it's a slow wednesday. something like that. here's what fun looks like for those people. ♪ this land is your land >> reporter: in america, what does it mean to be truly free? the freedom to speak. the freedom to pray. the freedom to walk around in public dressed as a giant cartoon skunk. ♪ rocky mountain high rejoice, patriots, this is the third annual rocky mountain furcon. nature-love furies, who like to do everything dressed as huggable woodland creatures, and i do mean everything. nearly 300 antramorphs turned out in their personas where one of the rare event where is having a hairy back is not only acceptable, but preferred.

participants at furcon hope that this peaceful gathering will dispel the growing perception that the costume community is fraught with savagery and even violence. ♪ i'm going to knock you out ♪ mama say knock you out >> reporter: what are we? animals? >> is it possible to buy a fur suit with head and everything, on the open market? >> probably so. >> home-nknit things? >> perfectly legal here in the united states to put on a giant head and big, fuzzy shoes and do what you've got to do. >> when i heard that you were doing this and that furcon existed, i assumed it was people in mascot outfits. but they don't look like mascots. >> no, a lot of these are of the homemade variety. a lot of creativity. >> really, intensely homemade. thank you, kent. thank you for watching tonight.

we'll see you again tomorrow night. "countdown with keith olbermann" starts right now. have a good one. which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? congratulations, chuck grassley, you just denied counseling to grievously ill people and their heartbroken families. if they want end-of-life care advice now, they'll have to pay for it themselves. it's out of the bill. grassley now boasts he exploited the bipartisan negotiations just long enough to push the health care vote beyond the august recess to enable the chaotic perverted paranoid death panel talk to unfold. congratulations, senator. you just saved the insurance company millions. millions taken out of the pockets of the people of your state and the people of your age. and palin the pathetic repudiates her brief visit to reality. she says there were two death panels and that they were

orwellian like she knows what or wellian means. april 2008 governor sarah palin proclaimed health care decisions day in alaska to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for health care decisions, related to end-of-life care. she was before death panels before she was against them. and another genius chimes in. >> well, i think it's proper because it's within the context of what people are seeing in some of the legislation that's floating around out there. >> the lessons of the republican hit job using stupid people to scare other stupid people. with eugene robinson, the lessons of pointless bipartisanship, senator grassley using inclusion to force exclusion, with howard dean, bush v. cheney. the statute of limitations expired on what the ex-v.p. wants to dish like when the president made decisions that i didn't agree with, i still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him. he thinks bush went soft and is going to tell all in his book.

so reports barton gellman of the washingt"washington post," our guest tonight. plus, john dean on why cheney may be admitting he ran the bush administration. and bush v. gore. publicly addressed by the secretary of state in nigeria. >> in 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state. so we have our problems too. >> and worsts. limbaugh whines he was compared to nazis and then a moment later compares his critics to nazis. all that and more now on "countdown." >> what must your mind-set be to believe that? good evening from new york. at some point in the future you or a loved one will be dying. you'll want to know all the options and their implications. but thanks to the republican party today, sarah palin,

senator chuck grassley, and others, thanks to them, if you cannot afford to have your doctor at your side for those questions, you will face death on your own. our fifth story tonight, how sarah palin's functional illiteracy and a senator's dysfunctional pandering just killed reimbursement for end-of-life counseling. senator grassly, top republican of the finance committee at the center of the health care talks put out a statement today, saying, quote, we dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted. misinterpreted, of course, by him, deliberately, to his constituents, on tape, as, quote, death panels. quoting the aarp, a sensationalized misinterpretation of a common sense and bipartisan measure. a misinterpretation the gop has happily, enthusiastically endorsed. >> i just wanted to get your reaction to some of the -- of your co-party members, former alaska governor palin, who called these panels that are essentially going to be dispensing care or deciding it

death panels, that sort of thing. is that proper? is that right? >> well, i think it's proper because it's within the context of what people are seeing in some of the legislation that's floating around out there. >> death panels, a key issue soaking fear and fury around the town halls around the country, a goal senator grassley now admits he was pursuing even while he was pretending, talking bipartisanship. >> if i had not been at the tab table, there would have been a bill through the committee the week of june 22nd and it would have been through the senate by now because there's 60 democrats. so i think that i have by sticking my finger in the dike, i have had an opportunity to give the grassroots of america an opportunity to speak up as you're seeing every day on television, and i think -- and i think that that's a -- i think that that's a good thing. >> stick your finger somewhere

