It's hard to see how a controversial billboard like this would be a sound business move. (David Zalubowski / AP Photo)
By Frank James
With the economy being what it is, you would think a business as consumer dependent as one that sells and leases cars, trucks and boats would be reluctant to offend any potential customers by stirring up political and racial controversy.
But that apparently isn't the case with some businesses, like Wolf Wheat Ridge Interstate Leasing and Sales in Wheat Ridge, Colo. outside Denver. There's a "birther" billboard on the property which shows two caricatures of President Barack Obama, one with him wearing a turban with the word "jihad" next to it. The words "Birth Certificate. Prove It!" appear prominently on the sign. The sign's kicker is "Wake Up America! Remember Ft. Hood."
The Associated Press reports:
General Manager Wayne Means says the dealership has seen strong opinions about the sign, both for and against it. The left-leaning advocacy group MoveOn.org called the billboard "racist" and is asking customers to boycott the business.
Dealership owner Phil Wolf was unavailable for comment.
Again, it really seems like a dubious business move to antagonize potential customers, especially when they're so hard to come by these days. But maybe Wolf has all the customers he wants or needs.
James Armstrong, Civil Rights icon, in 2008. (David Gilkey/NPR)
By Mark Memmott
He never let the flag hit the ground.
That's one of the telling lines in stories being told today about James Armstrong, 86, who died yesterday in Birmingham, Ala.
As The Birmingham News writes, it was Armstrong who was carrying the American flag at the head of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.
When the hundreds of civil rights activists got to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, police turned on them. The beatings were brutal.
But Shirley Gavin Floyd, business manager for the Civil Rights Activist Committee in Birmingham, tells the News that though Armstrong went to his knees, "he never did let that flag hit the ground."
And each year on the anniversary of the march, Armstrong carried it again.
As Andrew Yeager of NPR station WBHM in Birmingham reports, Armstrong was an Army veteran and ran a barber shop in Birmingham for more than 50 years. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was among his customers:
On Election Day last year, when the nation elected its first African-American president, NPR photographer David Gilkey followed Armstrong to the polls for a photo/audio report. "If you want a voice. ... If you want to go be better, you have to vote," Armstrong said:
Update at noon ET: NPR's Debbie Elliott adds that Armstrong was active in civil rights most of his life. In Birmingham, she says, "he sued to integrate schools and helped coordinate sit-ins and demonstrations."
In a legal decision that may prove seminal, a federal district court judge in New Orleans has ruled that the U.S. government is liable for flood damage resulting from Hurricane Katrina because of the contributing role the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet project, popularly known as MRGO (Mr. Go) played in the damage.
As NPR's Debbie Elliott reports:
In a sometimes scathing critique of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval found "monumental negligence" in the operation and maintenance of a shipping channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.
He rejected the government's argument that the Corps was immune from liability and had properly maintained the navigation channel, known locally as MRGO.
Flood victims had sued, arguing the widening of the channel and subsequent loss of protective wetlands turned MRGO into a speedway for Katrina's storm surge. Judge Duval blamed government engineers for letting the shipping channel "run amok."
Judge Duval awarded damages of about $720,000 to four people and a business. The case has been closely watched by other Katrina victims seeking compensation from the government.
Attorney General Eric Holder will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that the upcoming trial in New York of the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will not give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed an effective platform to spread his agenda.
"I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is," Holder says in a written version of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "I'm not scared of what (Mohammed) will have to say at trial -- and no one else needs to be either."
As the AP writes, critics of Holder's decision to bring Mohammed and four others to the United States for trial "mostly Republicans, have argued the trial will give Mohammed a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric."
Holder, AP adds, will say that "we need not cower in the face of this enemy. ... Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready."
We'll pass along highlights. Click your "refresh" button to make sure you're seeing our latest additions.
Update at 2 p.m. ET: During questioning, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Holder that the Obama administration is "making bad history" with the decision to bring Mohammed and others to New York for trial.
"You're criminalizing the war," Graham said.
"I know that we are at war," Holder said.
Update at 10:35 a.m. ET. Here are two quick clips from the opposite sides:
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who opposes bringing Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators to trial in a civilian court:
And Holder:
Update at 10:02 a.m. ET:
Holder is using his opening statement to address critics of his decision and to clear up what he says is "misinformation."
"I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial and no one else needs to be afraid either," he said.
Mohammed, Holder believes, will have "no more of a platform to spew his hateful ideology than he would have in a military commission." Federal judges, he says, can control their courts and the suspects brought before them.
"We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing so for years," Holder said, noting that more than 300 convicted terrorists are now in U.S. prisons.
The attorney general's official statement -- as prepared for delivery and much longer than what he delivered orally because it covers a variety of subjects -- has now been posted here.
Update at 9:49 a.m. ET: Laying out the position of critics, the ranking Republican on the committee -- Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama -- just called the decision to bring Mohammed to the U.S. for trial "dangerous" and "misguided."
For Mohammed to be "treated as a common criminal in U.S. courts," Sessions said, signals that "fighting global terrorism is not the priority it once was" and a "return to a pre-9/11 mentality."
Instead, the senator added, Mohammed and others like him should be tried by military tribunals.
Update at 9:39 a.m. ET: Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is using his opening statement to reaffirm his support for Holder's decision to try Mohammed and four others in New York City.
"They committed murder here in the United States and we will seek justice here in the United States," Leahy just said.
Update at 9:35 a.m. ET: The hearing is indeed underway.
Subaru is the only manufacturer with a winner in all 4 vehicle classes in which it competes. This automaker earns 5 awards for 2010. Ford and subsidiary Volvo have 6 winners, and Volkswagen/Audi has 5. Chrysler earns 4 awards, continuing a recent trend of improving the crashworthiness of its vehicles. Two new small cars, the Nissan Cube and Kia Soul, join the Top Safety Pick list for 2010.
This year's judgments are tougher, the Associated Press notes, because the institute used new tests for roof strength.
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
By Mark Memmott
The Internal Revenue Service says more than 14,700 taxpayers fessed up and disclosed they had tried to hide money in offshore bank accounts during its recent amnesty program.
"To put it simply, this is a historic milestone for the nation's hardworking taxpayers," IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said on a conference call with reporters this morning. In most years, about 100 such taxpayers come forward.
Americans with foreign bank accounts had until Oct. 15 to disclose them and pay past-due taxes and penalties. In exchange, they would get amnesty from stiffer fines or criminal prosecution.
Shulman said the IRS will be collecting "billions of dollars" thanks to the program, the Associated Press reports.
Dow Jones Newswire reports Shulman also said the accounts involved were at banks in more than 70 countries.
And, Forbes writes, Shulman promises the IRS "will be scouring" the disclosures to identify financial advisers who directed clients to the tax dodges.
The news Monday that Chicago Board of Education President Michael Scott's body had been found along the Chicago River and that the medical examiner ruled he had died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head doesn't seem to make sense to Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass.
Scott, Kass observes, would have had to walk in the pitch dark through a stretch that at that point "would have been all but unnavigable" -- under the cement counterweight for an old drawbridge, "underneath an iron fence, then down a little embankment overgrown with weeds and strewn with trash."
That's one reason, Kass writes, that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis said "we know what the ME ruled. ... But there are a lot of questions out there."
"A body believed to be that of Michael Scott, the president of the Chicago Board of Education, was found in the Chicago River near the Merchandise Mart this morning," police tell the Chicago Tribune.
Chicago's CBS2 reports that Scott's family called police yesterday to say he was missing. The Tribune says Scott's car was found near the scene.
Update at 3:10 p.m. ET: NPR's David Schaper in Chicago reports he's been told by the Cook County Medical Examiner's office that Scott's death has been ruled a suicide. He died of a gunshot wound to the head, the ME says.
Update at 2:05 p.m. ET: We've updated the headline on this post to simply say that Scott has died, because the Associated Press now reports that his family has released a statement saying they appreciate the support they've received in the wake of his death. The statement also says arrangements for a public memorial service will be announced soon.
Update at 12:45 p.m. ET. From Chicago, NPR's David Schaper reports that:
Arne Duncan, who before becoming U.S. Education Secretary was chief of the Chicago schools system, says he is shocked and saddened by the apparent death of his friend. Scott was himself a product of the Chicago Public Schools, growing up in the impoverished North Lawndale neighborhood on the city's west side. In a statement, Duncan says Chicago has lost a great leader, and the city's school children have lost a devoted champion.
Update at 11:30 a.m. ET: Both the Tribune and the Sun-Times are now reporting that police continue to say the body is that of Scott, and that they now believe he had suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
KUSA-TV in Denver is webcasting, and the national news networks are going live as well, as "balloon boy" parents Richard and Mayumi Heene appear in a Colorado court this hour to plead guilty to charges related to what turned out to be a nationally televised hoax last month when their homemade weather balloon soared over Fort Collins and six-year-old son Falcon was not aboard, as they had told authorities.
As we reported yesterday, the couple's lawyer says Richard Heene will plead guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant and Mayumi Heene will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a false report to authorities.
We'll update this post as the court appearance continues, so click your "refresh" button to make sure you're seeing our latest additions.
Update at 11:18 a.m. ET: And the Heenes' court proceeding just wrapped up. You can scroll down and read "up" to see what happened. The short version: Both Richard and Mayumi Heene, as expected, pleaded guilty to the charges against them -- effectively admitting that the whole thing was a hoax. Sentencing is set for Dec. 23.
Update at 11:15 a.m. ET: Judge Stephen Jon Schapanski just accepted Mayumi Heene's guilty plea. Her sentencing, like her husband's, will come on Dec. 23. And she too has been given permission to leave the state while out on bond.
Update at 11 a.m. ET: Mayumi Heene just acknowledged that she is pleading guilty to the misdemeanor charge -- and that she realizes there is the possibility that doing so could result in her being deported to her native Japan (though her lawyer says that is unlikely to happen). Mayumi Heene is not a U.S. citizen.
Update at 10:55 a.m. ET: Richard Heene's sentencing date was just set -- Dec. 23. As The Coloradoan reports, "the penalty range for a class 4 felony is two to six years in the Department of Corrections and a fine of $2,000 to $500,000." But, "according to the couple's lawyers, both will receive probation sentences, although Richard Heene also could get up to 90 days in jail and Mayumi 60 days."
Heene's lawyer has asked that he be allowed to travel to New York and California while out on bond, because he has the opportunity for some type of work. The judge says that's fine.
Update at 10:45 a.m. ET: Richard Heene is competent and his guilty plea is accepted, Judge Stephen Jon Schapanski just ruled.
Update at 10:41 a.m. ET: Richard Heene just told Judge Schapanski that he understands his guilty plea is an admission that he deliberately intended to deceive the local sheriff on the infamous day.
Heene also says he understands he may have to pay substantial restitution costs -- to cover the money spent by would-be rescuers that day.
Update at 10:35 a.m. ET: The Larimer County court is taking Richard Heene's case first. "We are prepared at this time to enter a plea of guilty" to the class 4 felony of attempting to influence a public servant, Heene's lawyer just said.
"That's correct," Heene just told District Court Judge Schapanski when asked if he intends to plead guilty.
Update at 10:27 a.m. ET. A moment of levity: A court official just told those in the room that they need to turn their cellphone ringers off, but that "you may Twitter if you want." That got some laughs.
The stress that's been put on American military personnel by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been well documented.
The man who's in charge of efforts to help veterans cope with the aftereffects of multiple deployments is retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, who heads the Department of Veteran Affairs.
On Morning Edition today, there was a fascinating conversation between Shinseki and host Steve Inskeep. One particularly interesting moment was when Shinseki, an engineer by training, likened the effect that multiple deployments can have on a soldier to what happens when you drop a ball.
"A few years ago," Shinseki says, "I used to use the term resilience. The term is still used today. When I used the term, resilience was a throwback to my days as an engineering student -- where you hold a ball at a certain level and you drop it and the ball bounces back up. ... It never bounces back up to where you dropped it from. That delta, that difference, is the coefficient of resilience. ... Well, if you let it bounce again, each succeeding bounce is some portion of that. ... This also describes the multiple deployments. Quality of resilience is affected."
Here's the audio of their conversation. It begins with Shinseki talking about conversations he's had with veterans about their post-combat stress:
Hasan, who's been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder for the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, "won't be able to walk in the future," said retired Army Col. John Galligan, the defendant's lawyer.
The suspect was shot by police at the scene.
Update at 8:50 a.m. ET: The Associated Press now reports it has been told by Galligan that Hasan "told him that he has no feeling in his legs and doctors say the condition may be permanent."
For more of NPR's coverage of the Fort Hood shootings, click here.
In Tokyo just moments ago, President Barack Obama had this to say about the news that the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four other men suspected of playing a role in them will be brought to the U.S. to stand trial:
"I believe the attorney general is going to be making an announcement" about that later this morning. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it. My administration insists on it."
Federal authorities are seeking court approval to seize four mosques and a Manhattan office tower owned by a non-profit group with ties to the Iranian government, according to an Associated Press report.
Here's part of the AP's report:
NEW YORK (AP) - Federal prosecutors Thursday took steps to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets of the Alavi Foundation and an alleged front company.
The assets include Islamic centers in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 acres in Virginia, and a 36-story office tower in New York.
Seizing the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and seeking a nuclear bomb.
"I like to believe a system, in any court, is going to be fair, impartial, just," John Galligan told reporters a short time ago. "This has not made me a happy man."
