UPDATE: In a brief statement, a Chicago Police Department official confirmed that eight computers and a safe were stolen from Blagojevich's lawyer's office. "The content of the computers we have no knowledge of, nor do we care about," he said, which makes absolutely no sense to us.

From the Trib:

Chicago police are investigating a burglary at the law offices of the attorneys for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, sources said, and are trying to recover computers containing discovery evidence in the sweeping corruption case.

Someone broke into the offices of laywers Sam Adam and his son, Sam Adam Jr., in the 6100 block of South Ellis Avenue, sources said, and stole computer equipment. At least one of those computers carried copies of secretly made tape recordings in the case, sources said.

How very Nixonian! Blagojevich has called himself "the anti-Nixon"; we can't really figure out at this early stage whether this break-in cements or undermines that characterization. Since the material stolen is reportedly discovery evidence, and therefore just copies of what the prosecution has, our completely uninformed gut is telling us that this was staged in order to give Blagojevich cover to start leaking extended portions of the incriminating wiretaps—something he has repeatedly said he looks forward to doing. Either that or he dumped all his mob-related files on his lawyer for safekeeping. Of course, it could just be a random break-in, just like everyone thought Watergate was at first. But for some reason, we're disinclined to give Blagojevich the benefit of the doubt.

To be fair, it was ridiculous back when ABC allowed Stossel to give keynote speeches at conservative/libertarian think tank gala events while still calling him a "reporter" for 20/20 and not a "pundit" or whatever. He's always had a very specific political agenda and he's always been more than willing to distort the truth in the service of that agenda. In that respect, he's not so different from a Michael Moore, except that he's on the side of evil and also no legitimate news organization has ever tried to pawn off Michael Moore as a regular plain-old "reporter."

But! John Stossel is different! He is not fat, first of all, and second of all he has a mustache, and thirdly it is considered a corrective to "liberal bias" to have a dude straight-up lying to prove conservative points on your newscast.

Obviously he is much more at home on Fox, where they only pretend to be unbiased for the purposes of annoying people like us. So the fact that Stossel is actively promoting and co-hosting this Americans For Prosperity anti-health care event is not even really News.

But it is coming as everyone in DC is dropping their monocles at the fact that the White House has been criticizing Fox News. This is Nixonian! The White House is not allowed to say a tv station is not legitimate! It is classic Nixon dirty tricks, to punish Fox by... not granting them interviews with administration officials for the rest of the year, which is two months.

Because, you know, they so often make themselves available to representatives of the RNC, various right-wing think tanks, and Ron Paul's newsletter.

Anyway Joe Conason has a very good little piece that begins to explain what, exactly, Nixon did in his war on the press. He did not criticize the Washington Post for being mean to him. He used the power of the federal government to hurt them financially so that they'd stop reporting truthful thing about him. Calling it "Nixonian" every time a president is upset with a news organization cheapens that man's amazing legacy of bastardry.

It is a wonderful piece of alternate universe American history, in which President Nixon had to explain to a nation that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were going to die on the moon.

Of course, Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, and Bush left office after completing his second term. Nixon spent two years in seclusion, and then agreed to be interviewed by a man he considered (with ample evidence) to be a lightweight in exchange for $600,000. Bush will probably never be in need of money.

Though he will, eventually, have a book of some kind to promote. And once he does, he'll be pushing, as Nixon was, for a public reevaluation of his time in office. So we can dream!

British tabloid editor turned reality TV embarrassment Piers Morgan is just one of the current journalists who'd love to reenact Frost/Nixon with Bush.

The Nixon interviews are great television (though not quite as HEY DRAMATIC ACTING OVER HERE GUYS as Ron Howard would have you believe). But would the Bush interviews even be worth it?

If you asked our former President about torture, for an hour straight, he'd still just say "we don't torture." If you asked him about warrantless wiretapping he'd say he'd do anything to keep America safe.

Wouldn't we, as a still broken and angry nation, rather just have someone yell at Bush for two days than hear the same idiotic cliches? Do we judge this man capable of any kind of self-reflection? Nixon had that grand paranoia. Bush is oblivious.

Bush has faced "tough" questions before. He gets petulant, but reveals nothing. Nixon was operatic in his self-pity, cunning in his politics, and actually genuinely interesting. Bush is just a dumb shit.

A Frost/Cheney might be more interesting, but he would just relentlessly lie until you lured him to the Fortress of Solitude and immersed him in Red Kryptonite.

But, you know, kind of wonderful. Especially when she does her Nixon impression. We'd like to hear her read this column out loud.

As Jack Kennedy used to say, and so eloquently, here you can really stick it to him and break it off.

And speaking of JFK, try to seize back a bit of the issue of health in general. Remember physical fitness and vigor and 50 mile hikes on the C&O Canal? Completely captured the public imagination. JFK himself didn't do it, he wasn't insane, and he had the bad back. He sent Bobby and that fat Pierre Salinger. Anyway, go with that: personal responsibility, strength, health. Steal it from the Dems. But don't imitate their censorious tone: ‘Ya can't smoke, put down that doughnut.' Let me tell you, doughnut eaters are the largest growing demographic in America. Don't get crossways with them!"

