It seems to have gone nowhere. After the phone hacking scandal broke two years ago, British politics was in tumult. The world’s oldest English-language newspaper, the News of the World, was peremptorily shut down. News Corp., the world’s second biggest media conglomerate, was in meltdown. Senior executives either resigned (like Dow publisher Les Hinton) or were arrested (like CEO Rebekah Brooks). The resignations were quickly followed by the defenestrations of Britain’s most senior police officers, who had wined and dined with those same executives rather than investigating them.

The Murdoch dynastic succession was also shattered. James Murdoch was forced to forsake the biggest media acquisition in European history (a $16bn bid for the takeover of BSkyB) and left the country in shame. A judge-led public inquisition, the Leveson Inquiry, was set up to look into the nexus between the police, press and politicians—shining an excoriating beam into the cosy cartel of media moguls and prime ministers which, Prime Minister David Cameron admitted, had been “too close.”

After such revelations, where next? Well, Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for an independent press complaints body have spent six months mired in Parliamentary wrangling. There are now two competing “royal charters” in contention, mainly because – by perverse logic – these archaic medieval instruments don’t sound like “state control.” Meanwhile, the national press, having complained that politicians were trying to chill and silence them, are now insisting that members of the unelected House of Lords should be allowed to run the new replacement for the Press Complaints Commission. Why? Because some key press barons in Fleet Street are noble Lords.

When those who buy pixels by the terabyte cite Jefferson, Paine or Wilkes, take it with a boulder of salt.

To Americans, this must look like an episode of Downton Abbey—with antique arguments about regulation anathema to first amendment principles. But wait. Waves from this political earthquake are about to cross the Atlantic, where News Corp. is registered and where its chair and CEO Rupert Murdoch is citizen. They may well have had an impact on the James Rosen scandal.

U.S. Liabilities related to the scandal are mounting. As I revealed in November, there is prima facie evidence that News Corp. made illegal payments to U.S. officials for pictures of Saddam in captivity, simultaneously published by the New York Post and the Sun. The lawyer for many of the U.K. phone hacking victims, Mark Lewis, tells me his plans to open civil suits in the U.S. are proceeding apace. Last month, News Corp was forced by its insurer to settle a shareholder suit for $130 million, and instituted new corporate governance and claw back schemes for errant executives. And then there is the two-year-long Department of Justice investigation into News Corp for breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—with massive fines and possible imprisonment for any U.S. company and its directors caught bribing foreign officials.