As the AP adds:
Galligan said his military co-counsel told him that charges were being read to Hasan in the hospital without his lawyers present. "I don't like it. I feel like I'm being left out of the loop," Galligan said. "I guess it's 13 charges, but I don't like to have to guess in this situation."
Update at 3 p.m. ET. Here's an audio clip from Galligan's comments to reporters:
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET: Chris Grey, a civilian spokesman for the Army's criminal investigation division, just told reporters at Fort Hood that "we still believe there was only one gunman at the scene" and that Hasan had no "scheduled appointments or command-directed activity" that required him to be at the scene -- which would appear to be a way of saying he had no good reason to be there.
Grey also just said that Hasan was shot "by two officers," one male and one female, who "arrived at the scene and both engaged the armed suspect."
Update at 1:45 p.m. ET. Here is the complete audio of Grey's statement:
The lawyer for parents Richard and Mayumi Heene says they will plead guilty tomorrow to charges connected with the infamous Oct. 15 "balloon boy" incident in Colorado.
NPR's Jeff Brady reports that:
Denver lawyer David Lane says in a written statement that tomorrow morning Richard and Mayumi Heene will appear in Larimer County Court. The statement says Richard Heene will plead guilty to a felony charge of attempting to Influence a public servant. The mother, Mayumi Heene, will plead guilty to a misdemeanor of making a false report to authorities.
The lawyer, David Lane, says the mother is a citizen of Japan and could have faced deportation if she pleaded guilty to a felony. He says the father agreed to "fall on his sword" to keep that from happening.
Neither the Larimer County DA's office nor the sheriff's office has confirmed the settlement. If approved, the father could face up to 90 days in jail and the mother up to 60 days.
Two days after the Oct. 15 flying saucer-shaped balloon chase riveted TV audiences worldwide, Mayumi Heene allegedly admitted "that she and Richard Heene had lied to authorities," Larimer County sheriff's investigator Robert Heffernan wrote in a sworn statement supporting a warrant to a recent search of the family's home.
You'll likely recall that when the Heene's homemade weather balloon took off into the sky, it was first reported by local authorities that the family thought six-year-old Falcon Heene was aboard. It turned out he was home all the time.
In other "balloon boy" related news, the local district attorney has decided not to pursue charges against Sheriff Jim Alderden for disclosing that "county social service workers were investigating the (Heene) family," The Coloradoan reports.
Update at 7:25 a.m. ET. Via NPR's Jeff Brady, here is attorney Lane's statement:
The retired Army colonel who is the attorney for the suspect in the Fort Hood killings may be familiar to many.
John Galligan, as The Washington Post writes, "defended an Army military policeman charged in the 2002 maiming death of a taxi driver who had been detained in Afghanistan. The jury in that case did not send the defendant to prison; he was honorably discharged. The case was the centerpiece of the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, in which Galligan appears and which won an Oscar."
The Austin American-Statesman reports this morning that Galligan says he's gotten some support from other defense lawyers, who agree that the rights of the suspect, Maj. Nidal Hasan, need protection. But, the newspaper says, "others questioned how he could have accepted a case involving the man accused of the deadly attack on a U.S. military post."
Galligan's view? The American-Statesman says that:
As a defense lawyer, Galligan said he has a standard answer for similar questions when he represents suspected rapists and child molesters. He said it applies to Hasan as well. "My goal is to ensure that the defendant receives a fair trial," Galligan said.
In his 30-year Army career, Galligan was at times a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney.
Paying his respects to the nation's veterans. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Instead of choosing "narrow self-interests," today's veterans have "chosen the opposite," President Barack Obama just said at Arlington National Cemetery, where he is delivering an address on this Veterans Day.
Many of those serving now, Obama noted, have "endured tour after tour" in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The nation, he said, owes them thanks.
We'll post updates as his address continues. Click "refresh" to make sure you're seeing our latest additions.
Update at 11:51 a.m. ET. Here is the audio of the president's address:
Update at 11:41 a.m ET: When veterans take off their uniforms, "our obligations to them" do not end, the president just said.
But, he added, "there have been times when we as a nation have betrayed that trust." Too many veterans of the Vietnam War, he said, came home to "condemnation and neglect ... something that will never happen again."
Remembering the victims. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
By Mark Memmott
A memorial service was held this afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas, where 13 people were killed and about 40 wounded last Thursday in a shooting rampage. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist, is the lone suspect.
Families of the victims, personnel from the post and President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended and the president eulogized the fallen.
We live-blogged the service in the box below. Just click the "play" button and our updates should flow in automatically. You can share your thoughts in this post's comments thread. During the service, we won't be posting comments in the "Cover It Live" box -- so that we can concentrate on covering the event. Once the service is over, though, we'll turn on the comments function in the player as well for about 30 minutes, or for as long as the conversation seems to want to continue.
Update at 4:15 p.m. ET: As you can see in our live-blogging, there was a discussion among some Two-Way readers after the service about the coins that the president placed on each memorial to the 13 people killed (12 of whom were soldiers).
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters a short time ago that those were traditional "challenge" coins that military commanders often give out to their personnel. The president gives them to members of the military he meets.
"Calling All Bloggers" is the headline at the widely read, conservative Power Line blog, where John Hinderaker writes that he is:
Delighted to be collaborating with Joe Trippi, one of my favorite liberals, on a bipartisan project to support America's veterans. The project is called the Eleven Eleven campaign; the objective is to get 11 million Americans to contribute $11 apiece to support America's vets. The campaign will be internet-driven, and all bloggers are invited to participate.
According to Eleven Eleven, there's a "blogger call" tonight at 8 p.m. ET during which Hinderaker, Trippi, Gold Star mother Ruth Stonesifer and Beyond Tribute Executive Director Matthew Boulay will talk about the campaign and how bloggers can get involved. Click here for more information about that. BeyondTribute.org, which has begun the Eleven Eleven project, is a coaltion of 11 charities "that specialize in direct services and/or advocacy for veterans of all eras and conflicts."
Actress Kim Cattrall explains in this video how contributions can be sent via text messages:
Eleven Eleven gets its name from Veterans Day (Nov. 11; this Wednesday) and from its goal to get 11 million Americans to each donate $10 -- to which Beyond Tribute will add another $1 to bring it up to $11.
The civilian police officer who shot and wounded the gunman yesterday at Fort Hood -- bringing to an end the rampage that left 13 people dead -- is being hailed as a hero today by the post's commanding officer.
Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told CNN's American Morning that officer Kimberly Munley and her partner "responded very quickly. ... She, in an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded -- but wounded the shooter four times." It was "really a pretty amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer":
Munley is among those who remain hospitalized. She is in stable condition, according to Army officials.
ABC News says that Munley is 34 and originally from Enola, Pa.
The suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is also hospitalized.
For more of NPR.org's coverage of the story, click here.
The strike against SEPTA's subways, buses and trolleys in the city spread to the suburbs this morning as pickets blocked buses at a still operating terminal and a fire on a Regional Rail train further complicated an already messy mass transit picture.
The Associated Press writes that:
The sudden strike called early Tuesday by Transport Workers Union Local 234 all but crippled the agency, which averages more than 928,000 trips each weekday. The transit agency's largest union walked away from negotiations on a new contract over disagreements on wage, pension and health care issues.
Regional rail service is still operating because their workers are represented by a different union, but trains have been delayed as they experienced larger-than-normal crowds.
"Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has selected Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Charlie Beck, a 32-year LAPD veteran with strong support from rank-and-file officers and civil rights advocates alike, to serve as the next chief of the Los Angeles Police Department," the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Associated Press says it has been told the same thing by "a person in the mayor's office."
KABC-TV says the mayor will make the official announcement at 2 p.m. ET.
Both houses gathered for the chancellor's address. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
By Mark Memmott
"We Germans know how much we owe to you, our American friends," German Chancellor Angela Merkel just told members of the House and Senate. "We shall never -- and I personally shall never, never forget this."
Merkel, as the Associated Press says, is the first German chancellor to address Congress since Konrad Adenauer in 1957.
Among the historical events she noted: The Berlin airlift of 1948-49 that fed the people of West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded much of the city.
"We shall remember and honor them forever," Merkel said of the pilots, from the U.S. and other allies, who flew those missions.
On a policy issue now in the news, Merkel just said a nuclear-armed Iran "is not acceptable."
Update at 11:25 a.m. ET: Our original headline was "German Chancellor Says Her Nation 'Shall Never, Never Forget' U.S. Aid". We've updated it because at the end, the chancellor spoke of overcoming the "walls of the 21st Century" and went on to tell of a Freedom Bell in Berlin. "It is a symbol of the promise of freedom," she said, and rang out on Sept. 13, 2001, to honor those killed in the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Then, speaking in English, Merkel said that bell is "a symbol which reminds us that freedom does not come about of itself. It must be strugged for."
Here's an audio clip. For the first 90 seconds, you'll hear the interpreter. Then, Merkel speaks in English:
The Series resumes tomorrow night in New York, with the Yankees ahead three games to two.
The bad news for folks in Philly this morning is that the transit system's biggest union went on strike at 3 a.m. ET. As the Inquirer says, the walk out is "crippling a transit system that averages more than 928,000 trips every weekday in the city."
Sarah Whites-Koditschek of NPR member station WHYY says the strike shuts down all bus, subway and trolley services in Philadelphia. Among the major issues: Wages, naturally, and pension contributions. The transit system had offered no pay hikes for two years. The union wants 4% increases immediately.
As for the Series, here is a report on last night's game from NPR's Mike Pesca. It's introduced by Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep:
But they're headed to New York. (David J. Phillip/AP)
As a born and bred New Yorker who started his journalism career just blocks away from the World Trade Center towers, who enjoyed the view and the feeling of being inside an engineering marvel whenever I was in one of the towers, it was hard not to be stirred by images Monday of the USS New York sailing up the Hudson.
Steel from the 9/11 ruins of the trade center is incorporated into the bow of the newly built amphibious transport dock ship, making the New York a floating memorial to those who died on one of the worst days in American history.
As NPR's Margot Adler reported for the network's newscast:
Families of September 11th victims as well as first responders gathered at a viewing area where they could see the crew on the deck of the battleship. Shots were fired in three bursts in a 21-gun salute.
There are 361 sailors serving aboard the ship at present and about 13 percent are from New York State. There were many requests from Navy personal to serve on the ship. Rosaleen Tallon, who lost her brother, a firefighter, said she was proud the military was using the steel, transforming something twisted and ugly.
Rev. Bernice King. (W. A. Harewood/2008 file photo, AP)
By Mark Memmott
Rev. Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., was elected this morning to be president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- the landmark civil rights group her father co-founded.
As NPR's Debbie Elliott reported on Morning Edition, Bernice King is a 46-year-old motivational speaker known for her fiery sermons.
And, Debbie reported, King's election comes at an important time for the SCLC:
The vote is "crucial for the survival of the organization," says Ralph Luker, a civil rights historian in Atlanta. He says after four decades of strong leadership under Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy and Joseph Lowery, the SCLC has limped along in recent times without "a clear sense of its reason for being."
Delta CEO Richard Anderson seems set on making his wayward pilots walk the plank (or is it jetway?) (Mark Lennihan / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Delta Air Lines chief executive Richard Anderson on Thursday appeared to be saying without explicitly uttering the words that he intends to fire the pilots who, distracted by their personal laptops, flew past their Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport destination.
Reuters reports that Anderson delivered a recorded message to Delta employees. Delta owns Northwest, the airline the pilots flew for. Anderson didn't leave much open to question.
A Reuters snippet:
"The best way that I can describe the incident to you is we don't operate our airplanes that way," Delta Chief Executive Richard Anderson said in a recorded message to employees Thursday. "We operate professionally, we follow our standard
operating procedures ..."
Anderson added that it was a "clear violation of our rules to have laptops open in a cockpit," and said the incident was an "anomaly..."
..."This is really a basic in flying an airplane, that you pay attention and that you act professionally," Anderson added in his message. "That crew did not and we'll deal with it
accordingly."
The pilots' licenses were revoked by the Federal Aviation Administration so it's academic that Timothy Cheney and Richard Cole won't be flying airliners anytime soon, if ever unless they can get the FAA to reinstate their flying privileges.
But whatever happens on that score, it's pretty certain from Anderson's words they won't be flying for his airline so long as he has anything to say about it.
Investigators look over a "sweat lodge" on the grounds of Angel Valley Retreat Center, near Sedona, Ariz. (Tom Tingle / The Arizona Republic/AP Photo)
By Frank James
The self-help guru who was ran the sweat-lodge purification session that resulted in the deaths of three people and illnesses in 18 in Sedona, Ariz earlier this month is canceling all of his events for the rest of the year.
James Arthur Ray has a statement on his website explaining his decision. It reads in part:
The lives of the families impacted by the Sedona tragedy have been changed forever. These families deserve to have the questions raised by the tragedy answered as quickly and authoritatively as possible. That is the goal I'm dedicated to achieving.
In the days following the terrible accident, I struggled to respond in the right way. This is the most emotionally wrenching situation I've ever faced, and it's now clear I must dedicate all of my physical and emotional energies to helping bring some sort of closure to this matter. That means helping the authorities and the families get to the bottom of what happened.
