This week in the saga

The fortress starts leaking from inside. On the last Tuesday of June an aide who once walked the palace halls sits before the committee on live television — a thrown plate, a lunge for the armored car's wheel — and he answers from the dark of the lounge while she is still speaking: no cross-examination, a kangaroo court, a total phony. The next morning the machine reminds everyone it still wins: twelve endorsements, twelve victories in a single night. But the week ends on a terrace under the Fourth of July fireworks, tallying war, inflation and his own trial — and calling that the good news.