On Comey hearing, there is a little matter to discuss

How is a private note a "record" of events?

Do you think it would be right to determine the circumstances of how one person fatally shot another person based on the shooters' notes written shortly after the killing, the killer doing it because he or she thought it would be in their best interest to have some "ironclad backup evidence."

Of course, not.

So James Comey represents that he believed President Trump may have been obstructing justice when he says Trump said "I hope you can let the Flynn thing go."

And what does he do after he thinks the president may have committed an impeachable offense? Goes home and scribbles some notes.

If he had run down to Justice and filed a complaint, that would be different, but he didn't, unable to pull the trigger, a failure to launch, if you will.

At one point during the Thursday hearing, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, asked Comey: "Did (Trump) order you" to drop the investigation into Flynn? "No," Comey acknowledged, the words were "not an order." But he said that, in the private, Oval Office conversation with the president of the United States, "I took it as a direction."

So a remark by Trump is a "direction."

Why not give him a break, James, and just call it a "matter."

That's how the former attorney general frames all of her high jinks.

Maybe we should have a special prosecutor look at the former attorney general telling Comey not to call the Hillary email probe an investigation, but rather a "matter."

Because you know why? Matters matter.

Btw, talk about political correctness. You can't call a probe a probe?

I say let's get a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this because if the AG is telling the FBI director how to parse their words, especially from investigation to matter, that sounds pretty close to obstruction, too, at least on the face of it.

So investigations turn into matters and diaries turn into records.

Which makes me think of what Comey was thinking when he wrote that diary after one of those White House one-on-ones.

Cue the Jimmy Fallon "Thank you note" music.

Dear Diary: President Trump was really creepy tonight. I mean he like freaked me out so much I don't know what to do or say or who to talk to or who to confide in. I'm not even sure if I remember what he said or what it meant, or how he looked when he said it or how my chakras were, so in my diary when I put down what I think he said I'm going to put quotes around stuff and then everyone will know that I have total retention of all verbiage, gestures and tonal nuances at all times. ...

Btw, If anyone is thinking of a redo on Broadway for Shakespeare's Hamlet, guess who should get the part?

Let's just say if Comey doesn't get it, that's the tragedy.