The antics and flouting of convention, like the clapping that the nationalists have brought to Westminster from Holyrood, may soon pall.
There is a horrible symmetry to the gun legislation debate taking place in the Senate under the pall cast by the Boston Marathon bombings.
Long pre-trial detention periods (some defendants have been in jail for four years and still do not know on what charges) continue to cast a pall.
Neither consumers nor investors have yet realised the "perils of the suffocating pall of debt hanging over the financial world".The writing is less florid when Mr Levy gets down to details.
Mr Rove's escape removes the pall that has hung over the administration for months, distracting "the Architect" from his plans for the mid-term elections.
But the pall of an unsolved Greek mess will continue to hang over the euro zone, just as it has done for the past year.
Unlike the years in which the assembled buy-out barons crowed about their mind-boggling profits, this year they were warning that few should expect any return at all.Yet a more ominous pall hangs over the industry, and the firms they have bought, than the prospect of investors losing some of their money.
Yet the relentless negativity of Better Together has got up Scots' noses, by casting a pall over Scotland's future inside or outside the union.
Mortgage rates in America have risen, casting a further pall over the subdued housing market.
On the other side, 15 Israeli soldiers had been injured, five from Palestinian gunshots.The al-Nakba anniversary always casts a sombre pall over Palestinians, wherever they are.
Europe's chronic failure to resolve its crisis continues to cast a pall on China's prospects.As part of its new style of leadership, the Politburo says it will eschew meaningless press events and "empty talk".