Hah. Can you imagine this coming out of her patrician mouth? No, but seriously, it's a very good Nixon pastiche, except not once does it say anything about the Jews. Come on, Pegs! You know Zombie Nixon would have plenty to say about the Jews!

Oh, but before Nixon advises the modern GOP to... lobby for Tort Reform (booooooorrrrrring!), Zombie Franklin Roosevelt appears before Obama and tells him to expand the politically popular Medicare program to all Americans, and call it the National Health Service. That would be a government-funded single payer national health insurance system, like they have in socialist Canada. It is a wonderful idea! We would let Zombie Nixon have his stupid "you're not allowed to sue doctors who maim you" reform if we got single-payer in exchange!

We know Peggy has always cared more about pretty words and fanciful narratives more than actual policy but now she is basically Bernie Sanders with a hard-on for cowboys.

He was 24 minutes late to the podium and then he rambled, just straight-up rambled, apologizing to literally everyone he's ever met, talking about dinosaur sheets and "Adventure Trips," becoming tearful, and wasting a full ten minutes of rambling before finally admitted to cheating on his wife. He cheated on his wife for a year with some friend from Argentina, and his wife has known for five months, and the affair just continued, while he worked on his marriage, and it was not until he disappeared on Fathers' Day (to spend "five days of my life crying") and the media caught wind that something might be up here that he decided it was time to apologize to his family and maybe stop the affair.

It was a bravura live political meltdown. Though it was dissimilar in tone, it was a cousin to Blago's classic presser. Not the first one, with the poetry, but the classic Friday afternoon performance about the children with cancer. Or maybe the one about cowboys? But while Blago filibusters and mugs and grins, Sanford just bared way, way too much of his soul.

It blew away Spitzer's one minute apology—He took questions! His wife was at home!—and Clinton's initial denial and eventual apology were, in comparison, boring.

It was Terrell Owens-esque, actually. Sure, he could've blamed outside forces, like when Mark Foley's attorney blamed booze and priests. But no. He had no excuses. That made any sense.

It was reminiscent, especially with the wife's glaring absence, of the pre-9/11 Rudy Giuliani classic, "I am telling the press about my separation from my wife before I tell my wife."

Sanford didn't have a single sound bite as classic as Nixon's "last press conference" (well, maybe "the biggest self of self is indeed self"), but it will provide us with many days of joy, until Tim Pawlenty's "I am addicted to meth" conference next month.

Sanford's instant classic in full:

According to newly released White House audiotapes, Richard Nixon summed up his view of abortion in 1973 thusly:

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white," he told an aide, before adding: "Or a rape."

Not that you needed any more evidence that the man was a miserable fucking monster.

He also blamed anti-Semitism on the Jews:

"What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up," Nixon said. At another point he said, "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

Previous tapes have shown Nixon referring to "cheap kikes" in the White House.

"I don't want to confuse you," O'Reilly told Colmes, who was like, "OK."

If you know anything about the O'Reilly Factor host, you can see where this is going: Nixon totally shook Mao's hand, on the same historic, initial trip where he similarly greeted Zhou Enlai.

Not only that, but Nixon quoted Mao in a toast to the Chinese tyrant, during an endless communist orgy:

As the People's Liberation Army band played such American favorites as "America the Beautiful" and "Home on the Range," course after course was followed by seemingly endless rounds of toasts. "‘Seize the hour! Seize the day!'" Nixon quoted from Mao, raising his glass to his Chinese hosts.

The president was trying to visibly embrace Chinese leaders to atone for a previous snub against them by John Foster Dulles, who had refused Zhou's hand in Geneva in 1954.

O'Reilly is expected to explain away his petulant ignorance of history by making even more things up, hilariously, probably involving Gerald Ford punching Brezhnev in the face.

The disgraced Illinois governor appeared on Maddow's MSNBC show after the Illinois senate heard for the first time on Tuesday federal wiretap recordings of his conversations. His strategy seems to be to keep talking and talking until everyone gets bored with him and forgets what he did wrong. Hence his tour of morning shows like Good Morning America and the View and his chat with Larry King.

By the time he made it to Maddow's program, Blagojevich had gotten bold. He said he wanted "every taped conversation to be heard so the whole story can be heard in the full context" since "I consider myself the anti-Nixon."

But the Democrat is not the "anti-Nixon," because within seconds he got all jumpy. He said "I can't go into the details" when Maddow pressed him for a real answer on whether he tried to get Chicago Tribune editors fired. He later sputtered a half-denial, saying he didn't tell Tribune Company to lay off, and his aide was "never directed" to do so.

The guv apparently managed to run afoul of judicial regulations, since, Blago said, there's a "Supreme Court rule" that won't let him discuss the specifics of his case. Which he had just discussed. Rather unconvincingly.

Blago surely plans to keep talking, Supreme Court rule or not, because his embarrassing presence in the national media is one of his only remaining political bargaining chips, and because he knows his constituents will eventually beg him to finish out his term if he promises to just stop talking, on television.

