Six months ago, I was getting a daily rush out of watching the nightmare unfold. There was a warm sense of poetic justice in seeing 'fate' drive these money-changers out of the temple they had worked so hard to steal from its rightful owners.

But that high is beginning to fade, tailing down to a vague sense of angst. Whatever happens to Richard Nixon when the wolves finally rip down his door seems almost beside the point, now. He has been down in his bunker for so long, that even his friends will feel nervous if he tries to re-emerge. All we can really ask of him, at this point, is a semblance of self-restraint until some way can be found to get rid of him gracefully.

This is not a cheerful prospect, for Mr. Nixon or anyone else - but it would be a hell of a lot easier to cope with if we could pick up a glimmer of light at the end of this foul tunnel of a year that only mad dogs and milkmen can claim to have survived without brain damage.

-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear And Loathing In The Bunker"

Well. There you go. To paraphrase Gahan Wilson, do you remember being a kid and how it was when you wished for and wanted something with all of your soul and then you got it and it just wasn't that cool?

Maybe Joe Wilson sums my feelings up best in a statement delivered by his attorney.

Today, however, is not the time to analyze or to debate. And it is certainly not a day to celebrate. Today is a sad day for America. When an indictment is delivered at the front door of the White House, the Office of the President is defiled. No citizen can take pleasure from that.

There's an old joke that goes like this:

FIRST MAN: "I heard your mother-in-law passed away. you must be sad."
SECOND MAN: "Nah, I got mixed feelings."
FIRST MAN: "Mixed feelings?"
SECOND MAN: "Yeah, she drove herself over a cliff."
FIRST MAN: "Well, see that's the thing - that's tragic. What you possibly be having mixed feelings about?"
SECOND MAN: "She was driving my new Caddy."

I'm happy that this seems to be the beginning of the denouement here; that the curtain is finally being lifted to reveal that the gigantic and omnipotent wizard is, in fact, a wrinkled, weak and warty old crone.

But I'm sad that it's only the beginning and that we'll still be living with the players in the game until well after - as Hunter Thompson might have put it - we're gnawing on their skulls and righting their wrongs.

Which is gonna take a long time - if it can be done at all.