"Most often" and "typically," though, are the operative words these days. While I'm obviously hesitant to invoke the 37th president terms for the aforementioned reasons -- and while I agree with my Salon colleague Alex Pareene and my pal Steve Almond that the IRS and Benghazi brouhahas most certainly do not warrant Nixon references -- I do believe Nixon's legacy is nonetheless applicable to the revelations about the Obama administration's posture toward press freedom.

Those particular revelations, of course, aren't happening in a vacuum. Instead, they relate to an administration whose known obsessions suggest this is part of a larger, dare I say Nixonian, pathology -- one defined by a hostility toward the most basic democratic ideals.

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The men remain at large while the FBI gathers evidence. But the investigation has been slowed by the reduced U.S. intelligence presence in the region since the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks, and by the limited ability to assist by Libya's post-revolutionary law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which are still in their infancy since the overthrow of dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and holding them at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The preference is toward a process in which most are apprehended and tried by the countries where they are living or arrested by the U.S. with the host country's cooperation and tried in the U.S. criminal justice system. Using military force to detain the men might also harm fledgling relations with Libya and other post-Arab-Spring governments with whom the U.S. is trying to build partnerships to hunt al-Qaida as the organization expands throughout the region.

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Citing a Tuesday poll from the Washington Post showing that President Obama's approval on the economy is at 48 percent, up from 44 percent in April, Silver writes: "The economic mood may have been lifted by two highly visible indicators — record-breaking stock prices and rebounding housing prices — along with a series of improved jobs reports."

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Watching the Woodward of today pimp his personal brand on cable TV — call it innuendo with gravitas — is something like seeing a former Hall of Famer dispense motivational tips at a business seminar in Topeka.

And yet no event is more emblematic of our historical moment than Woodward’s appearance last week on Morning Joe, an MSNBC program devoted to the promotion of overpriced coffee, with a side dish of political hype.

Asked about the various “scandals” confronting the Obama administration, Woodward dutifully hit his mark. “I know there have been these comparisons to Watergate,” he told host Joe Scarborough. “I would say not yet, Joe … You’ve got to investigate all of these things.”

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The poll shows that Obama's approval rating is "stable" at 51 percent, close to a CNN/ORC International poll from earlier this week that showed Obama's approval at 53 percent -- up two points from the beginning of April.

Though it's not all good news. From the poll:

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It's because Obama is black, and "the American people are not going to tolerate the first black president being removed from office," according to Limbaugh.

h/t Media Matters

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Case in point: Its hilarious “D.C. turns on Obama” piece last week, which marked the crest of Scandalmania and also helped explain polls that show Americans trust President Obama’s version of events when it comes to the Benghazi and IRS controversies. I expected polls to show people believe the president on these issues, but I’ll admit I was surprised to see his approval rating actually ticked up a bit despite the constant drumbeat of scandal. But it did -- and that should force the media to look in the mirror, though it probably won’t.

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To review, Karl erroneously reported that he'd personally seen emails that showed national security adviser Ben Rhodes seeming to intervene on behalf of the State Department in a turf battle with the CIA -- but the actual emails (uncovered by CNN's Jake Tapper) revealed Rhodes did not mention the State Department at all. It was later shown that Karl had not actually obtained or reviewed the emails, but he and the network stood by his reporting and story, anyway. Karl did not show up on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday to address the issue but instead released a terse statement to CNN doubling down on his contention that the story was solid.

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Let's recap the scandals, in case you have been too busy having message board debates about Star Trek or deciphering new Kanye lyrics to pay attention:

1. Benghazi. Republicans insist the White House did something evil and incomprehensible involving talking points following the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Lybian city. Recently, the White House released an email chain showing the process of drafting and revising the talking points.
2. The IRS. The IRS reportedly targeted conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny of their tax-exempt status.
3. The Associated Press. The Justice Department sought access to, and received, a massive trove of phone data of AP journalists, as part of its investigation into a leak.