else, senator, and see if your honesty is stuck there. and the woman that trumped up death panel phobia, sarah palin posted last night, a lengthy for her defensive, with footnotes. if she had not just crewed over poor, dying people with her fearmongering, it would be almost funny. except on health care decisions day in alaska last year, governor palin proclaimed one of her principle goals was to assist hospitals, assisted living facilities and in others in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives. but now part of the house bill requires consultations. quote, practitioners must explain the continuum of end-of-life services, and she cites a "washington post" editorial page opinion that says essentially the same thing. here's the problem, unless you can actually read, section 1233 does say, quote, such consultation shall include the following -- listing all the d

end-of-life stuff, but it turns out section 1233 is just amending a section 1861 of the social security act, which is just a list of definition. so, miss palin, when it says such consultation should include the following, it does not mean doctors have to include the following in their consultations, it means the definition of reimbursed advanced care consultation includes any of the following. got it? oh, in the subsection hhh in your footnote, it does not exist. see the quote marks? the bill is quoting a hypothetical subsection hhh that it would add to the existing social security law. good thing you do not have a job where you need to know stuff like this, right? miss palin also quotes gene robinson of "the washington post," who will presently tell us the sentence miss palin chose not to quote from her piece. and she quotes another writer, quote, if it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to bend the curve on

health care costs? palin repeats the writer's suggestion that reimbursing doctors for this counseling gives them financial incentive to counsel patients to kill themselves. point of fact, end-of-life directives save money, end quote. newt gingrich said that. and point of logic, if your patients kill themselves, you stop making money off them. as promised, gene robinson joins us now. good evening, gene. >> evening, keith. >> so sarah palin quotes your column and the quote she used was, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending. i want your response, but if you would first read the sentence for us that immediately follows that that she left out. >> yes. the sentence, in the same column, immediately following is -- quote, it's irresponsible for politicians, such as sarah palin, to claim outlandishly and falsely that there's going to be some kind of death panel to

decide when to pull the plug on aunt sylvia. so, yes, sarah palin, somehow, is bolstering her argument on death panels by quoting a column of mine that calls her out by name, specifically, as outlandish, false, and irresponsible for making up this whole death panel canard. >> so she proved the point of the column, and i would call what she did with the quote "intellectual dishonesty," but it would imply some intellectual capacity on her part. moving on, the point of what she wrote seemed to be that the president made a strategic mistake by linking reform of health care to cost cutting and that that linkage, however tenuous it was and theoretical, opened the door for grassley and palin and others to obviate and on phys indicate, successfully, as it was today. >> i question that strategy, or at least how it was carried out

tactically. because it seemed to create an opening for the likes of palin and grassley and the crazies at the town hall meetings. if you say, we have to reduce health care costs and you say, we want to encourage end-of-life counseling, which absolutely, by the way, we could encourage and medicare should pay for. you know how difficult these -- that time of life is. you just lost your mother, keith, i lost my father in january. these are wrenching decisions that families have to make. it is so much better if they are thought about before hand. so, absolutely, medicare should pay. but if those two concepts are allowed to be linked, cut costs, talk about what to do at the end of life, it does create this opening for demagoguery, frankly, and that's what's been going on. >> what will it say about

democrats, at this point, if they accept exclusions like grassley and baucus have pulled off, which are based on, to used a polite version of it, bullcrap. >> well, what will it say about democrats? it will say that there is not yet, and it's awfully late in the day, a unified, coherent democratic vision of exactly what this health care reform package is supposed to look at. and i think, frankly, that president obama, while he has gotten, as he would say, 70% of the way by essentially allowing congress to do it and see what they come up, i really think he needs to help define it. you know, we were at the point where congress is going in all its different directions and now with with the recess and the town halls, it seems the debate is a bit out of hand.