I'm committed to devoting all of my time, for as long as it takes, to achieve this goal. For that reason, I'm postponing all the events I had planned for the remainder of 2009. These events will be rescheduled as soon as possible in 2010--once the essential work that must be done on the Sedona tragedy has been completed.
Air-traffic control tower at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. (DALSkyking / media.photobucket.com)
The Northwest pilots who flew 150 miles past their destination of Minneapolis/St. Paul not only created problems for themselves but for the Federal Aviation Administration, too, since agency employees are now under scrutiny for not responding to the lengthy lack of radio communication between controllers and the cockpit crew.
The Federal Aviation Administration violated its own rules by taking more than 40 minutes to alert the military after losing communication with a Northwest Airlines flight last week, according to officials familiar with internal reviews under way at several federal agencies.
The delay has sparked consternation within the military, concern within the FAA and special oversight by the White House, these officials said, particularly because such time lags were supposed to be eliminated as a result of the lessons learned from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the event of a hijacking, the military would order fighters into the air to intercept an aircraft and possibly shoot it down.
In an interview, the man charged with protecting the skies above North America, U.S. Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., said he was displeased with the way the situation evolved, stressing that notification should have been quicker and those involved should have been more agile in their response.
In a statement to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday evening, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said air-traffic controllers "should have notified [the military] more quickly that the plane was not responding." Local controllers apparently became so focused on trying to re-establish contact that they failed to alert higher-level FAA managers about the problem in a timely manner.
"We are conducting an internal review," Mr. Babbitt said, "and will require retraining on proper notification procedures when we lose radio contact with aircraft."
So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office says it's only a coincidence that the governor's veto letter to the California General Assembly canning a bill authored by an adversarial lawmaker appears to contain an obscene smackdown.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's secret message to lawmakers is exceedingly unlikely to be a coincidence. (Nick Ut / AP Photo)
But as we heard from a cryptology expert and mathematic professor Robert Lewand of Goucher College in Baltimore who All Things Considered host Melissa Block interviewed Wednesday, the odds the letters on the page aligned themselves in such a way as to create the lewd message were fairly astronomical, along the lines of 5.5 in one trillion. So not very likely.
"I think somebody in the governor's office was just having a little fun," Lewand said. And so do we.
That no one was severely injured or killed Tuesday when the emergency "fix" engineers placed onto the San Francisco area's Bay Bridge fell to the road deck during the evening commute seems something of a miracle.
But that thought probably didn't make Wednesday any easier for the tens of thousands of Bay area people who had to find new ways to get to and from work and school Wednesday. NPR's Richard Gonzales reported on All Things Considered that more than 200,000 cars use the bridge everyday.
Reports on Wednesday were that the same sort of high winds that loosened the 5,000 pounds of metal used to "repair" the bridge after a crack in the structure was found during a summer seismic inspection were whipping around the structure on Wednesday, making new repairs difficult.
A story that began with one woman's complaint to a TV station about the ticket she'd been given by police "for being a non-English speaking driver" has mushroomed in Dallas.
As the Morning News reports: "since 2007, at least 20 Dallas police officers from five patrol divisions have wrongly cited motorists for not speaking English."
The newspaper says the number of officers involved "is likely to grow because Dallas police officials say they plan to look back several more years and include the supervisors who signed off on the tickets in the investigation for possible dereliction of duty."
WFAA-TV says that 39 people received such tickets. All but one were Spanish speakers. The 39th was issued to a Vietnamese man.
The city is going to drop any of the cases that are still pending and will reimburse anyone who has paid a fine for the fictitious violation.
The two Northwest Airlines pilots who apparently paid so little attention to their cockpit duties that they flew 150 miles past the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport last week, have told investigators they were looking at their personal laptops and discussing pilot scheduling issues according to an update issued Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Using personal laptops in the cockpit during a flight would violate Northwest's policy, the NTSB added.
In its continuing investigation of an Airbus A320 that
overflew the Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-
Chamberlain Airport (MSP), the National Transportation
Safety Board has developed the following factual
information: On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 5:56 pm
mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, operating as
Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no
radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet. The flight was
operating as a Part 121 flight from San Diego International
Airport, San Diego, California (SAN) to MSP with 144
passengers, 2 pilots and 3 flight attendants.
The Globe doesn't cite statistics to shore up its conclusion, but says that on blogs, in web forums and on Internet bulletin boards such as Craigslist, homeless Americans who have access to computers at libraries and other public places are soliciting help. It points to several places online:
In an affidavit made public today, the sheriff's office in Larimer County, Colo., says that Mayumi Heene admitted last Saturday that the whole "balloon boy" story was a hoax.
Mayumi, mother of six-year-old Falcon, told investigators that it was all done to make the family more attractive to the media, the affidavit -- used to secure a search warrant for the Heene family's home -- states.
Bear in mind that the father in this family, Richard Heene, has maintained that the adventure was not a hoax. The Coloradoan writes today that:
Richard Heene's attorney David Lane and Mayumi Heene's attorney Lee Christian both have not seen the affidavit, which was made available to the public today through the Larimer County courthouse.
"The fact that they're releasing an affidavit before an arrest is made -- I've never seen that before," Lane said in a phone interview. "It's further proof of what that sheriff will do to further his own agenda and try to make it unfair to the Heenes."
In case you've been in a news media blackout for the past week or so, on Oct. 15 a homemade weather balloon took off from the Heenes' backyard and it was initially thought that Falcon was inside its plywood basket. The whole drama was broadcast live on TV across the nation. Later, the family claimed he had been hiding in an attic because he thought he was in trouble. But now, the local sheriff plans to press criminal charges.
There is at least one good thing to say about the story of the man in Minnesota who this week pleaded guilty to driving under the influence -- driving his tricked-out La-Z-Boy chair, that is.
As the Duluth News Tribune reports, Dennis LeRoy Anderson's motorized La-Z-Boy is going to be auctioned off by police, which means taxpayers will be getting some money out of this story.
Proctor, Minn., Police Chief Walter Wobig tells us that the chair will likely be put up for bids within the next week or two. The formal auction notice will be published by the local Proctor Journal.
And Wobig says the proceeds will be shared by the state of Minnesota, the local victims' advocacy fund, the prosecuting attorney's office and his police department.
What will the winning bidder be getting? As the Duluth newspaper says, the chair is "powered by a converted lawnmower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. It has a stereo, cup holders and other custom options, including different power levels. A National Hot Rod Racing Association sticker is posted on the chair's head rest. The chair has a small steering wheel, about a third of the size of a golf cart's, coming straight up from the middle of the La-Z-Boy."
KBJR in Duluth has this video report about Anderson's escapade:
Anderson, who had a blood alcohol content of 0.29 when arrested in the August 2008 incident, received a sentence of 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine plus court fees. But the jail sentence and half the fine were waived if he successfully completes two years of probation.
For those who wonder how their senators voted yesterday on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which extends federal hate-crime law to include acts of violence against a person because of his or her sexual orientation, here's the rundown:
And they're specifically protesting the use of their songs to wear down suspected terrorists (by playing them repeatedly, at high volume) who've been detained at Guantanamo Bay or other sites.
"It seems so obvious," Cash says in a statement. "Music should never be used as torture. It's beyond the pale. It's hard to even think about."
Among the actions the musicians have joined: A Freedom of Information Act request for "all secret government records pertaining to how music was utilized as an interrogation device," according to a statement from New Security Action.
For "just" $19.99, what you really get is a miniature version of the infamous balloon. If you use the cardboard box it comes in as an additional prop, you can pretend to be six-year-old Falcon Heene hiding from the world.
As for actual news today about the "balloon boy" saga, The Coloradoan also offers an interesting look at the issue of whether it was right for the local sheriff to lie to the world when he initially said he believed the Heene family's story about little Falcon being trapped aboard their homemade weather balloon as it flew above Colorado last Thursday.
Charges have yet to be filed against either of the parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene. They have denied the sheriff's allegation that the whole thing was a hoax.
At the White House today, President Barack Obama gave the Presidential Unit Citation to the Vietnam-era veterans of Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, for their actions during what came to be known as "the anonymous battle" on March 26, 1970.
"Troopers, you are not anonymous anymore," Obama told the veterans who attended today's ceremony.
Army Times has described in detail what the men did. When the 200 men of "A Troop" learned that 80 to 100 other American soldiers were pinned down by the enemy in Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province, they volunteered to go to the rescue. It required hacking their way through four kilometers of jungle. Then, they attacked the North Vietnamese -- driving them off. Two members of A Troop, Obama noted, died that day. Another 20 were wounded.
"The choice, to me, was one of [the] certainty of suffering versus a lifetime of guilt," John Poindexter, who was Alpha Troop's captain that day, told Army Times. "It was a collective realization of what we were getting ourselves into, but the consequence was to see 100 men killed."
Army Times says it was Poindexter, after he learned that his men hadn't gotten their individual honors for bravery, who led the effort to get the unit citation.
NBC-TV's The Today Show talked with Robert Thomas this morning. He's the 25-year-old college student who says he was something of an intern for a while with "balloon boy" dad Richard Heene.
Thomas, who over the weekend sold his story to Gawker.com, tells Today that Heene "enjoys promoting himself." Thomas says he didn't know about the alleged hoax before the homemade weather balloon flew across Colorado skies on Thursday, but that when he heard about it -- and the reports that a little boy might be in the balloon's basket (he wasn't) -- Heene's name immediately came to mind.
Thomas also says he was paid much less than most people think by Gawker -- but he wouldn't disclose the amount:
Though the local sheriff has said he's convinced the "balloon boy'' story was a hoax, his investigators and local prosecutors haven't yet met to talk about what -- if any -- charges to file against parent Richard and Mayumi Heene, The Coloradoan reports.
It's possible the authorities might not get together this week, the newspaper adds, based on what it's been told by Larimer County (Colo.) District Attorney spokeswoman Linda Jensen.
Reminder: Richard Heene has said several times that there was no hoax -- that the family did think six-year-old Falcon was flying high over Colorado last Thursday. And the family's attorney makes the always-important point that you're innocent until proven guilty.
Need a chuckle? Here's the "silvery suprise guest" from this week's Saturday Night Live:
Ask virtually anyone who's run a marathon and they'll tell you how physically stressful it is to run 26.2 miles all at once.
Which is why many runners decide to do half marathons.
So the deaths of three runners who ran a half marathon during Sunday's Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Marathon is likely to give pause to more than a few people interested in running the 13.1 mile distance.
It's also nothing short of bizarre for three runners to collapse and die in short order as they did Sunday in the Detroit marathon. Indeed, while deaths do happen in long-distance running events, a race can go years without a death.
The last time a runner died in the Detroit race was 15 years ago.
The Detroit Free Press reports that three men, ages 26, 36 and 65, died within minutes of each other near or at the finish line.
The Freep reports:
It had been a chilly, but buoyant morning. And then tragedy hit at 9:02 a.m.
That's when Daniel Langdon, 36, of Laingsburg collapsed on Michigan Avenue between the 11- and 12-mile markers as he ran Sunday in the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Marathon, according to Rich Harshbarger, vice president of consumer marketing for the Detroit Media Partnership, which handles business operations for the Free Press and Detroit News.
In the Gawker piece, Thomas claims that Heene talked about staging some sort of UFO stunt using a weather balloon. Thomas professes to be a researcher and college student who got to know Heene this year.
Meanwhile, the attorney who now represents the Heene family says that parents Richard and Mayumi are willing to turn themselves in if the sheriff follows through on his plan to charge them with several felonies and misdemeanors for allegedly cooking up a hoax that had the nation watching on Thursday as a weather balloon floated above Colorado -- supposedly carrying six-year-old Falcon Heene with it. The boy was not on board. Heene family attorney David Lane says his clients maintain they're innocent.
Here's the conversation that Lane had with Matt Lauer this morning on NBC's The Today Show:
Now that the local sheriff says he has evidence that the whole thing was a hoax and some kind of stunt aimed at getting the Heene family a reality TV show gig, all sorts of questions arise about the "Balloon Boy" escapade.
-- Has our obsession with reality TV gone too far?
-- Have the 24/7 news media gone overboard on covering these kinds of stories?
-- If it's true that they staged the whole thing, should Richard and Maymi Heene be allowed to keep their three sons? Keep in mind that Richard has said several times that it wasn't a hoax -- he really did think six-year-old Falcon was flying high above Colorado in that homemade balloon Thursday.
The Larimer County Sheriff on Sunday said criminal charges will be filed against Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of a 6-year-old boy thought to have been swept away in a homemade helium balloon last week, after determing the entire incident was a hoax.
"We have evidence to indicate (the Heenes) were marketing themselves for a reality television show in the future," Sheriff Jim Alderden said in a news conference in Fort Collins, alluding to a confession by one or both of the parents.
Alderden said the Heenes will face charges of Conspiracy, Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, False Reporting to Authorities, and Attempting to Influence a Public Servant. Alderden said no charges had been filed as of Sunday, and the parents weren't under arrest. Some of the most serious charges each carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
"Clearly, we were manipulated by the family and the media was manipulated by the family," Alderden said.
Things are -- if you can believe this -- getting even odder at the Fort Collins, Colo., home of the Heene family.
Richard Heene, father of "balloon boy" Falcon, emerged from their house this morning for what he said would be a "big announcement."
What he did was put a cardboard box out for reporters to put questions in. He promised to answer some of them this evening.
The one response he did give was to a shouted question about whether Thursday's infamous balloon flight (during which the world thought six-year-old Falcon Heene might be aboard) was some kind of publicity stunt.