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The dog whistle quote came via NBC's “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing." The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

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According to an administration official, Politico reports, Obama will discuss the policy at the National Defense University in Washington. From Politico:

Obama plans elaborate on "the state of the threats we face, particularly as Al Qaeda core has weakened but new dangers have emerged," the official said. He will also "discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones" and "will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

The president will also "frame the future of our efforts against Al Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents."

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45 percent now say they disapprove of the President.

From CNN:

"That two-point difference is well within the poll's sampling error, so it is a mistake to characterize it as a gain for the president," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Nonetheless, an approval rating that has not dropped and remains over 50% will probably be taken as good news by Democrats after the events of the last week."

The CNN poll is in-line with Gallup, which also indicated a very slight rise in Obama's approval rating over the same time period. And Gallup's daily tracking poll also indicated a slight upward movement of Obama's approval rating over the past week. But as with the CNN poll, it was within that survey's sampling error.

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On the IRS scandal:

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, addressed the IRS scandal, saying that the law is "irrelevant" though the actions of the IRS were "outrageous and inexcusable."

“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant,” he said on ABC's This Week. “The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed to ensure it never happens again.”

When pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, Pfeiffer explained: “What I mean is, whether it’s legal or illegal is not important to the fact that the conduct doesn’t matter. The Department of Justice has said that they’re looking into the legality of this. The president is not going to wait for that. We have to make sure it does not happen again, regardless of how that turns out.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on the other hand, said that he cannot believe that the misconduct by IRS employees was so limited in scope. “I can’t believe that one agent sort of started this,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It seems too widespread.”

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"Those of us who have had the briefings, seen the videos, know there was no protest involved," Ryan said. "To suggest afterwards that this was the result of a spontaneous protest, we now know is not the case. So the burden of proof here is on the administration's side. Why did they continue to push this kind of a story when they knew nearly immediately afterwards that that was not the case?"

Host Chris Wallace asked Ryan if he thinks the White House "purposely misled" the American people to help win the election. "I don't know the answer to that question," Ryan replied. "Rather make a conclusion before an investigation has been completed, we just need to investigate this for the sake of good government."

As The Huffington Post points out, this is a slightly different approach from the one Ryan has been taking:

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Karl didn’t appear on CNN, but he gave Kurtz a statement which is brazen and baffling.

Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands.  I should have been clearer about the attribution.  We updated our story immediately.

-Jonathan Karl, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent

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CBS News reported last week that emails between the CIA, White House and State Department, leaked to ABC News and purportedly showing the State Department's key role in drafting talking points about the attacks, were sent out by Republicans, and had key differences from the originals released by the White House.

Schiff, a Congressman from California who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Saturday that the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the committee, should provide answers for how the emails leaked in the first place, saying that Congress's oversight authority "certainly does not justify the leak of falsified information intended to further a politically-driven narrative."

From the statement:

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“We have to be persistent but patient,” Priebus told Politico. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”

Republicans like Sen. Jim Inhofe, Okla., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah, have argued that the President could be impeached over the State Department's handling of the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya — not to mention the slew of Republicans who have invoked Watergate when discussing the IRS scandal.

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In 1998, as Burton was investigating alleged campaign finance violations from Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, his office released a doctored transcript of an audiotape of a former Clinton aide. Burton's top aide took the blame for the deception and resigned, as the New York Times reported on May 7, 1998:

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That might be less of a problem if the characterization of the emails was accurate. It was not.

Here's a timeline of ABC's role in the matter:

Friday, May 10 - Morning: Karl's explosive report that ABC had obtained 12 different versions of the administration's talking points on the Benghazi attack quickly made the controversy the top news item of the day as every other news organization rushed to aggregate and digest his report (including Salon).

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From the poll:

Republicans are much more likely to say they are following these news stories closely than are independents or in particular Democrats. There is a 21-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats in terms of following the Benghazi story closely, and a 27-point gap on the IRS story.

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