Lucianne Goldberg, vileness personified, on the ABC interview of Howard and Judy Dean:

Judy, the un-Hillary sweet., with just a tiny touch of Hedda Nussbaum

In case you don't recognize the allusion:

Ten years ago, Hedda Nussbaum became a household name. Her face, shattered and scarred after years of physical abuse by her live-in partner, Joel Steinberg, was splashed across newspaper and magazine covers when Steinberg beat the couple's 6 year old adopted daughter Lisa to death.

(That's from SafeNet, which also reproduces a picture of the abused Nussbaum shortly after Steinberg's arrest -- an image that's burned into a lot of memories around here.)

Goldberg worked this riff yesterday as well. And Peggy Noonan and National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez have had a good chuckle over this little quip, in reference to Dean's Iowa speech: There's an old joke that Goerge Bush 41 reminds women of their first husband. Howard Dean last night reminds women of their first husband against whom they had to take out a restraining order.

Yeah, I know -- your opponent's drowning, you toss in an anvil. But there are anvils and anvils. Absence evidence, a charge like this, or even jokes like this, should be beyond the pale. This is essentially calling the man a domestic Hitler.