President Trump has ousted another inspector general, the fourth IG in the last six weeks. This time, Steve Linick of the State Department was cashiered. The White House says the president has his reasons for no longer having “the fullest confidence” in IG Linick. Perhaps . . . but it is curious how these removals always seem to happen late on Fridays, when administrations do things they’d prefer you didn’t notice.

I am not a fan of the institution of inspector general because it is constitutionally suspect, to say the least. An IG works in the executive branch, and is therefore subordinate to the president, yet reports to Congress. This is a hybrid that flouts separation-of-powers principles. Predictably, it has deleterious effects. Congress has become too dependent on the in-house IG at executive departments and agencies, atrophying its oversight muscles. The existence of the IG makes it harder for department and agency leadership to deal swiftly with misconduct. And because the IG answers to dual constituencies in political minefields, IG reports often suffer from on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand syndrome.

All that said, the institution is not going anywhere anytime soon, just as the administrative state’s distortion of the separation of powers seems to be a permanent feature of modern government — and modern governmental dysfunction. We should try to make the system work as well as it can, though its design flaws may make it increasingly irrelevant.