The scene around the Heene home can only be summed up with the classic cliche "media circus." The Coloradoan says that:
The media and television trucks continue to fill the Heenes' southeast Fort Collins neighborhood. The reporters include members of the media from Brazil and Australia.
Onlookers also held up signs. One said: "Put Balloon Boy on TV: America's Most Wanted." The other, featuring a poorly-drawn flying saucer read: "10/15/09 We will never forget."
The Post adds that:
"C'mon, Richard, get this over with," said a 32-year-old neighbor who did not want to be identified. "Let the neighborhood get back to normal. We're sick of it."
Update at 7:30 a.m. ET, Oct. 18: Late last evening there was this new development -- Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said he's going to be filing charges against someone. He didn't say who will be accused, but added that:
"We were looking at Class 3 misdemeanor, which hardly seems serious enough given the circumstances. ... We are talking to the district attorney, federal officials to see if perhaps there aren't additional federal charges that are appropriate in this circumstance."
Alderden previously said that if the balloon ordeal was a hoax, the parents could be charged with making a false report to authorities, a low-level misdemeanor.
The Denver Post says the sheriff plans a 1 p.m. ET news conference.
All those news outlets, as well as the cable news networks, will surely be at the news conference.
Gov. David Paterson, the very unpopular chief executive of the state of New York, really has nothing else to lose politically.
New York's unpopular Gov. David Paterson takes a questionable approach in trying to win support for his proposed $5 billion in spending cuts. (Mike Groll / AP Photo)
Which is good since when he talked with NPR's Robert Siegel of All Things Considered on Friday, he likened those opposed to his just proposed $5 billion in spending cuts from his state's budget over the next 1-1/2 years -- some of them fellow Democrats -- to crying children. The cuts would hit hard schools and health care for the poor, among other services.
Likening your opponents to children isn't exactly like calling them "girlymen" like his California counterpart. But it's definitely not a way to win friends and influence people:
Paterson told Siegel:
When a family runs out of money, what they do is they don't spend until they have the resources. That's what I'm doing. I'm in charge of the family of New York and I'm urging, so that we don't go into default like other states are bordering, that we make these decisions. And I would expect the legislature to act like the adults in the family and not the children who just start crying when there's a problem and don't have any solution other than to call people names, the same adults who are trying to solve the problem.
If you've heard about the Louisiana justice of the peace who won't perform marriage ceremonies for interracial couples and are trying to figure out how this kind of thing could still be happening in 21st Century America, the story to see is the one that broke the news.
Louisiana's Hammond Daily Star gives Justice Keith Bardwell the chance to explain his thinking. The complete story is here. And here are some excerpts about what the justice has to say:
-- Bardwell said he came to the conclusion that most black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society. "Yet, the children are innocent. They had nothing to do with that," he said.
-- "I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. ... In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."
-- "I'm not a racist. ... I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children."
Bardwell does give interracial couples the name of a local justice of the peace who will marry them. He's been a justice of the peace for 34 years, the Daily Star says.
Calling any such talk "crap" and "disgusting," Richard Heene told reporters last night that the nationally televised drama yesterday -- when it was thought his six-year-old son Falcon was floating high above Fort Collins, Colo., in a balloon -- was not some kind of hoax or publicity stunt.
KUSA-TV in Denver has posted video of Heene talking to reporters about what happened. We'll embed the video in this post as well, in the second section after the "read more" link (we'll put it there because KUSA's player automatically starts and we don't want it to begin playing every time a Two-Way reader opens the blog; our apologies to those coming straight to this post who suddenly hear the audio).
Questions about whether the incident might have been a hoax popped up even as the balloon was still in the air. They were raised again when Falcon, who says he hid in a garage attic and fell asleep during the saga, told CNN that he didn't come out because it was "for the show." Here's what the Denver Postwrites about that:
In a later interview on CNN, Falcon was asked again why he hid and didn't come out when he heard his family calling his name.
"You had said that we did this for a show," Falcon said.
His father, Richard Heene, was asked to clarify the comment. He said he was "appalled" at the question and its implication the ordeal was a hoax. He suggested Falcon's response might have stemmed from the family's appearance on the TV show Wife Swap.
After the CNN interview, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told The Associated Press that although personnel dealing with the family are convinced that the incident was legitimate and "not a hoax," the department intended to ask the family today "to cooperate with our investigation through answering more questions and resolve this issue."
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET: Here's the report that NPR's Jeff Brady filed for Morning Edition:
The 6-year-old boy at the center of the runaway balloon saga got sick twice on national television when he and his father were asked during separate TV interviews what he meant about his comment that "we did this for a show."
Update at 7:48 a.m. ET: On CNN's American Morning a moment ago, Richard Heene said he thinks Falcon was referring to showing the news media where he had hidden, not to being part of a "show" about the balloon.
And there were a few uncomfortable moments when CNN's John Roberts asked the parents about videos they've made of their sons in which the boys can be heard swearing. Richard Heene said his boys are allowed "to cuss" at home.
Again, the KUSA video of Heene speaking about the incident follows:
(7 p.m. ET: As you'll see below, all's well that ends well. The news that captured the nation's attention this afternoon -- that a six-year-old Colorado boy might have been carried aloft by his family's homemade balloon -- ended several hours later when he was found at home, hiding in a box. Just click the "play" button in the box below to see our minute-by-minute coverage and the hundreds of comments from other Two-Way readers who were watching the story unfold).
(5:30 p.m. ET: If you're just catching up, there's still no sign of the six-year-old boy who reportedly took off in a helium balloon that soared over Fort Collins, Colo., and surrounding counties for more than two hours before touching down. Scroll down to the box below and click "play" to see our latest coverage.)
(4 p.m. ET: A lot has obviously happened since this post first went up. Now, the balloon is on the ground but there's no sign of the boy who was said to be inside. Scroll down to our Cover It Live Player below to follow the news as it happens.)
By Mark Memmott
A six-year-old boy is said to be floating above Larimer County, Colo., right now in an experimental aircraft that looks like a flying saucer.
Update at 2:44 p.m. ET:The Coloradoan in Fort Collins reports that:
According to the Larimer County Sheriff's Department, the 6-year-old boy's family had been building an experimental aircraft which had a large helium balloon attached at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins.
On Thursday morning, according to the family and officials, the boy got onto the aircraft and detached the rope holding it in place.
The aircraft is described by the sheriff's office as a dome-shaped, 20 foot, 5 foot aircraft covered with foil.
Update at 2:52 p.m. ET. To make it easier to keep up with the story, we'll use the box below. Click "play" and our updates will roll in automatically:
We need to be open about race, he says. (J. David Ake / AP)
By Mark Memmott
When he used a February speech to say that "in things racial, we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards" because Americans don't like to talk about race, Attorney General Eric Holder sparked an intense debate.
Today, Robert Siegel of All Things Considered asked Holder about that statement. Since America is a nation that has elected an African-American president and where blacks and other minorities serve in prominent positions, wasn't he selling the U.S. short?
Holder said he has no regrets. "People need to look at that speech in its entirety," he said. "It was a very hopeful speech."
The attorney general conceded, though, that "I might have chosen different words ... I might have said we were 'reluctant' to (discuss race) as opposed to 'cowards.' "
Still, he added, "I stand by what I said in the speech ... this is a country that has been afflicted with racial issues for much of its history. We have a coming demographic change that's going to make us more diverse than we ever have been and unless we are willing to talk with one another in an open way about these kinds of issues, this coming diversity might be a negative when it should be a very positive thing for our nation."
As that part of their conversation ended, Holder added an amusing line that shows his age (58) just a bit -- saying that if he'd used the word "reluctant," he might have saved bloggers some "ink."
Bytes, perhaps. But ink?
Here's their discussion:
Much from Robert's conversation with the attorney general is set for today's edition of ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Tom Joyner and his millions of listeners will have plenty to celebrate and talk about when the radio host returns to the mic Thursday one day after South Carolina officials exonerated two of his grand uncles who were electrocuted in 1915 for a murder they didn't commit.
Joyner was in South Carolina Wednesday where he witnessed state officials sign the document officially pardoning his two grand uncles, Thomas and Meeks Griffin, for the 1913 murder of a white farmer. Like so many black men of their time, the Griffin brothers were framed for a crime they didn't commit. An all-white jury of the era found it easy to convict the men despite the lack of any evidence of their guilt.
It was Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, famously arrested earlier this year, who discovered the Griffins' dramatic if not unique story while researching Joyner's family for the PBS genealogy documentary "African American Lives 2."
After 18 years away from her family while being held in captivity, 29-year-old Jaycee Dugard has emerged on the cover of People magazine because she "wants the world to know she's doing OK," the magazine editor's deputy managing editor, Peter Castro, said on CBS-TV's The Early Show.
Authorities in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., say Dugard was held captive all those years by a registered sex offender and his wife. While being held, she gave birth to two daughters, allegedly fathered by the man, Phillip Garrido, who is now under arrest along with his wife. Dugard was discovered, and freed, in late August.
Zachary Christie can go back to school today with a clean record.
The six-year-old first-grader from Newark, Del., was given a reprieve last night by the local school board, which bowed to public outrage over the Cub Scout's suspension after he brought a multi-tool camping utensil (which had a small knife blade) to school so that he could use its spoon to eat his pudding.
Its decision would seem to be in line with the thinking of Two-Way readers. Of the more than 1,350 who voted on our poll yesterday, 88% thought the suspension was "one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time."
Meanwhile, eyes shift to Lansingburgh Senior High School in Troy, N.Y. There, 17-year-old Eagle Scout Matthew Whalen has been suspended for having a 2-inch pocketknife locked in a survival kit in his car while it was parked on school grounds, Fox News reports:
A new development in a case that has caught national attention:
"Fathima Rifqa Bary is likely coming home to Ohio, the state she fled nearly three months ago, saying she feared death for her conversion to Christianity," the Columbus Dispatch reports. "But she'll be staying in a foster home, not her parents' Northeast Side apartment."
Some stories leave you with complicated, conflicted feelings. Plenty of people are likely to see The Wall Street Journal's story about Felony Franks as one such.
A businessman opens a hot-dog stand on Chicago's West Side with its wide swaths of poverty, gangs and violence.
He's got what is certainly a unique marketing concept. He calls the business Felony Franks and hires a workforce of ex-convicts. He would like to franchise the idea, envisioning Felony Franks from coast to coast, providing ex-offenders with a second chance.
Who can be against ex-offenders getting employed and being given a chance to straighten out their lives and become productive members of society?
Well, there are some who believe James Andrews, the businessman, with his marketing gimmick, is exploiting the ex-offenders with his "misdemeanor wieners" etc.
A school board meeting tonight in Newark, Del., will be getting lots of national attention because of the outrage many parents feel after hearing that a six-year-old Cub Scout was suspended from school.
Zachary Christie's "crime"?
Last week, he brought a camping utensil to school. He wanted to use the spoon to eat his pudding at lunch. But the multi-tool also had a small -- less than three inches long -- knife. And that violated the school system's "zero tolerance" policy on weapons.
As the local News Journal reports, 29,000 people have now signed an online petition asking that the boy be allowed back in school.
Here's a video report from CBS News. On The Early Show, Zachary said his punishment is "very wrong; it's not fair at all":
Rev. Al Sharpton has written to National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell to urge that controversial conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh not be allowed to join in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams.
According to Politico, Sharpton tells Goodell that Limbaugh is "anti-NFL" and that some things Rush has said over the years -- including a comparison of NFL teams to the Crips and Bloods gangs -- are "disturbing."
Limbaugh confirmed last week that he's part of a group that hopes to buy the football club.
St. Louis Post-Dispatchcolumnist Bryan Burwell wrote that the league should think twice before approving such a deal. Bryan pointed to what he said are some of Limbaugh's own words, such as:
"I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back. I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."
Limbaugh, by the way, is getting extensive coverage on NBC's Today Show this week. Today, he said that most of his critics "don't even listen to me; they are clueless":
While President Obama's biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife's pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans. Mrs. Obama and her family declined to comment for this article, aides said, in part because of the personal nature of the subject.
"She is representative of how we have evolved and who we are," said Edward Ball, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, Slaves in the Family.
The Times is also appealing to its Web readers for help in filling in some of the gaps in the first lady's family tree.
Close the loophole, Bloomberg says. (Casey Templeton / AP)
By Mark Memmott
Investigators hired by the city of New York found it easy to purchase weapons at gun shows in three states this past spring and summer even after they shared information with the sellers that made the transactions illegal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office announced this morning.
Bloomberg, who has been leading a national effort to tighten gun control laws, said the sting operation underscores that "the gun show loophole is a deadly serious problem."
But, Bloomberg's report says, if a buyer discloses to an unlicensed dealer that he does not think he could pass a background check, "the seller is required by law to refuse the sale." At gun shows in Tennessee, Ohio and Nevada, 19 of 30 dealers went ahead and sold weapons to the undercover investigators after such disclosures were made.
In addition, Bloomberg's report says that investigators went to 17 licensed dealers at the shows. Sixteen of them, the report says, sold weapons to investigators who made it clear they were making "straw" purchases on behalf of someone else -- a violation of federal law.
Undercover video made by the investigators is due to be posted here around 2 p.m. ET.
