For the first time in our turbulent history, a sitting member of a presidential cabinet, Attorney General Eric Holder, has been held in criminal contempt of Congress by the House of Representatives for failing, when subpoenaed, to provide key documents in an aborted gun-trafficking investigation.

Stripping that historic contempt of any meaning, the Justice Department, of which Holder is the boss, refuses to prosecute him. That’s because Holder’s boss, President Barack Obama, has characteristically invoked executive privilege to keep those documents sealed.

Since 9/11, we have become a nation in which the president frequently acts as a king, without acknowledging the legislature and the courts.