Democrats.com is holding a contest for the best video comparing Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon and making the case for impeachment, with a $1000 prize going to the winner. All you have to do is make it and upload it to YouTube by noon ET on Thursday, August 9th—the 33rd anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation. More information here.

A 37-year-old taxi cab company owner from Ocean City, MD has been charged with murder after she sought emergency care for complications of a late-term pregnancy loss.

Christy Freeman initially told doctors that she hadn’t been pregnant, but later admitted that she had been. Doctors found 8-9 month placenta in her body with a jaggedly-cut umbilical cord.

Police later searched her house and made an astonishing discovery:

Inside a trunk in the living room, they found the remains of two
fetuses in two plastic bags and what appeared to be a placenta in a
third bag. In a vanity under the bathroom sink, they discovered a
26-week-old, 2 1/2 -pound stillborn child wrapped in a blood-smeared
towel. And in the upper section of a Winnebago parked outside were the
remains of a fourth tiny body.

Authorities have charged Freeman,
a taxicab company owner, with first-degree murder in the death of the
stillborn child found in the vanity, under a law that makes it illegal
to kill a "viable fetus." [WaPo]

As if that weren’t bizarre enough, the medical examiner has already certified that the fetus she is charged with "murdering" was stillborn. She’s up on murder charges because of a 2005 state law that treats the killing of viable fetuses as murder. Yet, that law contains an exception for self-induced abortion:

Joel J. Todd, the state’s attorney for Worcester County, said
prosecutors believe they know what caused the stillborn to die "in
utero." At trial, he said, prosecutors will have to prove that the
cause of death was murder, because the law appears to have an exception
for self-induced abortion. [WaPo]

Everyone agrees that the fetus was born dead. Yet, Freeman is being charged under the special "fetal murder" law with an exemption for self-induced abortion. By definition, anything she may have done to deliberately kill the fetus would be a self-induced abortion, and not covered under the law.

This case is going to be sensationalized for all the wrong reasons. I think they’re throwing the book at this woman because of the "ick" factor. The real outrage is that a woman is being charged with murder for a stillbirth.

Ferret, originally uploaded by Thelms Eye.

Rudy Giuliani is accusing the Democrats of wanting a nanny government for the United States.

That’s rich, coming from the man who as mayor of New York tried to ban ferrets:

It’s always worth recapping Giuliani’s famous riposte to a ferret owner who called in to the mayor’s weekly radio show to protest the city’s ban on them as pets: "There is something deranged about you.… The excessive concern you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist.… There is something really, really very sad about you.… This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness.… You should go consult a psychologist.… Your compulsion about—your excessive concern with it is a sign that there is something wrong in your personality.… You have a sickness, and I know it’s hard for you to accept that.… You need help." [Vanity Fair]

Hizzoner even compared legalizing ferrets to legalizing tigers.

Someone should ask Giuliani whether he supports his Republican successor’s plan to ban unauthorized photo shoots in New York City.

Kenneth Pollack, writing an op-ed for the New York Times with Michael O’Hanlon today:

A War We Might Just Win

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with…

[T]here is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Kenneth Pollack, writing in The Threatening Storm in 2002:

Saddam has a twenty-eight year pattern of aggression, violence, miscalculation, and purposeful underestimation of the consequences of his actions that should give real pause to anyone…

Even when Saddam does consider a problem at length…his own determination to interpret geopolitical calculations to suit what he wants to believe anyway lead him to construct bizarre scenarios that he convinces himself are highly likely.

Rick Perlstein tells a dreadfully sad story involving his grandmother and Fox News, here.

There really are no words for people who make it their life’s work to encourage Americans to hate and fear each other. By contrast, some days it seems like it’s only anti-American America-haters like us who actually like other Americans.

BLURG: Borrowed from here.

Tom Engelhardt: “The Withdrawal Follies: The Bush Administration Plants Its Flag in the Future”

Chalmers Johnson reviews the new history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes

Ira Chernus: “The Democrats’ Iraqi Dilemma: Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered”

Cigarette Graveyard, originally uploaded by JuanJ.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) surprised observers by coming out against legislation that would expand state-based health insurance for children by taxing tobacco.

David Donnelly of campaignmoney.org notes that McConnell has received a lot of money from the tobacco industry over the course of his career, $257, 725. That’s more than any other sitting senator except Richard Burr (R-NC).

Frankly, I’m not convinced that a tobacco tax is the best way to fund S-CHIP. As Mark Kleiman says, a tobacco tax burdens old, poor smokers for the sake of child health insurance.  Increasing the cost of cigarettes might also have other unintended consequences such as an increase in smuggling.

I would rather see the extra CHIP money come from general revenue, but that option isn’t on the table yet.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. The benefits of extending health insurance to millions of American children appear to outweigh the disadvantages of singling out smokers to pick up the tab.

The Republicans are terrified of this initiative because they rightly see it as an incremental step towards single-payer health care. That possibility itself is a reason to support the S-CHIP legislation. We can work out a better funding scheme for a larger and more ambitious program in the future.

The well-known hate site BillO’Reilly.com is being investigated by the Secret Service for threatening Hillary Clinton’s life. Well, actually it was just some commenter, but by Billo’s own standards, if the comment is on his site, that means he condones it. Why does Bill O’Reilly want Hillary Clinton to die?

Funny thing. As it turns out, when the cost of one of the basic necessities of life, i.e. shelter, triples and quadruples within a few short years, the rest of the economy is impacted as well.

Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, said yesterday that more borrowers with good credit were falling behind on their loans and that the housing market might not begin recovering until 2009 because of a decline in house prices that goes beyond anything experienced in decades.

The news from Countrywide, widely seen as a bellwether for the mortgage market, initiated a sell-off in the stock market, which is at its most volatile in more than a year. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 30.53 points, or 2 percent, to 1,511.04, its biggest one-day drop in nearly five months. The dollar dropped to a new low against the euro, edging closer to $1.40 to 1 euro. Stocks opened sharply lower in Japan this morning.

The slumping housing market has become the biggest worry for the stock market, which just four days ago set records, because of its potential impact on the broader economy and financial system.

Countrywide’s stark assessment signaled a critical change in the substance and tenor of how housing executives are publicly describing the market. Just a couple of months ago, some executives were predicting a relatively quick recovery and saying that most home loans would be fine with the exception of those made to borrowers with weak credit who stretched too far financially.

Executives at Countrywide had for some time been more skeptical than others but the bluntness of their comments yesterday surprised many on Wall Street. In a conference call with analysts that lasted three hours, Countrywide’s chairman and chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, said home prices were falling “almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression.”

Related cartoon here.

Actual quote from O’Reilly: “Doing business with people who traffic in hate-filled diatribes is unacceptable.”