As the Associated Press writes:
The sting comes three years after Bloomberg's administration conducted a similar operation focusing on illegal straw purchases at gun shops in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia that authorities believe were responsible for selling guns used in crimes in New York City.
Bloomberg's administration brought a civil case against 27 gun dealers targeted in its 2006 investigation.
As a result of the suit, 20 dealers are being monitored by a court-appointed special master. One is out of business, two more are expected to be put under monitoring agreements and three were dropped from the suit. A final dealer settled with the city but the terms did not include a monitor.
Attorney General Eric Holder today conceded something that's been increasingly clear, Reuters reports.
He told reporters it's going to be difficult to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by President Barack Obama's self-imposed Jan. 22 deadline.
Last week, the House went on record as opposing the transfer of terrorism detainees from Guantanamo to prisons in the U.S. As the Associated Press reported:
If such a ban were to become law, the Obama administration would be hard-pressed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by January as Obama has promised. Last week the administration acknowledged for the first time that it might not be able to close the facility by that deadline because of difficulties in reviewing detainee files and resolving legal and logistical questions.
There are about 450 prisoners at the detention center, Reuters estimates.
The arrests of suspects who were allegedly plotting to bomb targets in New York, Illinois and Texas are successes that "have made us safer," President Barack Obama just told employees of the National Counterterroism Center in McLean, Va.
"We've seen your success here in America in the last several weeks," Obama said. "You've stayed vigilant. You watched for signs. You stitched together the intelligence. You worked together across organizations as one team. And then arrests in Denver and New York and still more in Illinois and Texas have made us safer."
Here's an audio clip:
The man at the center of the alleged plot to bomb transportation hubs in New York City is Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi, 24, an airport shuttle bus driver in Denver. He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.
In the other cases the president mentioned, American Michael Finton is accused of planning to bomb a federal building in Springfield, Ill., and Jordanian student Hosam Smadi is accused of wanting to bomb a bank building in Dallas.
"The Obama administration is expected on Tuesday to unveil an outline of sweeping changes for the nation's immigration-detention system, saying it will decide whom to lock up and for how long based on the danger and flight risk posed by detainees," The Wall Street Journal writes.
The Associated Press adds that "illegal immigrants awaiting deportation would be confined according to the risk they may pose under a new plan being proposed by the Homeland Security secretary."
And according to The New York Times, the administration "is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is seeking to deport."
After losing its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley sounded like a man resigned to the reality that it probably won't make sense for another U.S. city to try and get the 2020 games.
After Chicago's failed bid for the 2016 Olympics, Mayor Richard M. Daley let his city's journalists know he thought they lacked the proper booster spirit during the city's efforts to secure the games. ( Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images)
It certainly didn't sound like he's in the mood for Chicago to make another run at the games in four years.
"I'm disappointed but you go on with your life." Daley said, adding that Chicago may not be getting in the bidding for the 2020 Games. "It's already in this hemisphere, with Rio, and it would not make sense for an American city to try again in 2020. It's in this hemisphere and they have to move somewhere else."
While it sounds from the report that Daley tried to be gracious, he apparently couldn't resist taking a shot at the Chicago media for not being unalloyed boosters of his city's virtues. He seemed to claim journalists in other cities were.
Another excerpt:
On the media, he noted that reporters from other bid cities were unabashed supporters of their bids, unlike the Chicago press.
"I've been to Rio and have been interviewed by press there, and every time, their reporters say, 'Thank you, very much. But we are a much better city.' I respect that strong emphasis on the press, that they were supporters. It was overwhelming. This is not to criticize you, but they say ours is the best city. They are really behind the city."
Here's one of those stories that tug at the heart just a bit.
A message in a bottle that Ann Hernandez tossed into the Atlantic Ocean six years ago off the coast of Maine washed ashore in France this summer.
When the French couple who found it tried to contact Hernandez, they learned that she died last winter at the age of 61, the Boston Globe and Gloucester Daily Times report.
The heart-tugging part is that Hernandez and her boyfriend, Alan Tomaska, had made the message-in-a-bottle launch an annual event on her birthday; Oct. 10. And, Tomaska tells the Globe, "whenever we were on the island, she would say, 'One of these days, someone is going to find one of those bottles.' "
She didn't live to hear of the 2003 bottle's long voyage and discovery. But, Tomaska says in the Daily Times, "she would've been ecstatic, she would've been smiling from ear to ear."
ACORN continues to hemorrhage important support because of a number of controversies it's had in recent years, from financial mismanagement to workers caught in a sting by a conservative critic who got them on videotape giving advice on how to break the law.
NPR's Pam Fessler reports on All Things Considered about how the community organizing group is becoming something of a pariah to foundations that have provided millions of dollars of support over the years.
As Pam reports:
Several major funders told NPR that they've ended or are re-assessing their ties with ACORN and its affiliates. The Ford Foundation gave almost $2 million in recent years, but says it has suspended ACORN funding because of concerns about inadequate financial controls.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation gave ACORN over $4 million dollars. But spokeswoman Kathleen Baca says the grants are not being renewed, even though the foundation thinks ACORN has done some outstanding work for the poor.
"Part of our funding criteria is fiscal responsibility. And a strong management structure. At this time there are too many questions surrounding the management of ACORN and its finances for us to fund them."
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bank of America and JP Morgan also say they've ceased making grants to ACORN and its affiliates.
Although at least one foundation is bucking the tide. The California Endowment says it's on the verge of approving a new half million dollar grant to ACORN to help low-income families access health care and other benefits. Robert Phillips is the endowment's director of Health & Human Services:
"We feel pretty solid in our relationship with them, for one really specific reason, which is the standards that we've kind of held all of our grantees to, ACORN has met."
What does the safety officer for one of the USA's biggest insurers tell his family about texting-while-driving or making a call on a cell phone while behind the wheel?
"No phone call is worth injuring yourself or injuring another person," says Bill Windsor of Nationwide Insurance. "Whatever call's coming in can wait until you're in a place where you can safely take that call."
Put the phone on standby, put it away and by all means don't try to read or send text messages, he adds. Studies have shown that texting is one of the most dangerous things drivers do.
Texting-while-driving has been in the headlines this week. Windsor was at the Department of Transportation's distracted driving summit the past two days. President Obama this afternoon issued an executive order banning all federal workers from texting while operating government vehicles. "Text messaging causes drivers to take their eyes off the road and at least one hand off the steering wheel, endangering both themselves and others," the order reads.
Windsor spoke with me by cell phone (from a train car, not an automobile) as he left Washington this afternoon.
His company recently commissioned a national survey that showed "8 in 10 Americans ... would support legislation restricting cell phone use while driving."
The survey results, says Windsor, support the notion that "Americans are really fed up with distracted driving."
He sees a time coming quickly when a combination of laws prohibiting cell phone use, public ad campaigns and technology combine to make driving-while-calling-or-texting as much of a taboo as drunk driving has become.
Windsor also sees companies such as Nationwide soon offering discounts to drivers who take advantage of emerging technology that would block the use of cell phones (except for making emergency calls) while a motor vehicle is in motion.
Here's some audio (edited for length) from our conversation:
It's an award to a citizen for "moral courage" defined as someone who stands up to the county government.
And the county commissioners had named the award for an anti-tax businessman the Internal Revenue Service says owes the federal government more than $300 million in back taxes.
To be fair to the commissioners, they apparently didn't know when they named the award for the late Ralph Hughes, who owned a company that makes concrete blocks, that he had a huge federal tax bill. The bill only came to his estate this summer.
But they knew that he was anti-tax. And, as the WSJ reports, they knew he was a financial contributor over the years to many a country commissioner. Hughes "was locally famous for funding the elections of county commissioners," according to the WSJ.
People need to get the message, LaHood says. (Michael Conroy/AP)
By Mark Memmott
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gets very animated when he talks about the dangers of trying to drive and send text messages at the same time.
In a conversation today with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, LaHood got passionate when he described how public awareness needs to build -- just as it did about the dangers of driving while intoxicated and the benefits of wearing seatbelts -- about the risks of driving-while-texting.
Here are two clips, one very short and one a bit longer:
LaHood and Steve were talking in advance of tomorrow's Transportation Department-sponsored conference on distracted driving. As we reported yesterday, the likelihood of more laws being passed to prohibit the use of cellphones while operating motor vehicles has safety advocates cheering -- but some of those in the trucking and other industries worried.
Much more from Steve's conversation with the secretary is due on tomorrow's ME. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
We need to stay in touch, truckers say. Safety advocates worry. (Nati HarnikAP)
By Mark Memmott
While much attention has been paid in recent months to the dangers of texting-while-driving, the focus of most stories has been on passenger vehicles and their drivers.
The New York Times today takes a look at the nation's truckers and why they say the growing number of laws that ban texting while operating a motor vehicle should not apply to their use of computer devices that keep them in touch with dispatchers.
Clayton Boyce, spokesman for the American Trucking Association, tells the Times that:
Computers used by truckers require less concentration than phones. The trucks "have a screen that has maybe two or four or six lines" of text, he said. "And they're not reading the screen every second."
But, the Times reports:
Some safety advocates and researchers say the devices -- which can include a small screen near the steering wheel and a keyboard on the dash or in the driver's lap -- present precisely the same risk as other devices. And the risk may be even greater, they note, given the size of 18-wheel tractor trailers and the longer time required for them to stop.
Truckers, of course, aren't the only professional drivers on the roads who use such devices to communicate with their offices. Taxi drivers have them. Package deliverers do. So do sales reps.
Wednesday in Washington, there's a Transportation Department conference on legislation that would deny federal highway funds to states that don't ban texting while driving.
G-20 protesters march in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville section, Thursday Sept. 24, 2009. (Matt Rourke / AP Photo)
By Frank James
It wouldn't be a G-20 meeting without youthful, black-clad anarchists trying to storm the downtown of whatever city is hosting the meeting. This time it's Pittsburgh's turn.
Demonstrators wearing black bandannas are starting to step up their activity, tipping over dumpsters and reportedly throwing rocks at police, according to reports on KDKA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Police are using a vapor form of pepper spray called OC to disperse the protesters, according to KDKA's reports.
The station is also reporting that until this afternoon, the protests have been rather quiet. Also, the more raucous protests are nowhere near as tumultuous or large as those many people will recall occurring in Seattle in 1999 during the World Trade Organization meeting.
The 50,000 protesters that had been feared haven't materialized. More like a few thousand.
Andy Sheehan, a KDKA reporter, is saying that perhaps 2,000 protesters tried to march from the city's Lawrenceville neighborhood in the northeast part of the city to downtown.
As NPR's Debbie Elliott reported on Morning Edition, "the sometimes bitter public discourse over overhauling health care has raised the question of whether race is a factor in the demeanor of the debate."
The race, that is, of the nation's first African-American president -- Barack Obama.
We first posted this online poll on Sept. 14. As of 8 a.m. ET today, 1,665 people had voted -- 14% had said race has played no role in the criticism aimed at Obama; 35% said it has played "some" role; and 51% had said it has played a major role.
Fifty miles north of the border with Mexico, in the Arizona desert, NPR's Ted Robbins was with Border Patrol agent Paul Dubois as a search and trauma team tracked four people who turned out to be illegal immigrants -- and as a Border Patrol helicopter flew over to get much-needed water to the illegal crossers:
On All Things Considered later today, Ted reports on the deadly toll in the desert. As increased enforcement and other factors have lead to a decrease in the number of people trying to cross into the United States, the death rate among those illegal immigrants has not declined.
David Hoffman, of the Border Patrol's planning, policy and analysis division blames smugglers for leading illegal immigrants into remote areas of the desert without giving them adequate supplies of water and other necessities. Rev. Robin Hoover of the group Humane Borders, blames U.S. policy:
Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts ATC.
Historian Taylor Branch conducted "79 oral history interviews" with his friend, then-president Bill Clinton, while Clinton was in the White House. Branch has pulled together a book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President. As USA TODAY's Susan Page writes of her interviews with Branch about the book:
The portrait that emerges from the 707-page tome is a president who reveled in policy and delighted in politics but "always thought he was trapped in the personal issues," Branch says. The description of Clinton's goals and thinking is more candid and more complex than in Clinton's 2004 memoir, My Life.
The personal issue that many people will want to hear about, of course, is Clinton's relationship with then-intern Monica Lewinsky. USA TODAY's Page says that Clinton was reluctant to discuss it with Branch, but "once lamented that it occurred when he felt sorry for himself and that he 'just cracked' under the pressure of personal and political setback.
USA TODAY has posted a series of videos showing Branch discussing the book, including this clip concerning the Lewinsky affair:
-- Los Angeles Times -- "Pro- And Anti-Government Marchers Face Off In Tehran;" Ahmadinejad Questions Holocaust Again: "Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting, 'Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran,' swarmed the streets of the capital, turning a day in support of the Palestinian cause into a major opposition rally. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose disputed reelection three months ago triggered Iran's worst political domestic crisis in decades, delivered a blistering condemnation of Israel on the occasion of annual Quds Day. In a fiery speech, he questioning the Holocaust and blamed 'Zionists' for ongoing wars in the Middle East."
Related story by the Associated Press -- Reformist Attacked: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at Israel and the West saying Friday the Holocaust was a lie and a pretext for occupying Palestinian lands, while hard-liners attacked a reformist cleric who was marching with the opposition at an anti-government rally in Tehran."
