LAWS, NOT MEN:

Did you know that the organizational chart for the federal government is the only one you'll ever see that doesn't have a person or group of people in the top box? Instead, the three branches of government, including President Donald Trump's executive branch, sit equidistant from each other on a horizontal row below the top box. And inside the top box is the Constitution.

When a federal employee sent me the org chart during the 2016 campaign, I thought of it mostly as a piece of quirky trivia -- hey, look, nobody's in charge! But I've thought about that chart again and again in the last week as people in the federal government have either joined forces with the White House or acted out against it in ways we've never seen before. [...]

State governments often have their electorate at the top of the chart. Companies may have the CEO or the board of directors.

But the chart distributed to federal employees to illustrate their role in the sprawling organization reports to no person, no boss, no board of trustees or political party. Instead it ties up neatly at the top underneath the document that Americans agreed to more than 200 years ago as their means of self-government.

The president swears an oath to uphold the Constitution and so do members of Congress. And so does every federal employee -- a decision made by President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s to make it abundantly clear where government workers' loyalties must lie -- not with a person, an idea, a movement, or even with him, the president.

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