>> eugene robinson, msnbc political analyst, also, of course, at "the washington post," gene, as always, thanks for your time tonight. at the white house briefing today, the press secretary, mr. gibbs, refused to take the bait when mr. grassley disingenuous about the death panels was dangled before him repeatedly. joining us, dr. howard dean, providing guidance to clients, particularly in the areas of health care and alternative energy resources. governor, good evening. >> thanks for having me on, keith. as a result of filling in for you two weeks ago, whatever you get paid, it's not enough. >> thank you kindly, sir. as to this issue, mr. obama has spoken before of not making the mistakes the clintons made, but here today, we saw chuck grassley bury a provision, he based it on a lie pushed by sarah palin, but written originally by betsy mccoy, the same big pharma shill who's now discredited, got the first reform killed when the clintons

were in power. how is mr. obama doing any better, at this point? >> well, first of all, i don't think chuck grassley has the power to bury anything. the way the republicans are behaving, they're digging themselves deeper and deeper in a pole. their base is shrinking, and no one cares if you're under 35 and voted 63% for barack obama what the republicans have to say because they're becoming increasingly irrelevant. so chuck grassley's probably not going to have a vote that matters at the end of this, because the republicans aren't going to play. >> but are the end-of-life provisions going to be in this bill? >> no, they'll be in the bill. because this has nothing to do with death panels or any of that stuff, they're just making that up. and at the end of the day, you've got to have a decent bill and that's part of it. >> is this -- i don't even know if there's a word that characterizes the last week and a half of death panelitis and the paranoia that has managed to damage something that would benefit so many people who are there yelling about it, as if it were a gunshot threat.

i don't know what word describes that, but is it necessary to this process or was the correct move, in retrospect, taking some input from the gop at the beginning and then writing a good bill and telling them, vote for it or not, we're bringing it to a vote before this august dog and pony show can be conducted around the country? >> i don't think the dog and pony show is all bad. first of all, people really are angry. they're not just angry about health care, in fact, frankly, most of them don't know what's in the health care bill, because what they've been told is totally untrue. but they're angry because there's a recession going on. i would venture to guess that 90% of the people that are shaking their fists and are shouting down congressman didn't vote for obama in the first place. there's a huge generational change going on in this country and these are the folks that are very uncomfortable with it. look, this is not obama's fault. he tried to get the gop to cooperate. they're not interested in cooperating. chuck grassley bragged that he's sending the bill to the bottom, and he's one of the good guys, supposedly. so it's not going to work.

we'll have to pass this thing with the very big majority that the american people gave us and this very vocal minority will have to accustom themselves to the change. and they will, because an awful lot of them are already on a government-run program, it's called medicare, and they like it. >> we kept hearing what a brawler the chief of staff would be in that position, rahm emanuel, betsy mccoy dragged her brother into this, the dr. emanuel into this, so why is there not a more dukes up quality of this at the white house. the press secretary was very cautious about what he said about senator grassley. >> i think these guys are digging themselves a deep hole and they will encourage their base and their base will get all exercise, but their base is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. i think they're doing themselves enormous damage for their future, and frankly, the smart thing to do is to step out of the way and let them keep doing this to themselves. no one, really, truthfully, except the most faithful of the far right believes that there's a death panel in this bill. no one believes that, and the

more they talk like this, the harder to believe it will be to convince anybody that there's much substance to this at all. >> shouldn't there be people out there handing out pieces of paper with sarah palin's name on there where she was devoted to something called the death panels now. shouldn't that be the approach at these town halls? shouldn't there be something more organized be the democrats? >> i think people are speaking up when they have the chance to get a word in edgewise. but do you think sarah palin has any chance of getting elected president of the united states? i don't. she could get the nomination, but she'll get 40, 39% of the vote. >> i would agree with you in terms of forecasting. i'm more worried about what somebody who has a certain cache to them, whether it's positive or negative, can do to people who don't understand and who are scared. >> here's the danger. the danger is that they further divide the country, that they convince this 39% or whatever it is that they really are being screwed and that the government's coming after them in every possible way. and that does lead to problems.

i mean, there's no question that that leads to problems. at the end of the day, this is a short-term political tactic to try to embarrass obama by beating his health care bill. i don't think it's going to work and i think it's going to cost the republicans a great deal by 2012. >> all right, governor. thank you, and if you could send me an e-mail on that salary point that i could forward to my bosses, i'll appreciate it and i'll give you a cut. howard dean, thanks. if you ever got the impression that the previous vice president of the united states were convinced that all around him were soft, insen sate to the apocalyptic terror that would come in the morning, turns out you were underestimating it. the implication was that bush had gone soft on him. what "the washington post" barton gellman had learned about what might be dick cheney's tell-all autobiography. investigators of another kind of, of course, have been begging for an utterly different kind of revelation. tonight, video discovered of the actual impact of a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter

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did you know that in his second term, president bush went soft and was too worried about public criticism? no, in this universe. dick cheney apparently thinks it's true and evidently will write so in his autobiography. barton gellman of "the washington post" joins us, john dean with some perspective. and five days later video has surfaced of the crash. introducing new tide stain release.