Related story from NBC News -- "Ahmadinejad Refuses To Rule Out" Developing Nuclear Weapons: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused Thursday to explicitly rule out development of nuclear weapons and said in an interview with NBC News that he would 'never' halt Tehran's work on peaceful nuclear programs to mollify Western skeptics." Asked if he stole Iran's June election, Ahmadinejad said "I don't know what you mean by that. ... We should be courageous enough to accept the vote of the people." And, he said of the death of protester Neda Soltan: "I was saddened as well ... We are treating it as a suspicious death."
-- The Associated Press -- Suicide Bomb Kills 25 In Northwest Pakistan: "A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a hotel in a northwest Pakistan market Friday, killing 25 people in a possible sectarian attack, police and a government official said. The attack in Usterzai village on the outskirts of Kohat town was the second in two days in the area, which is not far from the Afghan border and has witnessed past incidents of violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. A bomb Thursday in Kohat wounded six people."
-- NPR News -- Double Suicide Attack In Somalia Condemned:" NPR's Paul Brown introduces a report from Ofeibia Quist-Arcton on the deadly twin suicide bomb attacks in Mogadishu:
Other stories making headlines include:
-- Morning Edition -- For Some In Europe, "A Sense Of Betrayal" After U.S. Shift In Missile Defense Plan. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports:
Related Morning Edition report from NPR's Mike Shuster -- "New Picture Of Iran's Progress On Missile Development" Led To Change In Plan:
-- The New York Times -- "Reasons Unclear For Terrorist Fears": "As they zeroed in on Najibullah Zazi, law enforcement authorities came to view him as a potential terrorist threat. They raided homes connected to him, his relatives and friends in New York and Colorado, but have said very little other than to proclaim that the investigation revealed no imminent danger. The public, then, has been left struggling to make sense of what is known about Mr. Zazi and his acquaintances, his travels and intentions, if any, and how he came to the attention of the federal agents and local police who were intently tracking him."
Related story by the Denver Post -- "Federal Agents Grill Aurora Shuttle Driver For Second Day": "An Aurora (Colo.) man in the cross hairs of a multistate anti-terrorism investigation met with federal agents for a second day of questioning Thursday. Najibullah Zazi, the 24-year-old airport-shuttle driver who has become the focal point in the investigation, arrived with his lawyer at the FBI's Denver offices shortly after 2 p.m. He was questioned until late in the evening and was scheduled to return for more questioning at 9 a.m. today. His attorney, Art Folsom, said earlier in the day he was confident Zazi, who has proclaimed his innocence, would not be arrested."
-- Boston Globe -- "House Backs An Interim Senator": Massachusetts state House lawmakers "approved legislation last night that gives Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint a temporary successor to the late Edward M. Kennedy in the US Senate, putting Massachusetts on track to have a new senator in place by next week. ... Possible candidates are believed to include former governor Michael Dukakis and former Democratic National Committee chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr., who is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library."
He sacrificed his life for one of his men. (Courtesy of 10th Mountain Division.)
By Mark Memmott
The nation pays its highest military tribute to a fallen hero today when President Barack Obama awards a posthumous Medal of Honor to Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti of Raynham, Mass.
As NPR's Tom Bowman reported on Morning Edition, the 30-year-old Monti made a valiant effort to save one of his men during a ferocious firefight on a mountaintop in Afghanistan three years ago. Staff Sgt. Chris Cunningham tells Tom that when Monti heard during the battle that one of his men was missing, the 1st Sgt. said "he's my guy, I'm going to get him":
The highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress, it is often called the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Update at 2:45 p.m. ET. The president has awarded the medal. During his remarks, he talked about the bravery Monti showed:
Update at 11:55 a.m. ET: At the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked if he is concerned by the fact that there has not yet been a Medal of Honor awarded to any living veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gates said he is bothered by that -- and that it was one of former president George W. Bush's "real regrets" that he did not have sucn an opportunity. Then, Gates added that it's his understanding there are "some living potential recipients that have been put forward":
Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep is in Houston this week, and he's kicked off a series of reports on a city that is rapidly changing.
As Steve explains, the city's Third Ward is an historic section that developers have their eye on. But a state lawmaker is battling to keep the Third Ward from losing its identity:
The Department of the Interior is phasing out its "Royalty in Kind" program that lets producers pay for being allowed to drill on public lands by giving the government some of the oil or gas they recover rather than royalties.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the government was losing millions of dollars in potential revenue because it couldn't adequately monitor and collect the "in-kind" payments. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the House Natural Resources Committee today that "the department's energy leasing and royalty programs have not been working as they should and the American people have not been receiving the full benefits from these valuable assets."
As All Things Considered put it last evening, "the community organizing group ACORN is under attack after hidden-camera videos captured its workers giving advice on falsifying taxes to conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute." (Frank posted about this on Monday.)
Now, Fox News Channel has what is said to be the full version of the latest video from BigGovernment.com, a project of conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart and activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles.
ACORN says BigGovernment has been "caught out in an obvious set of lies and manipulations" and that the ACORN organizer shown in the latest video knew the activists weren't serious and "she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. She matched their false scenario with her own false scenarios."
There's word this morning from the Associated Press that "a water main is broken in the Winnetka area at Corbin Avenue and Kittridge Street" in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, there's a major story in the Los Angeles Times that's headlined "L.A. Engineers Are Puzzled By Uptick In Water Pipe Failures". The lede of that story:
Underground water pipes in Los Angeles have suffered significantly more "major blowouts" in the last three months, officials confirmed Tuesday after analyzing dozens of ruptures, some of which flooded streets, damaged vehicles and buildings and created a sinkhole so big that it almost swallowed a firetruck.
Former president Jimmy Carter has gotten into the middle of the debate over whether racism may be playing a part in the protests aimed at President Barack Obama. Carter tells NBC News that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man":
-- The New York Times -- "Man In Queens Raids Denies Any Terrorist Link": "A Colorado man whose visit to New York apparently set off government raids on several Queens apartments on Monday has denied having ties to al-Qaida or any other terrorist group. 'I have nothing to do with this,' said the man, Najibullah Zazi, 25, who was reached by telephone in Colorado on Monday and Tuesday. 'This looks like it's going toward me, which is more shocking every hour.' "
-- Morning Edition -- Al-Qaida Operative Killed In Somalia Linked To Minneapolis Boys Who Had Been Recruited By Terrorists:
-- The Associated Press -- New Prime Minister & Cabinet Take Places In Japan: "Longtime opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama was elected prime minister and installed his new Cabinet Wednesday, promising to reinvigorate Japan's economy and shake up government with his left-of-center party after more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by conservatives."
Among the things to watch for today -- At 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the consumer price index figures for August. President Obama meets with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the White House. And Vice President Joe Biden continues his visit to Iraq.
Is the economic downturn bad for the anti-abortion movement?
That's how the head of Operation Rescue, the militant anti-abortion group, explains his organization's declining financial fortunes.
But an Associated Press story suggests it has more to do with the Wichita, Kan.-based group becoming less attractive to potential donors for a couple of important reasons.
As the AP reports:
The group's president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a desperate plea e-mailed Monday night to donors. But the Wichita-based organization has also been under attack from both fringe anti-abortion militants and abortion rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.
"We're now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention," Newman wrote.
Newman told The Associated Press in an interview after the mailing that the group has only four paid employees left, compared to nine a year ago. The group typically has an annual budget of $600,000, but donations this year have been down 30 to 40 percent.
Newman, who earns $60,000 annually, said he hasn't been paid in two months.
"You put a need in front of people and say, 'Here is where we are at,"' Newman said. "I have always seen people respond faithfully."
On Saturday, when President Barack Obama was in Minneapolis, Hendrickson carried two weapons with him while he was with protesters outside the Target Center.
"The Second Amendment isn't suspended just because the president's in town," he told the Star Tribune. It adds that:
The conversation continues about whether racism is playing a part in the criticism aimed at President Barack Obama by some conservatives.
On Morning Edition, NPR news analyst Juan Williams told host Renee Montagne that many in the black and Hispanic communities see what they think is a pattern that adds up to a "lack of basic acceptance of the stature that's to be accorded any president."
Among the elements of that perceived pattern:
-- Questions from so-called birthers about whether the president was actually born in the USA (he was; in Hawaii).
-- Objections from some to having the president address schoolchildren.
-- Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's shout of "you lie!" during Obama's address to a joint session of Congress last week.
Juan adds, though, that many conservatives say that liberals are trying to stifle legitimate criticism with accusations of racism any time they raise questions about the policies being pursued by the nation's first African-American president.
Here is Juan's conversation with Renee:
We'll ask again, with this poll that we started yesterday:
Jody Powell, as White House press secretary, blows tobacco smoke as he watches TV news commentary after a July 1979 speech by President Jimmy Carter. (Charles Tasnadi / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Jody Powell, who served as President Jimmy Carter's press secretary, has reportedly died.
ABC News has learned that former White House press secretary Jody Powell has died.
This afternoon at his house on the Eastern Shore in Maryland, Powell had an apparent heart attack, a family friend said.
The former press secretary for President Jimmy Carter was the CEO of the PR firm Powell Tate. He was 65.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports the following:
WASHINGTON (AP) - A close associate says Jody Powell, who was White House press secretary during Jimmy Carter's presidency, has died.
Powell, a Georgia native known for his deep Southern drawl, worked on Carter's presidential campaign in 1976 and served as the Carter's spokesman between 1977 and 1981. The cause of death was not immediately known.
After leaving the White House, Powell became one of the founders of the Powell Tate public relations firm in Washington.
Counting the heads is controversial. (Jose Luis Magana / AP)
By Mark Memmott
The National Park Police long ago got out the business of estimating the sizes of crowds at political rallies in Washington, D.C. (though it does do estimates for inaugurations).
The Internet kerfuffle that's been underway since Saturday's "Tea Party" march and protest by conservatives underscores why Park Police officials don't like being dragged into discussions of crowd sizes when political organizers want to brag about how many folks they've gathered and critics want to poke holes in those claims.
Supporters of the rally say that liberals and the "mainstream media" have been deliberately downplaying the size of the crowd, putting it in the tens of thousands. Liberals and critics of the conservative groups' leaders say the Tea Party organizers have been deliberately distorting the facts, claiming at times that as many as 2 million were there.
Gertrude Baines, the oldest person known to those who keep such records, has died in Los Angeles at age 115.
Baines, a former Ohio State University maid, likely died of a heart attack, her doctor has said according to news reports but an autopsy is planned to ascertain the cause of death.
Born in 1894 in a small Georgia town, two years before the Supreme Court decided the Plessy vs. Ferguson case which made the tragic farce of "separate but equal" race segregation the law of the land, she lived to vote for the nation's first African American president.
CNN has been going hard with the "breaking news" that the U.S. Coast Guard fired shots at a boat on the Potomac River near the Pentagon this morning, possibly while President Barack Obama was at the Defense Department to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The Associated Press, though, just sent out this alert:
Coast Guard: Training conducted in Potomac River moments before Obama motorcade crossed.
Update at 12:15 p.m. ET. Vice Adm. John Currier, the Coast Guard's chief of staff, just told reporters that it was a "routine, normal training exercise."
Currier said "somebody said 'bang bang' on the radio at the appropriate point in the training exercise." The president, he added, "was not in the area."
As for conducting such training on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Currier said the Coast Guard will review that decision -- but added that "we're charged with 7-by-24, 365, all-day, every day, all-weather security and safety" in the area.
Here's some of his statement and back-and-forth with reporters:
Update at 10:50 a.m. ET: Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards tells the AP that "this is routine training for us and we train everyday."
Update at 10:47 a.m. ET. More confirmation that it was a training exercise. The Arlington County (Va.) Office of Emergency Management has sent this e-mail alert:
"Activity on the Potomac involving the U.S. Coast Guard is confirmed to be a training exercise."
Update at 10:44 a.m. ET. From the FBI's public affairs office, Lindsay Godwin just sent this statement to NPR's Dina Temple-Raston:
"I have heard from the FBI's Washington Field Office National Capital Response Squad that the Coast Guard let them know that this was a 'training exercise' and that no shots were fired."
Update at 10:32 a.m. ET. The AP now writes that:
The Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise in the Potomac River moments before President Barack Obama crossed a nearby bridge for a Sept. 11 commemoration.
Coast Guard Chief Keith Moore said Friday no shots were fired as part of the exercise, although media reports suggested shots had been fired in the river. News stations showed video of Coast Guard vessels in the water.
The president also greeted family members of 9/11 victims at the Pentagon. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
By Mark Memmott
Saying that "no turning of the seasons can diminish the pain and the loss of that day," President Barack Obama just marked the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at a Pentagon ceremony.
The president said the nation will not give up the pursuit of those responsible:
"Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still. In defense of our nation we will never waver; in pursuit of al-Qaida and its extremist allies, we will never falter."
And, he said Americans should recall "how we came together" that day:
"Most of all, on a day when others sought to sap our confidence, let us renew our common purpose. Let us remember how we came together as one nation, as one people, as Americans, united not only in our grief, but in our resolve to stand with one another, to stand up for the country we all love."
Here's the audio of his remarks. His text, as transcribed by the White House, follows:
Garrison Keillor, the public radio icon, has suffered a minor stroke, according to an Associated Press report.
Garrison Keillor suffered a minor stroke Sunday but should be back to his normal schedule next week. (Ann Heisenfelt, file / AP Photo)
The 67-year old Keillor, whose Prairie Home Companion radio show has been one of public radio's most popular offerings for decades, suffered the stroke Sunday.
