Well, forget it. It's over. I say this even though I didn't watch the hearings, I haven't read the transcripts, and I haven't even read a real news story on the hearings. Does that matter? I've watched a national news story and a local news story on the hearings today, which means that I'm now about as well informed on this subject as most Americans will ever be, and I know what the short version is: Clinton screwed up, Bush screwed up, everybody who testified today passed the buck, they're all bums. That's such a nice, easy-to-swallow conclusion that I'll be really surprised if it's ever supplanted as conventional wisdom.

Clinton didn't kill him, so Bush couldn't have prevented 9/11. And Rumsfeld, using that weird pronunciation of "bin Laden" with the long a, says that even if Clinton had killed him, or Bush had, it might not have prevented 9/11. Well, bin Laden was alive on 1/1/00 and Clinton's people prevented millennium terrorism -- what did the Clintonites do right that the Bushies did wrong? But I'm beating my head against a wall. Show's over, folks. Nothing to see here. Move along.