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we held only scorn for tell-all books, yet he is in the

midst of writing one. he was once a power center in his own right, but has recently complained about how and when that all changed. in our fourth story, dick cheney's disappointment with george w. bush and bush's break with him has fueled cheney's willingness to write about it, all about it. new details from one of the informal gatherings the former vice president has been holding to discuss his upcoming memoir. barton gellman will join us in a moment. in the second term, he felt bush was moving away from him. he said bush was shackled by the public criticism he took. the implication was that bush had gone soft on him, or rather, bush had hardened against cheney's advice. it was clear that cheney's doctrine was cast iron strength at all times, never apologize, never explain, and bush moved toward the conciliatory. cheney had not and now his disdain for what he perceived to be weakness in the obama administration's approach to national security may soon be directed at bush. quoting again from the article, cheney himself has said without

explanation that the statute of limitations has expired on many of his secrets. when the president made decisions that i didn't agree, i still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him. cheney said according to stephen hayes, his biographer, now that we've left office, i have strong feelings about what happened. now author of the cheney vice presidentsy, out in paperback later this month, bar don gellman. cheney's influence dimmed, he grew bitter, that would be a simple reading o of that. is there more to it than that? >> yes, cheney is someone who cares about outcomes. in an alternate universe where dick cheney appeared on your show, he would say, don't you think there's a possibility that terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons and will have no hesitations about using them.

and if he had that, where would you not say, use harsh interrogation measures on terrorists or use domestic surveillance or look for a way to topple the regimes in iran and north korea? and he thought he had george bush convinced of this. and bush walked away from it in the second term. it gets more personal than that, however, because cheney is saying bush did so for the wrong reasons. when he describes bush as caring too much about public opinion, that's cardinal sin in cheney world. people who seek after popularity, who change their mind in response to polls, who don't show resolve, those are people who are morally lacking at some point, because dick cheney's an anti-politician. he's a guy who thinks that unpopularity in the service of the right policy is a badge of honor. >> are there any indications, did you get any indications at this point what specifically he thinks bush did or did not do, or is it still in those

generalized, sort of being responsive to the american public? >> look, dick cheney is not a guy who spills his guts, even in small group private meetings. it's surprising and unusual he said as much as he did. the question was about what regrets he, cheney had, and his regret was that bush had walked away. the subjects we know that he was unhappy with were, there was no more waterboarding, no more secret prisons. there were -- there was a decision to go to congress for permission to do domestic surveillance, which cheney didn't think a president needed. there was a decision to engage diplomatly with iran and north korea. and in fact, to give them small carrots that cheney didn't they deserved when the whole game nor cheney was keeping unrelenting pressure on those governments in hopes that they would fall. >> the statute of limitations has expired on many of cheney's secrets. from that, do you infer that this book would be filled with

detail, the kind of which we would not expect from cheney? >> well, i sure hope so. i'd buy that book. >> all right. agreed on that. >> i'm all for openness. look, he means it metaphorically, i think, in context, that, you know, the game is played, the decisions are done, and it's okay to talk about it now. now, this is a departure from his old view that memoirs were inherently self-serving and damaging to the process of government. because a president had to believe and his advisers had to believe, in order to foster a candid debate that what happened in the oval office stayed in the oval office. and dick cheney is now going to talk about that. how far he goes, i don't know. what i do know is that he is being fairly open in his private talks now about his disagreements and his willingness to describe them. >> any sense of any -- any contradiction within the former vice president about it being over enough to have memoirs

written, but not be over enough for him to have shifted from any of his positions? because, presumably, you would not want to write about any of these things that you still thought were so vitally important and not being done unless that threat had somehow become less immediate, don't you think? >> well, i don't -- look, i'm not on the inside of his head. i don't know exactly how he would see that. he cares about affecting the debate. he cares about shifting policy. he's not moving into the sort of statesmen-like, above-the-fray, self-reflective kind of ways that many politicians do in memoirs. he wants to convince us here and now that he was right and his legacy needs to carry on. >> barton gellman of "the washington post," an extraordinary story and something to look forward to for historians in the making. thanks for your time tonight. >> thank. >> the implications of all this in our understandings of the crimes of the bush/cheney

administration, john dean joins me. in the interim, chicago, a very hospitable place. what has now happened after this incident, including the late-breaking developments. there's been an arrest, next on "countdown." hearts happy... ...and big hearts happy too. because as part of a heart healthy diet... ...those delicious oats in cheerios can help naturally lower cholesterol. (cheerios spilling) cheerios. how can something so little... ...help you do something so big. as we get older, our bodies become... less able to absorb calcium. he recommended citracal. it's a different kind of calcium. calcium citrate. with vitamin d... for unsurpassed absorption, to nourish your bones.