An AP excerpt:
A Mayo Clinic spokesman says Keillor suffered the stroke Sunday morning. Keillor is at Saint Marys Hospital on the Mayo campus in Rochester.
Mayo spokesman Karl Oestreich (ACE'-strike) said Keillor was moving around and working on a laptop Wednesday. Oestreich said Keillor should be released on Friday and resume a normal schedule next week.
We at NPR News, like his millions of fans, wish him a speedy recovery.
Cracks in the existing span were discovered during an inspection. But traffic is moving again. (baybridgeinfo.org)
By Mark Memmott
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reopened about half an hour ago -- a welcome development for hundreds of thousands of commuters who earlier had been warned that repairs would keep the span closed today.
But as The San Francisco Chronicle reports, California Department of Transportation Director Randell Iwasaki announced at 9:10 a.m. ET that:
"Through the night, the crews have worked nonstop -- for almost 70 hours -- and were able to complete repair work on the damaged eyebar beam found over the weekend. ... The bridge has been inspected, and it's safer than it was when we closed it on Friday."
The security guard at the Hospital of Central Connecticut certainly had a more more exciting grave yard shift than usual when a car occupied by two men and a dog drove through the hospital's front doors and into its lobby at 3 am Friday morning.
Fortunately, because it was the wee hours, no one was injured when the car crashed into the building.
When the security guard told the men to stay where they were, they fled. The dog took off, too.
A police officer spotted one of the men and the dog on a nearby street and confronted them. Police report that the man, Matthew Dufresne, 31, claimed to be the devil and punched the officer. The dog bit the officer.
The cop stopped Dufresne in his tracks with the stun gun. The dog got away.
The second man was caught later, according to the Associated Press. AP also reports this piece of information which made me laugh out loud when I read it:
It's often said California is where the trends start. Here's something that happened in California we hope doesn't spread east: A man bit off the tip of another's pinky finger off at a health-care reform demonstration, necessitating emergency room care for the man whose digit was partially pruned.
As the Associated Press reports:
LOS ANGELES (AP) - One man bit off part of another man's finger when a health care reform demonstration turned violent.
William Rice said doctors did not reattach the bitten-off part of his left pinky after he got in the middle of a Southern California rally Wednesday night that he said was "very scary."
"I didn't go out to demonstrate my beliefs, I happened to be driving by and I stopped to ask people what their purpose was," Rice, 65, said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I had no signs, I was not part of the demonstration."
In a now-posthumous memoir, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy says he panicked when the car he was driving went off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island in the summer of 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne, a former aide to his late brother Robert, drowned.
According to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of Kennedy's soon-to-be-released book True Compass:
Mr. Kennedy said he was dazed, afraid and panicked in the minutes and hours after he drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island with Ms. Kopechne as his passenger.
The senator, who left the scene and did not report the accident to the police until after her body was found the next day, admitted in the memoir that he had "made terrible decisions" at Chappaquiddick. He also said that he had hardly known Ms. Kopechne, a young woman who had been an aide to his late brother Robert, and that he had had no romantic relationship with her.
Kennedy, 77, died on Aug. 25 after a year-long battle with brain cancer.
The Times says the book "does not shy from the accident, or from some other less savory aspects of the senator's life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan." It also, according to the Times "offers rich detail on his relationships with his father, siblings and children that round out a portrait of a man who lived the most public of lives and yet remained something of a mystery."
We've all heard of people like babysitters abusing small children when the kids' parents are away. But how many of us have heard of a stranger abusing a child before the parent's very eyes?
Roger Stephens, alleged Wal-Mart child slapper. (Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department)
That apparently is what happened in a Wal-Mart in an Atlanta suburb. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
A Gwinnett County man is in custody accused of slapping a stranger's crying toddler in a Stone Mountain Wal-Mart on Monday.
Sonya Mathews, the mother of the 2-year-old child, told police that both were walking in the aisles of the Rockbridge Road store when Roger Stephens, 61, approached and said "if you don't shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you," according to a police report.
A few moments later, in another aisle, Stephens grabbed the 2-year-old and slapped her across the face four or five times, according to the report.
Stephens then told Mathews, "See, I told you I would shut her up," according to the report.
A bystander held Stephens until store security came to assist, according to a WSB-TV report.
When police arrived, Stephens said that he slapped the child and that he apologized to Mathews, according to the report.
Stephens was charged with felony cruelty to children...
It's a small story but sure to get a lot of attention on the Internet and maybe even from late-night comedians. Many of the comments on the AJC site are variations of, "if he had done that to my child, the police would've had to rescue him etc." That was my reaction, too.
The New Yorker's David Grann tells the story in this week's magazine of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed by the state of Texas in 2004 -- though, Grann's reporting shows, Willingham very likely was innocent of killing his three young daughters in a fire at their Corsicana home.
A short time ago, Grann explained to All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel that investigators relied on disproved theories about arson and that there were many shortcomings about the defense presented on Willingham's behalf. The bottomline, Grann says, is that when a commission completes its review, the state of Texas may become the first in the nation to make a startling admission:
Much more from Robert's conversation will be on today's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
And The New Yorker has a lot about the story at its website, including:
Why did Phillip Craig Garrido serve about one-fifth of a 50-year sentence for rape -- meaning he was a free man in 1991, when he allegedly kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard?
That's just one of the disturbing questions as more is known about what apparently happened in the backyard of Garrido's home near Antioch, Calif., where Dugard was allegedly forced to live for 18 years and raise two children fathered by Garrido -- who along with his wife has been charged with 29 counts related to the kidnapping, rape and imprisonment of Dugard. They have pleaded not guilty.
Passengers with very offensive body odor get on public transit systems the world over, usually to the olfactory distress of their fellow passengers.
But some city lawmakers in Honolulu want to try and put an end to this. If they had their way, extreme personal funkiness on public conveyances illegal.
The City Council is considering a bill that will make it illegal to "bring onto transit property odors that unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit system, whether such odors arise from one's person, clothes, articles, accompanying animal or any other source."
Councilman Rod Tam, a co-sponsor of the bill, explained why it is needed:
"As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different. Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor."
We'll include the video, which has been viewed on YouTube about 5 million times in recent months, in this post. It's down below and we should warn you that while those are actors in the film, it is quite graphic. The fictional account shows what happens when a teen driver who is texting sets off a chain reaction crash. Four characters in the film are killed.
There's been quite a bit of attention paid to the video in recent days.
The New York Timeswrites that "though the Welsh video has clearly struck a chord, some safety advocates maintain that blood and gore is not the best way to stop drivers from doing something that is legal in most states."
But USA TODAY's Drive On blog explains that the Gwent, South Wales, police department "pulled together the video with filmmaker Peter Watkins-Hughes" -- and that the Gwent police chief thinks all drivers should see it.
Here is the video. Again, we have to warn you that it is graphic:
The latest on the process of finding a successor to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is that Gov. Deval Patrick has scheduled the special election for Jan. 19.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick briefs reporters on the special election to replace Sen. Edward Kennedy. (Josh Reynolds / AP Photo)
At a press conference, Patrick also said Kennedy's widow Vicki told him in no uncertain terms that she doesn't want to be named interim senator.
Meanwhile, Patrick reiterated his support for changing the state law back to what it was before 2004 which would allow him as governor to appoint a replacement.
Before he died last week, Kennedy had asked Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law to let the governor name an interim appointee to serve until voters can choose a permanent replacement. Current Massachusetts law does not allow an interim appointee.
"This is the only way to ensure that Massachusetts is fully represented," Patrick said, but cautioned that "I don't think by any means it is a certainty it will happen."
Patrick said he agreed with Kennedy that the state needs two voices in the Senate during the intervening five months. State law requires a special election between 145 and 160 days after a vacancy; the special election was set for Jan. 19.
When President Barack Obama signed anti-tobacco legislation into law in June, giving the Food and Drug Administration for the first time the authority to regulate tobacco, experts said the law was likely to be challenged in the courts. And today it was.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the maker of Camels and other brands, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleging that the new federal anti-tobacco laws violate the companies' First Amendment rights . (Paul Sakuma / AP Photo)
Tobacco makers sued the federal government Monday, saying the law violated their First Amendment rights to communicate with their customers.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was one of several manufacturers that joined a retailer in filing the lawsuit.
"This suit does not challenge Congress' decision to give the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products, nor does it challenge the vast majority of the provisions of the new law," said Martin L. Holton III, senior vice president and general counsel for R.J. Reynolds. "However, the law contains provisions that severely restrict the few remaining channels we have to communicate with adult tobacco consumers and, in our opinion, cannot be justified on any basis consistent with the demands of the First Amendment."
Holton adds, "The law also contains provisions that chill our ability to participate in the broader public policy dialogue over the future of tobacco products in this country. Reynolds believes that governments, public health officials, tobacco manufacturers and others can and should play a role in providing adult tobacco consumers with accurate information about the various health risks and comparative risks associated with the use of different tobacco and nicotine products. This suit seeks to confirm that Reynolds' ability to participate in that important dialogue has not been shut down."
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich knew Sen. Roland Burris' Texas-sized ego would make him accept the Senate appointment despite the dubious circumstances. (Seth Perlman / AP Photo)
By Frank James
We know a little more today about why disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed Sen. Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by President Barack Obama: Burris was the only one would take the seat under dubious circumstances.
This is according to Blagojevich's new book to be published early next month.
An excerpt from the Associated Press which apparently got an early look at the book.
Blagojevich writes that he eventually appointed Roland Burris, in part because of Burris' famously big ego. No one else but Burris would accept the appointment and fight to be seated under the circumstances, Blagojevich says.
Maybe Blagojevich had heard about the lavish monument Burris has already built for himself at a Chicago cemetery.
The long, rich, sometimes tragic and sometimes controversial story that was the life of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- Teddy -- is reaching it conclusion.
The 77-year-old Democratic icon, youngest sibling in one of the nation's most storied families, is being laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He died Tuesday after a year-long battle with brain cancer.
His funeral procession will pause outside the U.S. Capitol to give his current and former staffers, as well as members of Congress, a chance to pay their respects.
We'll post updates below as things happen. Just click the "play" button and our additions will flow in automatically.
There are, of course, many ways to follow along, including on the cable news networks. Boston's WBUR is also live-blogging. NPR.org's coverage begins here.
Update at 8:30 p.m. ET: The day's historic events have concluded. If you missed any of it, or want to see our minute-by-minute live-blogging, just click the "play" button below.
Just a quick update: It looks like things are running at least an hour late as the body of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died Tuesday at the age of 77, makes its way from Boston to his final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The senator's funeral procession had been scheduled to pause outside the Capitol Building at 4:30 p.m. ET, but has yet to arrive there. And the burial service, which had been set for 5:30 p.m. ET, looks likely to be delayed as well.
We'll put up a fresh post once things get going.
The Boston Globe now says the burial service won't begin until 7:30 p.m. ET. But the Globe also says the event at the Capitol won't happen until 6:30 p.m. ET -- which seems like a long time from now given the more than 1,000 people, including some elderly members of Congress, who have already been called to gather there. Perhaps things will move along a little faster than the Globe projects. Stay tuned.
While we wait, here is some video from the funeral service earlier today in Boston:
The funeral service for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is being held this morning at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Roxbury, Mass. The 77-year-old Democrat, brother of the nation's 35th president and one of the most influential senators in U.S. history, died Tuesday after a year-long battle against brain cancer.
Scroll down to see our live-blogging of the service.
Among those speaking at the service: President Barack Obama, who will deliver the eulogy. Three former presidents will be in attendance -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Former vice president Al Gore is also there.
We're following the service in this post. Just click the "play" button in the box below and our updates should flow in automatically. If you wish, you can also submit comments and thoughts in that player. We'll try to add as many as we can.
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET: The service has concluded (so we've removed the video player that was in the post earlier). If you turn on the player below, you can read our minute-by-minute account.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is being remembered this evening at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. The 77-year-old "lion of the Senate," died Tuesday after a year-long battle against brain cancer.
Among those speaking at tonight's service: Vice President Joe Biden; Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; and Kennedy's niece Caroline, daughter of the nation's 35th president.
We're following the service in this post. Just click the "play" button below and our updates should flow in automatically. If you wish, you can also submit comments and thoughts in that player. We'll try to add as many as we can.
Earlier in the week we heard that all four former living presidents would attend Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral mass Saturday in Boston.
It appears that won't be the case after all. Former President George H. W. Bush evidently won't be attending.
According to the Associated Press:
BOSTON (AP) - The elder President George Bush will not be attending Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral.
A spokesman for Bush said Friday that he and his wife, Barbara, decided not to attend Kennedy's funeral after learning their son, former President George W. Bush, would attend.
Jim McGrath says the 85-year-old Bush feels his son's presence would "amply and well represent" the family Saturday.
Besides ex-President George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are expected to attend the Kennedy funeral.
Construction is seen Monday, Aug. 24, 2009, in Englewood, N.J., as workers renovate a 25-room mansion owned since 1982 by Libya. (Mel Evans / AP Photo)
By Frank James
The mere rumor that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was planning to pitch and sleep in a Bedouin tent on Libyan-owned property in Englewood, NJ during a September visit to the United Nations in New York was enough to send shockwaves of outrage sweeping through northern New Jersey.
