How Donald Trump has succeeded in bending democracy's guardrails

One by one, the guardrails of American democracy are bending and cracking during Donald Trump's Presidency. Whether the system can survive this historically unprecedented, and entirely self-inflicted, test remains unanswered. But there is a crucial object lesson already evident for all democratising societies, and any that seek to live by the rule of law. In the latest, and in many ways most egregious, of his myriad transgressions of established political norms, Mr Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of one of his close associates, the notorious political fixer and self-proclaimed "dirty trickster" Roger Stone. Mr Stone was due to begin a lengthy prison term for lying under oath...