I weigh in from time to time—pretty regularly, actually—on the Washington Post comment threads. This morning, in response to someone’s statement that he didn’t care how Trump left office as long as he went away, I replied that I saw the optimal exit strategy as involving a gurney and a sheet. I’m pleased to report that this observation garnered scores of “likes” and a dozen responses, all approving, before the Wapo comment police remanded it to the memory hole. Well, of course, these fora are the WaPo’s property, and contributors there are merely guests, but I had simply hinted that were the short-fingered vulgarian to die in office—straining at stool upon the throne of ease, as it may be—I might contrive to contain my grief. I certainly did not express anything like a hope for the Fourth Branch of Government, AKA The Lone Crazed Gunman, to participate in the process, but the comment police saw fit to extirpate my quip.

There was an English statute, first promulgated in 1351 and enduring in various forms for centuries, that made “compassing or imagining the death of the King” a criminal offense. Apparently it’s no longer on the books in Auld Blighty. Can the day be far off when it is resurrected in American jurisprudence?

cordially,