I don’t profess to be an expert on constitutional law. But it doesn’t take a genius to note that the outrage coming from both parties over the FBI’s raid of Rep. William Jefferson’s office has less to do with principle and more to do with self-preservation. At a time when corruption probes are intensifying on Capitol Hill, no one wants his or her office to be the next one searched.

The one person who seems to get this is Barney Frank, the eccentric 13-term Democrat from Massachusetts who’s regarded as one of the smartest, and funniest, members of the House. Frank first broke with his colleagues over the raid during a one minute speech on the House floor on May 25.

“What we now have is a Congressional leadership, the Republican part of which has said it is okay for law enforcement to engage in warrantless searches of the average citizen, now objecting when a search, pursuant to a validly issued warrant, is conducted of a Member of Congress,” Frank said.

Last night, he sharpened that message on the always-superb MSNBC show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. As Frank told guest host Brian Unger, “There’s more irony here than in the collected works of George Bernard Shaw.”

Here you have a Republican Congress which has been enthusiastic about the disregard of any kind of reasonable strength on law enforcement for almost everybody in the country, and now they overreact when it‘s a member of Congress.

To put it very tersely, they have generally, the Republicans in particular, approved of warrantless intrusions into the privacy of average citizens. That is, they‘ve said it‘s OK to go in and get into what people read in the libraries or what they‘ve said on the phone without a warrant.

Here, a warrant issued. So we ought to be very clear, this is not a unilateral executive decision to do it. A judge issued a warrant. And I must say, having seen the evidence, I don‘t know what the ultimate answer is, guilt or innocence, and that‘s to be decided later, if, in fact, there‘s a trial. And there hasn‘t even been an indictment.

But it does seem to me that based on what we saw, there was sufficient basis for a warrant. This was not an imprudently granted warrant. And the notion that we would object when a search is conducted of one of our officers pursuant to a warrant, when people don‘t conduct when there are searches without warrants of average citizens, yes, that‘s pretty ironic.