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"bests" in a moment. and why did those people have to ruin that nice portrait of that squirrel. born on this date as phoebe ann moseley. known as annie oakley.

while entertaining royalty in the 1880s, show shot the ash off the prince villhelm. who wants to play oddball? . we begin at wrigley field in chicago where the chicago cubs chairman is now apologized to phillies center fielder for this incident. in the bottom of the fifth inning last night, on a ball hit to deep center, victorino retreated to the warning track, and as the ball reached his glove, a fan chucked a beer on his head. security fingered the wrong guy and ejected the wrong guy from the stadium. look again, it was not the cubs fan in the cubs jersey, but the guy in the white shirt a few seats down who tossed his gold one. he now faces an assault charge. this man seen in the "chicago tribune" graphic has after a few hours of a fugitive turned himself into police. his name, dr. richard kimbell, falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, reprieved by fate

when a train -- sorry, they haven't released the guy's name. this is not the first time this has happened, not even in chicago. at the 1959 world series, al smith of the white sox retreated on a home run and a fan accidentally bumped his suds as the ball sailed into the huds. smith was soaked, no charges were filed. oddly enough, the moment was captured by an associated press photographer named charles e. chuck knoblauch. and a security video of a guy with a blue bandanna over his face and a hand in his pants pretending to have a gun trying to knock off this bar, this bar filled with 20 off-duty policeman. the robber was quickly subdued in the men in blue, one with who did not even bother to put down his beer. he was charged with one count of disorderly conduct. why the second bush administration might have been

scarier than the first. john dean's read on the cheney revelation promise. and in nigeria, the secretary of state warns of the growing pains of young democracies, like the 2000 election -- our 2000 election. these stories ahead. but first, "countdown's" top three best persons of the world. dateline columbus circle, number three, best news decision, john klein, president of the cnn, says he will ban radio talk show hosts as guests henceforth, because what they say is, quote, all too predictable, and much of what they add is a noise. should be an industry wide standard. dateline anchorage, best dumb criminal. he walked into a bank, asked about the balance in his account, the teller asked for his name, account number, i.d., all of which he provided, only then did he hand the teller a note saying he had a handgun and demanding money. mr. arnold is under arrest and presumably still wondering how on earth they knew it was him. and in british columbia, canada,

number one best photo from a vacation. melissa brandts, that's her in the middle, on the far right is her husband, and on the far left is a squirrel, where possibly a prairie dog who jumpeded into the shot just before the timer went off. they submitted the photo to national geographic and then they grabbed the cute little critter and they ate him. (announcer) this is nine generations of the world's most revered luxury sedan. this is a history of over 50,000 crash-tested cars... this is the world record for longevity and endurance. and one of the most technologically advanced automobiles on the planet. this is the 9th generation e-class. this is mercedes-benz. special interest groups are trying to block progress

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dick cheney's ultimate break with george w. bush, and before that, this nation's gross excesses in national security. the warrantless wiretapping, the secret prisons, gitmo, tortured, the resuscitated view that the president does it that means it's legal. what if those markers were merely symptoms of a problem. in our third story on the countdown, mr. cheney's attitude about national security, his inflexible, paranoid, myopic view. john dean joins me in a moment. revisiting "the washington post" piece, john p. hanna said the

former vice president is driven now as before by the nightmare of a hostile state acquiring nuclear weapons and passing them to terrorists. aaron freedburg, another of cheney's foreign policy advisers, says that cheney believes that many people find it very difficult to hold that idea in their head, really, and conjure what it implies. these are not small issues, hanna said. they cut to the very core of who cheney is, and he really feels he has an obligation to save the country from danger. let's turn now to author of "conservatives without conscious" and "worse than watergate," john dean. good evening, john. >> good evening, keith. >> mr. cheney has a unique grasp of this, there is expectationalism at work. is that how he sees this scenario? >> i think he's always seen himself as rather exceptional, keith, but his exception is that he's been able to get into big jobs and fail as those jobs. look at his work at white house chief of staff, look at his position as the gop leader in the congress, look at his work

