ANN ALTHOUSE: Why I didn’t blog Adam Liptak’s “Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say.”

In fact, an obvious riposte popped into my head immediately: All Presidents threaten the rule of law! That’s supposed to cause you to understand the levels of my annoyance at the headline. I don’t like the “could,” since mere possibility is already built into the word “threaten.” Any governmental power can be abused, so there is always a threat. Don’t back off and portray the threat as mere potential. The threat is omnipresent.

Let me just quote James Madison, Federalist 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The other level of annoyance is, as my riposte makes clear, that the headline singles out Donald Trump. What about Barack Obama? What about Hillary Clinton?

Yes, what about them? Well, they’re less constrained than Trump would be by the media and the Deep State.