I don't think much of Christopher Hitchens as a human being but he's a colorful writer, especially when in his usual state of supreme outrage. That can be useful when, with a track record a little better than a stopped clock, he's directing it to good use. I laughed out loud just now when I read the following expression: "…the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten."
It's from the linked article about the newly-released Nixon tapes. Everything you ever heard about the moral bankruptcy of Richard Milhous turns out to be so — again and again and again…
You can listen to the new tapes or read transcripts here. This is the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, where every effort is made to put its subject into a sympathetic context and to suggest that the pressures of the era would have driven even a saint to treacherous action. But even if one accepts that framework, Nixon and his associates still look pretty damn bad.