DOUG KMIEC on the Comey testimony.responds. And Orin Kerr comments:

In my view, Kmiec is plainly right that nothing in Comey’s testimony suggests anything like another Watergate. Consider how little we know about the facts. We don’t know what the program was that Comey and Ashcroft wouldn’t authorize, or why they wouldn’t authorize it. And as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the President intentionally violated a known legal duty or participated in some kind of cover-up. (Note that when Comey met with the President one-on-one, according to his testimony, the President backed him.)

At the same time, the test for whether the Comey story deserves attention surely can’t be whether it’s as bad as Watergate. I’m sure there’s room in there for political news that doesn’t quite hit Watergate break-in and Nixonian cover-up levels. And just as we don’t know the facts to make the Watergate comparison stick, we also don’t know the facts to suggest, as Kmiec does, that this was just some sort of routine disagreement within the Executive branch.

In fact, we don’t know much at all, though that certainly hasn’t kept it from becoming a big story.