Free Fall

("Supreme Court's Immunity Ruling Escalates Long Rise of Presidential Power")

So this is how democracy ends. Not with a whimper but the stroke of a pen.

Now Donald Trump can shoot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight, or at least order an execution by the military, without fear of consequence.

And I understand Richard Nixon is reconsidering his resignation.

The Supreme Court has forever changed the very heart of our relationship with the chief executive of our nation. Freeing him from adhering to the mandates, the dictates, of the law, allowing him unfettered capacity to exact revenge on those for whom he holds contempt, treating him far more as king, as authoritarian ruler, than as official elected by and subject to the scrutiny and reasonable constraints imposed on his office by we the people.

We have not formed a more perfect union by the ruling of the Supremes but have irreparably and irrevocably damaged it.

And in the process, we have enhanced and elevated the distinct possibility that Donald Trump will abuse the power of the presidency, should he win election, in ways that strong and vibrant democracies would never permit.

Beyond the reverberations in the Oval Office, was there ever a more pressing argument for term limits on the Supreme Court?

We are a country in free fall.