As Time Out Chicago writes,

In 1980, most twentysomething men probably pined to bump into one of the Beatles or maybe Bo Derek; Blago wanted the autograph of our nation’s most notorious politician.

Freak!

At least the disgraced, bribe-hungry Illinois governor was smart enough not to voluntarily tape his incriminating conversations, as far as anyone knows (unlike Nixon).

Just before he was arrested, Blago told reporters, "Those who feel like they want to sneakily and wear taping devices... I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate.” He was pretending to be outraged but in reality was totally turned on, because of his massive boy crush, on Nixon.

Blago later fell in love with John McCain, because he wanted to be a Maverick Reformer too, and hilariously he turned out to be not much of a reformer at all, just like his imaginary boyfriend!

Blago has truly followed in his heroes' footsteps. Now he just needs to give this speech, in front of a crowd of jeering racists.

Howard screened his movie before a Washington DC audience, then he and writer Peter Morgan and respected journalist James Reston, Jr. had a little panel discussion. And Howard, who voted for Nixon, said he was sad that America was all "never again" about Nixon and then Bush happened. And all the panelists compared Bush to Nixon and then Chris Wallace stood up and schooled them. (Or, as James Pinketon puts it, "FOX News’ Chris Wallace threw a fair-and-balanced apple of discord into the middle of the festivities.")

"Richard Nixon's crimes were committed purely in the interest of his own political gain," Mr. Wallace told Mr. Howard before an audience of a few hundred after viewing the filmmakers new film "Frost/Nixon," which is about the only U.S. president to resign from office.

"I think to compare what Nixon did, and the abuses of power for pure political self preservation, to George W. Bush trying to protect this country — even if you disagree with rendition or waterboarding — it seems to me is both a gross misreading of history both then and now," Mr. Wallace said.

And!

"Yeah I respectfully would like to disagree with that," Mr. Wallace said. "It trivializes Nixon's crimes and completely misrepresents what George W. Bush did. Whatever George W. Bush did was after the savage attack of 9/11, in which 3,000 Americans were killed, and was done in service of trying to protect this country. I'm not saying that you have to agree with everything he did, but it was all done in the service of trying to protect this country and keep us safe."

"And the fact is that we sit here so comfortably, and the country has not been attacked again since 9/11," Mr. Wallace said.

Chris is right, of course. Bush is no Nixon. Nixon was a smart paranoid criminal lunatic who actually effectively managed the nation even as he abused the office for his personal gain, railed against Jews, and illegally bombed Cambodia. Bush, of course, is a messianic moron who ran the nation into the ground, allowed a great American city to be washed away, and lied us into a pointless, poorly planned foreign war because he was so stupidly convinced of his own essential goodness and infallibility.

But, you know, Chris is less right to dismiss Bush's various crimes as borne out of a desire to do good and protect the nation (and do good intentions actually make a difference when you're violating the fucking constitution from the office of the presidency, Chris? really?), as opposed to Nixon's supposedly less pure motives. What the hell was the illegal dismissal of seven US Attorneys for partisan political reasons? That was for the security of the nation?

Giving Karl Rove, architect of the permanent Republican majority plan, a policy position certainly smacks of "pure political self-preservation." The Valerie Plame thing?

Also, yes, Chris, motivation aside, making torture official United States policy is actually worse than a two-bit burglary. Asshole.

How the hell does Mike Wallace even talk to his miserable son?

Seemingly self-appointed Republican "strategist" Roger Stone began his illustrious career pulling dirty tricks for Dick Nixon at the age of 19. He later served as post-resignation Nixon's "man in Washington," and competed with noted asshole Lee Atwater to see who could be more repellent and quasi-legal in support of Ronald Reagan's reelection. According to, well, Stone himself, he was responsible for disrupting the 2000 Florida recount. Recently he started an anti-Hillary Clinton organization called C.U.N.T.. That little scheme followed Stone's perfected model of gaining attention and press for himself, generally to the detriment of whatever cause he is ostensibly supporting, which is why it is best to take all of his grandiose claims of political sophistication with large grains of salt.

Last August, someone calling from Roger Stone's New York apartment called Eliot Spitzer's dad and left a crazy, sweary message. Once the details of the call were released to the media, Stone declared that it wasn't him at all, as he was attending a performance of Frost/Nixon the night the call was made. Frost/Nixon didn't have a performance that night, but whatever. Then Stone claimed to have gotten a tattoo of Richard Nixon's face, because the story was not yet crazy enough for his liking.

Stone sent the letter after the FBI called him up to maybe ask about that sweary phone call. Stone's response, of course, was to have lawyers send them a letter about Spitzer's whoring. "'Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,' the letter states, before going on to offer 'certain information' about Spitzer." Of course, the banking investigation that eventually led to the Emperors Club bust was already underway by November, so even if the date on the letter is accurate, who knows if it had any effect.

The whole thing could be bullshit, but at least it's well-crafted bullshit. The socks!

Beach man told FBI of alleged Spitzer sexscapades [Miami Herald]