Bouie: There is a sickness eating away at American democracy

Most Americans like to believe that this is a nation of laws, where justice is blind to power and status. But that is a bit of self-flattery. The truth is that as a country we have often found one reason or another to let the powerful escape the consequences of their actions.

Consider Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, commander in chief of a rebellion that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Davis spent two years in federal custody after the end of the war.