as secretary of defense, look at his work at halliburton and now look at his work as vice president, and you'll see a steady path of failure. and the only person who seems to understand this are those who are not dick cheney and his immediate aides, but the rest of the world looks closely at that record. >> did he -- is he going to paint himself into something of a corner here, though? to save the world from the vice presidency of the united states is an impossibility. does he not have to admit in this book if he's actually going to go there, to use that cliche, that he ran the bush administration. isn't he going to have to admit that he was in charge for at least the four years and then mr. bush gave up on him for some reason. >> i don't think even if he does say he was running the white house for all practical purposes in the first term, which i think is true, that he saved the world. in fact, i think he left the world in a much rougher shape in terms of his policies. he's become something of the poster boy in his policies for

recruiting terrorism, leaving us in much worse condition than before 9/11. >> normally, central players won't admit their influence in excessive policy and the list is extraordinary when you go throw it in succession, warrantless wiretaps, gitmo, torture. but that, too, is apparently going to be turned on its head in this, because cheney has, what, no apology? he believes nothing is necessary? no explanation is necessary beyond his absolute certitude that he and he alone knows the consequences of not breaking 18 laws? >> it's going to be very interesting to see how he handles this. he is all but a self-confessed war criminal, keith. and i don't think at this point, given the fact that he's broken the fisa law, he's broken many of our statutes and treaties, created this executive theory that these pushed out, and i don't think that john yoo and david addington's legal opinions are going to cut it anymore. so he's going to have some fancy explanations to offer us.

>> cheney doesn't want to write about personal feelings, as if those were beneath him, but psyche might animate the book whether he realizes it or not. my unified dick cheney theory has always been, somewhere deep inside, he knows he missed 9/11, he knows he missed it while he was too busy looking at iraq, so therefore he must believe he saved us from worse, and therefore he must also believe that 9/11 had something to do with iraq. do you have a unified dick cheney theory? >> well, i sort of do. i've always seen him as sort of doing for george bush what machiavelli did for the prince. and that is to show him how to corrupt power. i don't think dick cheney is an evil person. i think he did evil, however. and i'm not sure how he's going to work his way out of this in a memoir, so i'm one of those who's very anxious to see what he has to say. >> but, richard nixon, as you know, tried to work his way out, and i guess to some degree, was at least marginally successful in working his way out to a

memoir and a rehabilitation campaign. is that possible with dick cheney? >> i suppose it is, but there are a large segment of the american public who what i would call are authoritarian conservatives. these people, about 25% of the american people, like dick cheney. and so he will have a big audience for this book. but that's it. the rest of the people aren't going to buy into this. >> except those -- unless he reveals that he threw himself on a ticking atomic bomb as it was about to be dropped on -- and he blew up underneath him and he was already. john dean, author of "worst than watergate" and "conservatives without conscious," thanks, john. >> thank you. and if you think cheney feels liberated to talk the way he wants about george bush, wait until you hear the secretary of state's remarks about the president in nigeria. and we will show you the video obtained exclusively by

nbc news of the helicopter plane crash over new york on saturday. and when rachel joins you, she and bernie sanders will reveal who these astroturfers at the town halls actually are.

since saturday's disastrous direct crash between a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter over new york's hudson river, which killed nine, the one prospective silver lining. the national transportation safety board's guess that there might have been another sightseer in new york harbor on that sunny day with a camera pointed towards the accident. tonight, it proves there was. this is not our regular subject matter here, but we're going to show you this a moment with this warning, that it is as disturbing as you could imagine. but in that lies its value as a forensic tool and our reason for showing it. the video has been obtained by exclusively by nbc news. it was recorded by another tourist from italy on a boat near the statue of liberty. here is the videotape.

>> oh, my god, oh, my god! >> as you see the helicopter, a small plane coming in from the right, an instantaneous disaster. there is some inference being made that the chopper may have been in the plane's blind spot. the pilot unable to see the helicopter because of the wings of his own plane. contact was of the copter's rotor blades. it sheered off the plane's right wing. a former investigator says that something must have been distracted the airplane pilot just long enough that he never realized he had intercepted the helicopter's flight path. that image will underscore the debate of the wisdom of having pilots over that river as long as they are flying at under 1,100 feet, flying without instructions or guidance of any air traffic controllers. hillary clinton's surprise invoking of the 2000 presidential election coming up.

