The level of lunacy we've reached can be measured by the brouhaha over the presence of Russian photographers in the Oval Office during Sergey Lavrov's visit: no US photographers were allowed, but the Russians somehow got in and the Paranoid Brigade went into overdrive. They may have planted "bugs" there! No, this wasn't nutjob Louise Mensch, the queen of the Russia-haters, but "former intelligence officials," including the former deputy director of the CIA, David Cohen.

Given this kind of paranoia, why allow Lavrov in the Oval Office? After all, he could slip a bug into that sanctum just as easily as somehow who works for Tass – indeed, it would be far easier for him to do so, since photographers are routinely searched before they enter, and I doubt the Russian Foreign Minister is subjected to the same procedure.

Aside from that, the same people who are making a fuss about this are convinced the Trump administration is a cabal of Kremlin agents: so why would the Russians even need to plant a bug in the Oval Office? After all, according to the conspiracy theorists, they're getting the same intelligence directly from the White House.

Yes, folks, I'm really writing about this nonsense. Because that's where we're at these days.

Now the conspiracy theorists who have taken over the Democratic party are screaming that the firing of James Comey is all a part of the plot: Trump did it to scotch the year-long investigation into "Russia-gate," which has so far yielded nothing. The White House denies this, although we're now hearing a different and probably far more accurate account: the President was pissed off that Comey wasn't investigating leaks of classified information, and was paying too much attention to the Russia probe.

If this is true, then one can only applaud the White House and urge them to be more upfront about the reason for Comey's firing. The "Russia-gate" conspiracy theory is total nonsense, is based on completely unsupportable premises, and is bad for the country. The President should quash it, so he can get back to the job he was elected to do.

The whole thing is a media-driven hate campaign that has no relation to the facts: despite the "high confidence" our "intelligence community" says it has that the Russians somehow mysteriously "influenced" our election, the alleged evidence they've made public is nothing but a joke. Indeed, it has been repeatedly debunked by cyber-security experts, and yet the media ignores this, just like they ignored the warnings of those of us who challenged the Bush administration's "high confidence" that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction."

Hillary Clinton refers to "Russian WikiLeaks" as if it were a foregone conclusion that Julian Assange is an agent of Moscow, but there's no evidence for this. Just like there's no evidence for the allegation that the Trump campaign "colluded" with the Russians to deny her the White House: it was the American voters who did that.

In short, the multiple investigations into "Russia-gate" are based on nothing but speculation, innuendo, and unsupportable conspiracy theories – and yet they're consuming the Congress, the White House, and the law enforcement apparatus that is supposed to be protecting us from real threats. The whole thing is a tiresome theatrical performance that has dragged on long enough: it's long past time for the actors to take their curtain call, roll up the somewhat tattered scenery, and move on to more serious fare.

Speaking of "foreign influence" on US politics, it's been reported that the intelligence agencies of both Great Britain and Estonia fed dirt on Trump to our own spooks, who then leaked it to their conduits in the media. While "former" MI6 agent Christopher Steele, author of the slanderous anti-Trump dossier commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, is not officially connected to British intelligence, does anyone really believe Her Majesty's spies weren't clued in to the operation?

Of course, that kind of foreign influence is considered perfectly okay, and will never be investigated.

The meeting with Lavrov, which our warmongering media is portraying as Trump taking orders from the Kremlin, is good news: it means that the Trump administration is beginning to implement the President's campaign promise to "get along with Russia." At a time when tensions in Europe are at an all-time high, and US troops in Syria are doing their best to separate our Kurdish allies from Turkish aggression, the prospect of better relations with nuclear-armed Russia is a bright spot in an otherwise darkening world. That this development scares the national security bureaucracy, especially some elements of the military as well as the ever-Russophobic CIA, is hardly surprising. The former is counting on inflating the "Russian threat" in order to grab a big share of the defense budget, while the latter is institutionally opposed to Trump's "America First" foreign policy.