Perish any expectation that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) can be fixed.

Last year's report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz identified and documented not only blatant integrity failures within the FBI and the Department of Justice, but also Congress's nonfeasance and neglect of duty in its oversight role.  The FISA abuses of the past three years in particular occurred under the nose of Adam Schiff's House Intelligence Committee.  As we know, Schiff was obsessed with his utterly irresponsible impeachment pursuit instead of doing the essential job of guaranteeing government integrity.  The Democrats continue to ignore the problem.  Republicans walked out in protest of a recent Intelligence subcommittee hearing chaired by Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes.  Himes was the congressman who nauseatingly coddled the nauseating witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, during the House impeachment hearings.  In their protest, the Republicans noted, in understatement, that the committee "has strayed far from its mandate of overseeing the Intelligence Community."

The Horowitz report recommended specific actions to be taken by the FBI and intelligence community when applying for a FISA warrant, steps intended to remedy the failures he identified.  But the FBI's follow-on responses to the IG report's recommendations were so transparently deficient -- providing no meaningful reform, walking the path of least resistance, and largely serving to preserve the status quo -- as to be a slap in the face of the American people.  Both FBI director Christopher Wray and former FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collier have proven to be useless, if not complicit, in this lame response.

Now a court order just issued by new FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg acts as a rebuke to the FBI's intransigence.  Boasberg orders changes and improvements to the FBI's procedures that are meant to harden the FBI's diligence and ensure integrity throughout the FISA application process.  (The order also rightly prohibits "DOJ or FBI personnel under disciplinary or criminal review relating to their work on FISA applications" from any further involvement with the court.)  But it's far from clear that the addition of more language, procedural steps, and checklists to the FISA application process will actually do anything to change behaviors.

Judge Boasberg's demands, while clearly well-intentioned, seem more and more like papering over a fatal, fundamental problem:  It is now obvious that the FISC is hopelessly flawed as a nonadversarial court.  It is not a forum for debate or truth.  There is no opposing side.  Why would the FBI or other any applicant seeking a FISA warrant want to undertake an honest, rigorous undermining of its own case?  At bottom, there exists no meaningful incentive to do so; instead, the counter-incentives are permanent, inherent in the structure of the court.  This should be obvious.

The FISA court is one enabler of creeping totalitarianism.  The Patriot Act, with key provisions set to expire shortly, is another.  Why so many in government fail to recognize the danger they represent is disturbing.  It is time to abolish the FISA court.

The author is an observer of politics from Connecticut.