Probably the sourest, most disheartening news of the week was the sudden decision by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes to recuse himself from the congressional investigation into whether Russia hacked the election.  Another Republican will take his place, while standing committee Democrat Adam Schiff is busy dancing a jig with glee.  Still, all is not lost.

Nunes said he would recuse himself to answer complaints from left-wing activist groups claiming he leaked classified information.  It's mighty rich to hear that sort of fastidiousness about secrets coming from that bunch, given that Hillary Clinton's zero-security illegal private server holding all State Department documents and secrets in some guy's bathroom didn't bother them a bit.

But Nunes has said he is confident he will beat the phony charges of his political enemies, and in any case, he still retains his House position on more substantial matters.

This brings up why this recusal might not be such a bad thing.

The left's claim that "Russia hacked the election" has been going on ever since Wisconsin's, Michigan's, Pennsylvania's, and Ohio's voters all decided as a group to vote together for Donald Trump, winning him the election and becoming Putin's spies or agents or whatever.

There's nothing of significance that has come of this in itself, given that Russia had little to no influence on the election, and any claim to the contrary is just paranoia or a desire to cover Clinton's mistakes up.

Why should Nunes waste his time on an investigation that is going to come to nothing?  If there were something there, they would have caught it; Nunes and his staff are well known for their skepticism on Russia.  They didn't.  And unless Schiff and Co. are planning to make things up, they won't find anything, either.

There is the one substantial thing that has come of this investigation, and that is the illegal use of intelligence "unmasking" by embittered former national security adviser Susan Rice, whose motivations could only have been political.  Nunes himself has said that just getting that genie out of the bottle was worth the recusal, and given the consequences there could be for Rice, he is right.  But that won't be resolved in a congressional inquiry, given how far the details have traveled.  At this point, it's a Justice Department matter, and that will be where any action takes place.

Nunes can return to more substantial investigations instead of this Russia nothingburger and let the Democrats spend the entire Trump term trying to prove that the winner of the 2016 election and all his voters were really just Putin's puppets all along.