If you are a semi-news junkie, like me, last week was a Doozie, one for the record books.

"It began with a double whammy as the bipartisan government shutdown raced beyond Day 40. 

About 42 million Americans who depend on SNAP food assistance faced hunger as the program ran out of money. In many states, not-for-profit groups and local folks, like our good friends in Boothbay, Damariscotta and Wiscasset, stepped up to provide help. Meanwhile, the nation’s airline travel industry tiptoed towards chaos as many air traffic controllers, the folks who keep the planes from bumping into one another, decided to stay home. Strange, they wanted to be paid for their work. The shutdown put a hold on their paychecks. Do you think their family’s creditors would do the same?

In Washington, D.C., the Republicans blamed the shutdown on the Democrats and, surprise, the Democrats blamed the Republicans.

A group of mostly Democratic senators, including Maine’s Independent Sen. Angus King, stepped up, made peace, joined with the GOP and the shutdown ended. For their efforts, they were berated by their fellow Democrats for chickening out in a lovely political brawl. Hogwash. They stepped up and squished a senseless political fight that victimized the poor and traumatized a major industry.

And then, there was Jeffrey Epstein and his emails. And POTUS (surprise) was silent for the first time since he uttered “locker room talk” as a kid and his mother swabbed his mouth out with soap.

“And she should have,” said a voice coming from my smarter-than-me smartphone. Yes, it was the lovely and lonely Ms. Pigette calling from her perch beside Route 27.

“Now, mister old news dog, what is the latest juicy stuff coming out of Washington?”

Well, I said. Both political sides released a dumpster load of Epstein’s emails containing a lot of names, including POTUS, but no one seems to claim they contain smoking guns. But everyone from the White House to the back house is scared of, or gleefully anticipating, blockbuster stuff linking (here insert the name of your favorite political enemy) to Epstein and his ring of prominent DOM (dirty old men) who preyed upon underage girls. The files already implicated a British royal, Prince Andrew, leading his brother, the King, no less, to defrock him.

After a day or two, POTUS dubbed the Epstein scandal a Democrat hoax and ordered his chief legal mummy dummy, AG Pam Bondi, to investigate. He suggested she start with Democrats like former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president. And, surprise of surprises, she did just that, adding their names to her hit list of POTUS’s enemies, like ex-FBI boss Jim Comey, John Bolton, Leticia James, and you know the rest.

While Bondi did his bidding, some federal judges balked, with one suggesting the Justice Department may have charged Comey before investigating his alleged missteps. And she may have missed a few key legal steps, too. Then, in a SCOTUS hearing, jurists hinted POTUS may have overstepped his authority by imposing tariffs. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested tariffs are, in fact, taxes and the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to impose taxes.

“Cut out the kegel, oops, the legal gobbledygook,” said Ms. Pigette. “Does any of this stuff mean anything to moi, or the rest of us non-Washingtonians?”

Maybe not to you and me, I said. But, for the first time, some Republicans, and a few MAGA faithful, are turning on POTUS. A quartet of GOP congressmen, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, defied him by joining Democratic colleagues in signing a discharge petition to unseal the Epstein files. If you were a public official, would you want to vote, on the record, to shield big-shot dirty old men who victimized young girls? Do you know what that might mean for the losers? I asked her.

“Let me guess,” said La Belle Porchine. “They might lose, forcing them to buy their own meals, fund their own vacations, and forego those $1,500 English suits,” she said.

And the other day, I told her, the Indiana state senate’s GOP supermajority gave a one-fingered reply when POTUS and their own Republican governor asked them to redraw the congressional maps to cut out a Democratic seat.

“Humm,” said Ms. P. “Republicans refuse to kow-tow to the White House? Do I smell the first hint of a lame duck presidency?”

Maybe, I replied. But it is way, way, too early to make a prediction of that magnitude. Still, even in MAGA-land, all good things must come to an end. And when they do, the political knives will come out, and Washington might look like a circular firing squad.

Do you remember what happened to Nixon's henchmen after Watergate? They all pulled on orange coveralls with numbers on the back.

Stay tuned. It could get mighty interesting.