Opinion: The Nunes memo is a dud. It’s still useful to Trump.

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, June 3, 2018 — whoops, it’s really Feb. 3. But I can be forgiven for thinking we’re closing in on summer here in Southern California. Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

For weeks we’ve heard from Republicans that the contents of a secret memo written by staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) contained information that promised to start a scandal “worse than Watergate.” Now that we’ve seen the memo, which was released Friday, purporting to show surveillance abuse by the FBI and Department of Justice in the counterintelligence investigation of President Trump’s campaign, can we say it lived up to the hype?

Hardly. In fact, says The Times Editorial Board, the memo proves that the infamous Christopher Steele dossier did not serve as the impetus for the FBI’s investigation of the president, nor does it reveal that the reasons for putting Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, under surveillance were illegitimate. Still, a president who fired former FBI Director James Comey and reportedly tried to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III last summer may try to use the memo as an excuse to move on Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, warns the editorial board:

Oh look, an old-fashioned L.A.-vs.-New York dust-up. Nothing expresses the East Coast’s inflated opinion of its importance to the universe better than an uninformed think piece on the cultural backwater known as Los Angeles, and nothing betrays the congenital Angeleno inferiority complex better than the backlash to such a piece. This week, two L.A.-based New York Times reporters tied the Los Angeles Times’ recent turmoil to the lack of powerful civic institutions in this city (compared with, say, New York) — and the backlash was, well, predictable.

Dr. Larry Nassar was not a doctor. The disgraced, convicted sexual predator who “treated” hundreds of U.S. gymnasts over 20 years and assaulted more than 150 of them hid behind the title of “doctor,” writes Virginia Heffernan, but nothing he did attempted to heal these women as a physician would. It’s also worth nothing, she says, that Nassar was trained as an osteopath, and he said his methods constituted approved osteopathic treatments. In response, practicing osteopaths defended their profession in letters to the editor.

We may never find out what Robert S. Mueller III discovers. Those hoping for a cathartic end to the special counsel’s investigation, writes impeachment lawyer Ross Garber, would do well to consider the longstanding legal opinion in the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and to understand that the rules governing Mueller’s behavior are different than those that applied to Ken Starr, who himself turned his findings over to Congress for impeachment proceedings. L.A. Times

Read this before you adopt the Mediterranean diet to lose weight: The “experts” singing its praises as an effective way to control weight don’t have the evidence to back up their claims, write Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz. Rather, they say, those who push diets relatively high in carbohydrates ignore the science showing that such insulin-producing foods are uniquely fattening, and they parrot the unfounded claim that eating more fat leads to weight gain. L.A. Times

Why does a city like San Bernardino get such a bad reputation? Sure, the large Inland Empire hub has its problems, writes Gustavo Arellano, and the locals have earned the right to criticize their hometown. But something more pernicious happens when out-of-towners are allowed to establish a city’s dominant narrative, and Arellano posits why this happens: the decline of local journalistic institutions that can provide an insider’s view that a place like San Bernardino has plenty to offer. L.A. Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com