Rahm Haldeman and Obama's White House Plumbers

Richard Nixon relied on Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Gordon Liddy and a handful of others to silence his critics. Some were on the official White House payroll and were paid for their schemes and dirty tricks by the very taxpayers whose interest they swore to defend.

Others were paid from stashes of cash collected by political bagmen.

Thirty-five years later, President Obama is calling the same type of plays as did Nixon: paying people like Rahm Emanuel from the public treasure to conspire in secret with modern-day Liddys and Hunts in order to suppress citizens carried as "enemies" on Obama's political hit list.

Taxpayer-paid conspirators include White House staffers such as David Axelrod, Dan Pfeiffer, Robert Gibbs and Brad Woodhouse.

There's a big difference between then and now. Then, the media played the watchdog role, eventually uncovering Nixon's plumbers and toppling the President. Now, the media is complicit in the scandal, as the President's chief of staff meets daily to set talking points with George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and Paul Begala, perpetual talking heads in the President's pocket.

Have they nothing better to do? Is this really what we pay them for?