Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to rain on one of liberals' most sacred observances -- the anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency.

Since this year's anniversary ends in a zero, four decades having passed from that somber day in August 1974, liberals are more choked up than usual. (Audio after the jump)

One liberal journalist praised another liberal journalist on Monday's CNN Tonight. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein appeared along with Dan Rather to discuss the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Host Alisyn Camerota played a 1974 clip of the ex-CBS anchor sparring with Richard Nixon. 

After the then-president jokingly asked Rather at a news conference, "Are you running for something," the reporter retorted, "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?" Sitting with Rather, Bernstein marveled, "How did you come up with that? Do you have any idea what clicked in your mind?" The Post journalist continued, enthusing, "It was so brilliant, such a great comment." An irony-free Rather, who left CBS in disgrace for using fake documents, said with of the Nixon question: "And I have no -- plenty of regrets, but not about that." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In the early 1970s, the press obsessed about President Nixon's alleged "isolation," especially as the Watergate scandal, which in an objective lookback has to be seen as relative child's play compared to what we're seeing now, unfolded. Proof that Nixon's "isolation" had been a constant media theme in previous months is found in an NBC Nightly News report on May 10, 1973, when a White House staff reorganization was characterized by reporter Richard Valeriani as "Nixon moving to end President('s) isolation."

On Fox News's "The Five" on Friday, Democrat Bob Beckel relayed what he said was an anonymous comment by a person in a position to know about how cut off from external advice President Barack Obama is. It seems arguably creepier than any degree of isolation Nixon may have ever had, for reasons which I will explain below. Let's see what Beckel had to say following co-host Andrea Tantaros's comment that Obama has a "Stepford staff just sort of nodding at whatever he says," and Greg Gutfeld's assertion that Obama "doesn't have anybody in his circle" with the nerve or access to intervene (bolds are mine):

During the Pentagon Papers controversy over the release of Vietnam-related military and other documents in 1971, if a columnist had written that "the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences," and that "that decision must ultimately be made by the government," he or she would have been tagged in the press as a "(Richard) Nixon defender" and "an enemy of press freedom."

How ironic it thus is that Thursday, in his New York Times review of Glenn Greenwald's new book ("No Place to Hide"), current liberal Vanity Fair columnist and former CNN "Crossfire" host Michael Kinsley used that very language as he went after Greenwald, who has been NSA eavesdropping leaker Edward Snowden's go-between for the past year, with a vengeance. And yes, he did it at the Times, the very newspaper which was at the heart of the Pentagon Papers litigation that was ultimately decided in its favor.

The Obama administration's most recent abuse of the English language late last week involved its reluctance bordering on refusal to call Russia's military move into Crimea an "invasion." The press, unlike in 1970 when Richard Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia for under three months, is largely following suit.

CNN (HT Hot Air) began the Team Obama-driven festivities on Friday by reporting that "According to the latest U.S. assessment, there has been an uncontested arrival of Russian military forces by air at a Russian base in Crimea. They are believed to be Russian land forces, CNN was told."