding "wiretapping" by Obama. Trump's frequent loose language, either intentional or because he frequently uses imprecise language.

Like Trump, you do not use real sentences.  You should put a verb in the last word salad.

I know that you "raised the possibility" that Trump does not have a clue what he is talking about, then you try to walk it back.  When you say this "could be" what he is talking about, you give away the store.  Since there is no actual content to a Trump statement, you make up your own interpretation, like interpreting a Rorschach image.  Like a Rorschach image, every interpretation is equally valid.

Don't you just love precision?

You know, for a guy who regularly claims to be a Democratic voter, you've sure displayed a real knack for repeatedly carrying the Republicans' water buckets around here on a whole host of issues.

Pence was on the ticket, and is now Veep, because Brannon convinced Trump to ditch Christie and choose Pence instead. Nothing good comes from being in cahoots with Bannon.

Or before the inauguration.

BTW, I need some cash. There's a bridge I am acting as sales agent for.

Great location!

Wanna move to Brooklyn?  

His twitter following has increased dramatically, everyone is following him :) I haven't found any junk shots yet

The convictions of Hans and Erna Haupt, two German nationals who had become naturalized U.S. citizens, were later reversed by the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals. Hans Haupt was later retried and convicted again. There was no evidence that Erna knew of her son Herbert's role as a Nazi saboteur, although Hans had offered to authorities that his son had disclosed such to him, which lead to his retrial.

The Haupts had first come under surveillance when Herbert had journeyed to his parents' home in Chicago after being smuggled into the country by a German U-boat in June 1942. His father then assisted him in buying a car and getting a job at a defense plant which manufactured the Norden bomb site. Herbert was then arrested, and confessed his role. He was quickly tried and convicted by military tribunal, and then executed.

Hans and Erna Haupt, as well as Erna's two sisters and their husbands, were all arrested and charged with treason for having allegedly aided Herbert in his activities. They were all convicted but as noted above, their convictions were reversed on appeal. The couple was stripped of their citizenship and deported to Germany after the war for the "crime" of being Herbert's parents.

Martin Monti was a U.S. Army Air Corps fighter pilot and far-right zealot who in October 1944 had voluntarily flown his P-38 aircraft to German-occupied northern Italy and defected to Nazi authorities. (Given the Third Reich's dire predicament at that moment,talk about lousy timing.) Upon his arrest after the war, he freely pleaded guilty prior to going to trial, and offered a confession. Otherwise, there being nobody else to testify to his act as required by federal law, it's very doubtful that he would have ever been convicted at trial.

Iva Toguri D'Aquino was better known as the infamous Japanese propaganda broadcaster "Tokyo Rose." Having been caught in Japan at the time of Pear Harbor attack, she had always contended that she had been forced by Japanese authorities to make those broadcasts, and had never done so willingly.

Ms. Toguri D'Aquino's conviction in 1949 on one count of treason subsequently proved problematic 27 years later, thanks to dogged reporting by Ron Yates of the Chicago Tribune and Morley Safer of "60 Minutes," which revealed conclusively in June 1976 that government lawyers had suborned perjured testimony against her from several key witnesses at her trial. President Gerald Ford then pardoned her six months later in January 1977.

Tomoya Kawakita was a Japanese-American who had been living in Japan at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and had subsequently renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1943. He had been charged with treason for having abused American prisoners of war who had been forced to work in Japanese munitions plants.

Kawakita's conviction and sentence were upheld in 1952 only after the U.S. Supreme Court retroactively restored his American citizenship, citing his statement to U.S. consular officials in Tokyo that he had never intended to give up his American citizenship, and had done so only under duress from Japanese authorities.

By a 4-3 decision, SCOTUS ruled that Kawakita owed his allegiance to the United States, even though he was also a citizen of Japan and had declared his allegiance to that country. Writing in dissent for the minority, Chief Justice Fred Vinson said that "for over two years, [Kawakita] was consistently demonstrating his allegiance to Japan, not the United States. As a matter of law, he expatriated himself as well as that can be done." On this basis, Vinson would have reversed Kawakita's treason conviction.

As I said, all four of those cases were exceptional and far from clear-cut. Of the three that went to trial, only one conviction eventually stood, that of Kawakita. And that was only by one vote in the Supreme Court, in determining whether or not the defendant was still a U.S. citizen.

But that said, thanks for noting my error. I knew of those cases, and should have known better than to have made such a definitive declaration.