Donald Trump has proclaimed himself the “Law and Order President” and William Barr is presumably his “Law and Order” sidekick of an Attorney General.  They apply the law to drop felony charges against Michael Flynn, after Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador.  They apply the law to withdraw the Department of Justice’s sentencing recommendation with respect to Roger Stone’s seven felony convictions for lying to Congress and threatening witnesses.  Then the President commutes Stone’s sentence days before it was to be served.  Trump and Barr apply the law to fire neutral prosecutors who appear to be investigating the President’s friends and business partners; and then the Attorney General tells the bald-faced lie that the prosecutor had resigned. They apply the order to teargas peaceful protesters away from the White House so that the President can stage a photo-op with a Bible.  Law and order are convenient tools to help the President’s political friends (or those who have dirt on him) and to hurt his enemies.  

This is a squalid enough spectacle, but at least no one died.  Until this week, when Attorney General Barr took time out from his busy schedule to press for the execution of two inmates on federal death row.  No federal prisoner had been executed for more than seventeen years.  And until the 2020 election cycle—when the President’s strategy seems to be to create a phony panic about violent crime—the federal death penalty did not seem to be a high priority.  Suddenly, it is an emergency.  Two men were executed in the middle of the night, right out of the playback of the Soviet prisons of yesteryear or the torture prisons of Egypt.  A third is scheduled to die later this week.