THE BELLOWING OF GORED OXEN: James Wolcott (whose permalinks seem unworking at the moment) quotes in "Cries And Whimpers" from a great post at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

The idea implicit in statements of this kind by people like Christopher Matthews, David Gergen and Pat Buchanan is that there is nothing wrong with using the power of the executive branch of government to manipulate the press to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of political opponents. The belief seems to be that pressurizing or seducing media executives to accept false and misleading statements about critics of the policies of the government of the day is just a form of "contact sport" and that, in fact, all is truly fair in love, war, and now politics. It seems that the "wise men" also believe that it is just part of the game to "recruit" reporters for the national print media and then use them as instruments of propaganda to deceive the public and contribute to the destruction of the "loyal opposition."

If it is true that the politics of personal destruction are so widely accepted by the political establishment in the city named for one of the most honest men who ever lived, then perhaps we should change the name of the place. Maybe "Nixon City" would be more realistic....

Wolcott then adds for himself:

If it looks as if Cheney has to resign and Bush himself enters the Nixon danger zone, we'll hear the same frets and cries from the pundit shows about the country being torn apart and Americans losing faith in their government. But it isn't the country that will be torn apart by Plamegate any more than the country was torn apart during Watergate...; it's the Washington establishment that will be torn apart. And it should be torn apart. It's failed the country, and it's played by its own rules for too long, and "criminalizing politics" is exactly what should be done when political criminals deceive a nation into a war with Judith Miller serving as the Angie Dickinson to their Rat Pack and Richard Cohen auditioning for the part of Joey Bishop.