Bill Barr is the most dangerous man in DC. Maybe Trump is a demented aberration whose despotic demands result from a lethal cocktail of egomania and tertiary syphilis. But the attorney general, formerly known as a "serious person," insists that there is no law but the president, that the executive can defy both congressional and judicial oversight, and that he has the right to use the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies and to protect his friends. Which is such a gross insult to an independent legal system that former DOJ employees are slamming the fire alarm demanding Barr's resignation before he does any more damage to the department he leads.

This weekend, more than 1,100 former DOJ employees signed a letter demanding Barr's resignation and calling on current DOJ employees "to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation."

Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, authored an editorial demanding Barr's resignation or impeachment before his "root-and-branch attack on the core principles that have guided our justice system" turns us into "a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen." Not to put too fine a point on it, the people who know how the DOJ is supposed to work are freakin the fuck out.

And every day more news comes out about Barr's assault on our independent legal system. CNN reported Saturday that, in response to persistent lobbying by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump ordered Barr to disappear the case against Turkey's Halkbank for money laundering and violating US sanctions on Iran.