The Bush presidency is the highest stage of Nixonism.

Got that, folks? On occasions too numerous to count, President Bush has been likened to Hitler. Just recently, his foreign policy was compared to the Holocaust by leading Democrat Charles Rangel.

But Nixon?

My God, as hyperbole goes, that really takes the cake. As everyone knows, Nixon was Satan incarnate, and made Hitler look like a choir boy.

Glenn Reynolds is right when he says Bush's "ability to drive his opponents stark, raving bonkers is almost supernatural."

What's even more supernatural is the way former Clinton official Sidney Blumenthal has parted with his fellow travelers and jumped aboard the otherwise conservative Deep Throat composite bandwagon:

Felt was not working as "a disgruntled maverick ... but rather as the leader of a clandestine group" of three other high-level agents to control the story by collecting intelligence and leaking it. For more than 30 years the secrecy around Deep Throat diverted attention to who Deep Throat was rather than what Deep Throat was - a covertFBI operation in which Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was almost certainly an unwitting asset.

When FBI director J Edgar Hoover died on May 2 1972, Felt, who believed he should be his replacement, was passed over. The Watergate break-in took place a month later. As President Nixon sought to coerce the CIA and FBI to participate in his increasingly frantic efforts to obstruct justice, Felt, who had access to raw intelligence files, organised a band of his most trusted lieutenants and began strategic leaking. The Felt op, in fact, was part of a widespread revolt of professionals throughout the federal government against Nixon's threats to their bureaucratic integrity.

I'm very forgiving in all matters of political as well as personal deviationism, so I'm delighted to welcome Sidney Blumenthal to the hallowed halls of alternate Watergate historical revisionism.

It's a grand old struggle, Comrade!