The role reversal underscores the intelligence failures in advance of Jan. 6, as the FBI was unprepared for the riot despite having inroads into the groups now accused by the Justice Department of plotting the violence. The five Proud Boys leaders on trial are accused of seditious conspiracy, a rarely used political charge, in a trial that has lasted nearly three months.

Hang them all.

But while we procure rope, let's marvel at the Orwellian beauty of the phrase "intelligence failures".

The implication of the phrase is that the intelligence agencies, the warrant-less observers of all that happens, should be able to predict everything that will happen. And when something happens that Big Brother didn't predict, it's a failure that we should all be concerned about. It assumes we want them to know so much about everything that they can actually predict everything.

I'm not sure I want them to know everything.