(laughing through computer) good night, buddy. good morning, dad. (announcer) oreo. milk's favorite cookie.

secretary clinton invokes our 2000 presidential election as a warning to young democracies all around the world. that's next. but first, count down's number two stories, today's worst persons in the world. the coultergeist, totally ironically, on my death list, hold the applause, i'm going to be on the death panel. she did make kind of a death threat against dr. emanuel. dr. emanuel should want to be on the coulter death list. hell, i volunteered.

this is what any learned at the new cornell. the runner-up, congressman republican john micah of florida. he told a florida radio station, quote, they create a whole new category. they're death counselors. you have a whole new cottage industry, death counselors. that's one of these whack job republicans would claim the bill would fund democratic death eith eaters. but the worst, rush limbaugh. i'm not going to sit here and take it anymore. i'm not going to sit here and sit idly by while a bunch of fascists try to impugn mainstream conservativism rooted in the founding of this country. that was quote number one. minutes later, quote number two. if you want to do a comparison, just take this health care bill,

if you want to do a comparison, you want to do a comparison between the people pushing it and the people opposing it, to national socialism in germany, it ain't a contest. the people pushing this health care bill have much more in common with the people of germany than any of us have. if somebody where to compare rush limbaugh to the nazis, that would be a crime. and he's not going to sit there and take it anymore. but rush limbaugh is entitled to compare health care reformers to national socialism, the nazis, national socialists of germany, whatever he likes. just so we understand each other here. these are rush limbaugh's rules. rules you need when you do not have the intellectual or political chops. and not enough of a grown-up to defend a position without first tilting the playing field entirely in your own direction. this has a name. the name is cowardice.

limbaugh, you are a coward. and you are today's worst person in the world. (announcer) we will not be quiet

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it happened at a town hall. all right, let's just discontinue town halls, forever. for everybody. a cautionary tale to fledgling democracies. remember the lessons learned from past elections. remember, like that one time that one guy got more votes, but the other guy got to be president and the other guy's brother was running the state where the ballots were counted. a slight twist on this. town hall was in nigeria and person issue the warning was secretary of state hillary clinton. mrs. clinton in the midst of a sojourn through africa stopping by nigeria discussing the developing nation's upcoming elections with civil activists. she used the 2008 election in this country as an example of how democracy should work.

she said, i know a little bit about running elections, i have won some elections and i have lost some elections. in my country the man i was running against spent a lot of time trying to defeat to join his government. there is a way to make this transition to lead to free and fair elections in nigeria. 2008 was not the only u.s. election that could provide a teachable moment to nigeria, she thought. >> our democracy is still evolving. we had all kinds of problems in some of our past elections, as you might remember. in 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state. so we have our problems, too. >> a spokesperson for that man in the middle, former florida govern governor, jeb bush, offering this reaction. governor bush is declining to weigh in on these ill-advised comments, but wishing secretary clinton a safe and successful trip. joining me now, bloomberg news,

washington editor for "the week," margaret carlson. >> good evening. >> even though former governor bush gave a measured response, the right is predictably piling on these comments from hillary clinton. might this be a case of you only get attacked when you speak the truth? >> well, you get attacked in august when you speak at all, it seems. and isn't it curious that in nigeria, at a town hall, in the land of the prince and princesses who want us to send them $100,000 so they might claim their hidden her tainheri they have town halls where you can actually speak. that was one of the heartening things about nigeria. did you notice, keith, the body language of mrs. clinton in that clip that you showed in which she kept patting her heart or something, she seemed very nervous as she was making the reference to 2000. n now, i think it was a bridge too far. if mrs. clinton had stopped, secretary clinton had stopped,

with "yes, we have problems of our own," which i think is a good thing, that this president and others have said, listen, america is not perfect, we have our problems, we are trying to take responsibility for them, improve them, make life better here. i think that's a healing process for this country. however, to name the bushes, i think, might have been just a bit too much. leave it at, "yes, we have problems in our elections." and indeed, we do. look at minnesota. how long did it take to name senator franken senator franken? months and months and months. because the closer the elections are, the more we find out that our electoral system or our system of counting is not perfect. we are not perfect when there is a negligible difference between the two candidates. so, you know, but, however -- listen, let's cut her some slack. she was eight time zones away. she had surgery for her elbow,