For years ex-FBI official and Watergate informant Mark Felt apparently wrestled with the notion that he had somehow acted dishonorably in feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein. This morning, Felt should have all the information he needs to understand that he is an American hero.

Ex-cons Gordon Liddy (who says listening to Hitler on the radio “made me feel a strength inside I had never known before”) and Chuck Colson (pictured at right; once described as being “incapable of humanitarian thought”), as well as former Nixonian word torturer Pat Buchanan, are condemning the “traitor” Mark Felt for violating “the ethics of the law enforcement profession,” undermining the Nixon administration, and in general failing to “stop Watergate.” (Story.) Indeed – to read their incoherent spew you’d think the Washington Post burglarized the Watergate, wouldn’t you?

I do not feel that I have yet made a sufficient mark on society. However, if I awake one morning to find myself condemned as a traitor by criminal vermin like Colson and Liddy, I will know beyond question that I have served my nation well.