Nixon, born 30 years too late
This is one of the headlines currently on CNN.com --"Bush picks new nickname for senator."

Can we now officially admit that it's over, that the national media is an insult to all the ink stained wretches who came before them into what was once considered an honorable profession?

It's still hands-off when the national media talks about the Bush Administration. All of the following are no big deal according to the hacks working at most national media outlets:

* We're now in the torture business.
* We went to war on a made-up premise.
* Bush has told his aides he doesn't want to hear any bad news about the war. (I am not making this up.)
* During the run-up to war, the Administration tapped the phones of UN delegates to get an inkling of how they were going to vote.
* The Administration is now paying pundits to carry their water. (Armstrong Williams, stop saying they just paid for ads on your show. They also paid you to have Rod Paige on, talk up "No Child Left Behind," and urge other columnists to write about "NCLB.")
* Bush & Co. are lying about the Social Security issue so they can dismantle it.
* Bush's phony ranch in Crawford. (I know this is a trifling matter but the damned thing was built while he was running for president. He'd never lived on a ranch in his life. It's a prop, people. I always feel an aneurism coming on when a TV reporter is doing a standup at the ranch, standing in front of a tractor.)

Poor Richard Nixon. If he had only been born a few decades later, he could have skated through his second term unscathed. Seriously. Think about how trifling Watergate seems now compared to the atrocities being committed today.

Like they say, if you're going to steal, steal big.