the president may not have committed a crime by directing michael cohen to go held a lie, but that s not the only bar for presidential behavior. it matters that the president lied about it through the campaign and into his time in office. just because he didn t break the letter of the law doesn t mean it might be all right for a president to act this way. how much will that factor in. we talk about the president s base all of the time. there was a big chunk of people that voted that were taking a change on him and losing any of them could mean he wouldn t win by the same margin as last time. that s right and if it wasn t for 80,000 votes split up in three states. they didn t really like hillary clinton, they thought it was a
instagram and netflix. my first story, fair and balanced. during one of the fraught moments in the health care debate when it looked like novel forms of gop obstruction would kill the bill matt eglesias posted the following thought experience to showรง if you cano something according to the letter of the law doesn t mean it s acceptable. he wrote to the best of my understanding nothing is stopping rahm emanuel from murdering senators, having them replaced by democrats and getting a pardon from barack obama. his point was that norms matter. healthy governance isn t those who matter playing with a larger sense of respect for the norms of the institutions. there are certain things that just aren t done even if they might be permissible. norms are much more powerful