The families of some victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bombing live in the area, a bombing which killed 277 people and to which Libya accepted blame. So there was lingering anger toward Gadhafi even before he and other Libyans gave convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrah, a hero's welcome last week his release from prison by Scottish authorities last week because of terminal cancer.
Passengers this summer were trapped in Rochester, Minn. on a Continental ExpressJet like this one. (Ron Heflin / AP Photo)
By Frank James
This will probably come as no solace to the passengers forced to spend all night on a commuter jet on the tarmac at the airport in Rochester, Minnesota earlier this month but the Continental Airlines ExpressJet pilots should certainly appreciate it: the U.S. Transportation Department has determined that the pilots did what they could to get the passengers off the plane.
According to a Transportation Department: press release:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that his department has concluded the preliminary phase of its investigation into the Aug. 8 tarmac delay by Continental Airlines on a flight operated by ExpressJet Airlines. Passengers were stranded in a plane on the ground in Rochester, MN from 12:28 a.m. to about 6:00 a.m. with only pretzels provided by the carrier to eat.
"We have determined that the Express Jet crew was not at fault. In fact, the flight crew repeatedly tried to get permission to deplane the passengers at the airport or obtain a bus for them," Secretary LaHood said.
"The local representative of Mesaba Airlines improperly refused the requests of the captain to let her passengers off the plane. The representative incorrectly said that the airport was closed to passengers for security reasons, which led to this nightmare for those stuck on the plane," he said.
Mesaba is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.
"I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest," travel guide legend Arthur Frommer told his loyal readers earlier this week. And that means, he wrote, that he won't be going to Arizona anytime soon and may suggest that others join him in an "open boycott." He added that:
I would feel as I do regardless of the political identity of the speaker whom these thugs attempted to intimidate. The continued tolerance of extremists carrying guns is a frightening development which strikes at the heart of the political process and endangers the ability to carry out a reasoned debate. Is there any responsible citizen of the United States who believes that people should carry guns to a public debate or speech? If Ronald Reagan were delivering a political talk in Phoenix, Arizona, would they have felt it was proper for protestors with guns to mill about outside the hall from which he would leave?
Frommer was writing, of course, about the appearance Monday of a man carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was holding a town hall meeting.
In a 20-minute conference call ... Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and Steve Moore, head of the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau, spoke with Frommer, inviting him to visit Phoenix to clear up any misperceptions about the city's safety.
"It's a great place to live, work, raise a family and particularly to visit," Gordon said. "It's unfortunate an individual expressing his beliefs (the man with the rifle) got the coverage he got because that's not what Phoenix is about. Phoenix is one of the safest major cities in the United States." ...
Frommer told the mayor he has many friends in Arizona and would "take his comments to heart," Gordon said.
As CNN reported, the man with the gun in Phoenix was part of a staged event by a Libertarian radio talk show host:
On this sultry summer Friday there are some things to keep an eye on.
At 10 a.m. ET, the National Association of Realtors releases its figures on July sales of so-called existing homes. Those numbers are closely watched because home sales are good indicators of how the economy's doing and how healthy it will or won't be in coming months.
Sticking with the economy for a minute, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to speak at the Kansas City Fed's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. His appearance is also set for 10 a.m. ET, and his words will be parsed for clues to whether the Fed thinks the economy has indeed begun to strengthen. Steve Beckner of Market News International reports:
In Washington this morning, friends and family will gather for the funeral of conservative commentator and journalist Robert Novak.
Out in the Atlantic near Bermuda, meanwhile, Hurricane Bill has weakened slightly -- but still threatens to flood the island's coastlines and bring dangerous waves and riptides to the eastern coast of the USA.
Finally, Muslims around the world are preparing for the start of their religion's holiest month. NPR's Jamie Tarabay filed this report about Ramadan:
As for stories making headlines, they include:
-- The Associated Press -- "Karzai, Abdullah Teams Claim Wins In Afghan Vote": "Campaign teams for President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah each positioned themselves Friday as the winner of Afghanistan's presidential election, one day after millions of Afghans braved dozens of militant attacks to cast ballots. Partial preliminary results won't be made public before Saturday, as Afghanistan and the dozens of countries with troops and aid organizations in the country wait to see who will lead the troubled nation for the next five years."
-- ABC News -- "Opposition To Health Care Reform Is On The Rise": "Public doubt about health care reform has grown as the debate's raged this summer, with a rise in views it would do more harm than good, increasing opposition to a public option -- and President Obama's rating on the issue at a new low in ABC News/Washington Post polls."
-- The New York Times -- "CIA Said To Use Outsiders To Put Bombs On Drones": "From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington's most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill al-Qaida's leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees."
-- The Washington Post -- "Detainees Shown CIA Officers' Photos; Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law At Guantanamo": "The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation."
The 20-year old who allegedly viciously attacked Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was charged with first degree reckless endangerment and the use of a dangerous weapon -- a tire iron -- among other charges, which altogether could yield maximum prison time of more than 40 years.
Milwaukee mayor attacker Anthony Peters. ( AP Photo/Milwaukee County Jail)
The criminal complaint indicates that Anthony Peters told police he "freaked out" when he beat the 55-year old mayor for interceding in a domestic dispute taking place on a street between Peters and his daughter's grandmother.
The complaint describes a fairly savage beating allegedly administered by Peters with the tire iron after Barrett attempted to place a 911 call. According to what members of Barrett's family told police, Peters allegedly rushed the mayor, grabbing the cellphone and immediately punched the mayor in the face.
After the mayor punched Peters in defense, Peters allegedly pulled a tire iron out from under his shirt and began beating the mayor. The beating resulted in some of the mayor's teeth being knocked out and chipped, wounds on his face and back of his head, and an "open fracture" in his right hand, meaning bone protruded through the skin.
It's about a man who can't remember much about who he is or how he got to a place ironically called "Discovery Park":
The blond-haired man with the walrus mustache wandered out of Seattle's Discovery Park three weeks ago, with pressed khakis, an expensive dress shirt, a blue blazer and $600 hidden in his sock. He was uninjured -- but said he was confused, lost and frightened.
This much is clear: He is fluent in English, French and German. He possesses a professorial knowledge of European cultural history. He seems to have traveled the world. And he says he is a widower.
But he said he doesn't know who he is or when he was born. Or how he got here and why. Or whether he even wants to know.
With the lightning speed of the Internet, SeattleTimes.com readers may have already solved the mystery.
At 8:40 a.m. ET, "David Akast, Shanghai, China," left this comment on the Times' website:
This is Edward Lightheart. He lived in Xi'an, China in 2005.
That led other readers to post links to webpages about Edward Lighthart (yes, the spelling is slightly different than in Akast's comment). Here's one of those webpages.
And the readers' comments have led the Times to add this editor's note to its story:
Within hours of posting this story online, a reader identified Jon Doe as Edward Lighthart, an English teacher he knew in China. The reader, David Akast, said Lighthart taught at English schools in China and "had an incredible knowledge of European cultural history."
Photos of Mr. Lighthart on the Internet suggest that it is him.
But it doesn't answer the key question of how he ended up in Seattle.
The Times is on the way to contact Mr. Lighthart in person to discuss the news.
Update at 3:30 p.m. ET.All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel just spoke with Ian Ith, one of the Seattle Times' reporters on the "mystery man" story. The John Doe he first met, Ith says, is now convinced intellectually that he is in fact Edward Lighthart. But, Ith says, "there is no connection emotionally" between the man and that name. And he has nothing physical -- no ID cards, no posessions other than the clothes he was wearing when he first asked a bus driver for help about three weeks ago; nothing -- to help ease his mind. Here's Ith talking about the odd situation this man is in:
There will be more from Robert's interview with Ith on ATC later today. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Update at 12:50 p.m. ET. It's "definitely me," man says.
Friends have e-mailed photographs of Lighthart, and he acknowledges that the man in the photographs is he.
"The name isn't ringing a bell, but the image is definitely me," said the man who had been at Swedish Medical Center as Jon Doe since he walked out of the park.
Afghans have gone to the polls to vote for a president, and as we reported a short time ago the turnout is said to have been light and there has been some violence. Click here for all of NPR.org's coverage of news from Afghanistan.
As for other stories making headlines this morning, they include:
-- Boston Globe -- "Kennedy, Looking Ahead, Urges That Senate Seat Be Filled Quickly": "Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in a poignant acknowledgment of his mortality at a critical time in the national health care debate, has privately asked the governor and legislative leaders to change the succession law to guarantee that Massachusetts will not lack a Senate vote when his seat becomes vacant." The Democratic senator is battling brain cancer. The Globe has posted a copy of Kennedy's letter to Gov. Deval Patrick here.
-- The New York Times -- "CIA Sought Blackwater's Help In Plan To Kill Jihadists": "The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of al-Qaida, according to current and former government officials."
-- The Wall Street Journal -- "New Rx For Health Plan: Split Bill": "The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes."
-- The Associated Press -- Poverty Rate Said To Have Risen: "The ranks of poor and uninsured Americans are likely increasing -- with more than 38.8 million believed to be in poverty. Rebecca Blank, the Commerce Department's undersecretary of economic affairs, spoke to The Associated Press in advance of next month's closely watched release of 2008 census data. Noting the figures are not yet final, Blank said the numbers likely will show a 'statistically significant' increase in the poverty rate, to at least 12.7%. That would represent a jump of more than 1.5 million poor people compared with the previous year."
-- The Times of London -- Alleged Killer Of Neda Soltan Identified: "The man accused of killing Neda Soltan has been identified as Abbas Kargar Javid, a pro-government militiaman, after photographs of the Basiji's ID cards appeared on the Internet." Neda's death, which was shown around the world on YouTube, galvanized outrage about the Iranian government's crackdown on protests over the country's disputed June 12 presidential election.
-- Morning Edition -- "Kilogram's Future Hangs In The Balance": Since 1889, the official kilogram -- a small metal cylinder weighing around 2.2 pounds -- has been at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. But there's a problem. Its mass seems to be changing. Now, scientists say, the world needs a new official kilogram. That's going to require a special kind of scale.
An uprooted tree lies fallen as a worker sweeps debris from a Central Park Tennis Center court after Tuesday night's violent storm. (Bebeto Matthews / AP Photos)
By Frank James
Nature reminded several American cities of its powerful presence in the last 24 hours.
Both Minneapolis and New York City are cleaning up, the former after a tornado struck south of downtown on Wednesday, the latter after a storm brought hurricane-force winds Tuesday night that toppled scores of trees in Central Park, including giant American elms more than 100 years old.
Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska was shaken on Wednesday by a magnitude 5.0 earthquake which apparently jangled some nerves but didn't break anything.
"This dispels myths that tornadoes don't hit urban areas, they go where they want to," said Pete Boulay, assistant state climatologist. "It doesn't happen very often, but they do happen."
Northbound Interstate 35W at Hwy. 62, already a tangled mess at the southern edge of Minneapolis because of construction, is closed due to flooding.
Central Lutheran Church in downtown had an old copper steeple damaged, and two tents used for entertaining also were struck. One was blown into the street and the other was collapsed, said church spokesman Joe Bjordal. The tents were set up in connection with the national gathering of about 2,000 at the Evangelical Church in America at the Convention Center. "We're thankful that nobody was hurt," Bjordal said.
Representatives on the convention floor could hear rain on the roof, but only became aware of the turbulence outside when unofficial convention-goers were moved in from the outside corridors for their safety.
Dogs captured by animal control for fatal attacks on a Georgia couple. They were later euthanized at the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009. (Kate Brumback / AP Photo)
By Frank James
One of the most tragic and strangest stories of recent days was the killing of a wife and husband in Georgia last Friday blamed by authorities on a pack of wild dogs. The dogs, 16 in all, were rounded up and, yesterday, euthanized.
Sherry L. Allen Schweder, 65, had gone for a walk along a dirt road when she was evidently set upon and mauled by the dogs, none of which was over 35 pounds. Later, her husband Lothar Karl Schweder, 77, formerly a University of Georgia German professor, went looking for her and, when he saw her body and exited his car, was himself attacked and mauled to death by the animals. It was like something from Hitchcock, only it actually happened.
According to a story on the Athens Banner-Herald's, the authorities have no idea why the dogs, which weren't known as dangerous, attacked the couple.
Neighbors and the coroner said the dogs, who stayed at an unoccupied house on the end of the dead-end lane, roamed the area but didn't seem aggressive.
"It's hard to say what triggered the attack because the dogs haven't been aggressive to anyone else," Mathews said. "No one knows exactly what happened.
Battered Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett held a brief press conference where he said "We're on the mend," a day after he left the hospital following being beaten when he intervened in a domestic dispute.
With a long purplish wound on the left side of his face and his fractured right hand in a protective wrap, Barrett explained that he and his niece Molly first called 911 after a woman holding a baby shouted for someone to do so. " (The Milwaukee Sentinel has video of the entire press conference.)
"Our immediate thought was there was something wrong with the baby. I immediately pulled out my phone as I think Molly did and we started calling 911. Within seconds we realized the problem was not with the baby it was with the man. He came up and was very, very agitated. And events took off from there, very, very quickly."
"A U.S. government official says Swiss banking giant UBS will give the IRS the details of more than 4,000 client accounts, under a deal to end a contentious international lawsuit," the Associated Press reports. It adds that "the agreement is scheduled to be formally announced later Wednesday morning."
Reuters writes that the agreement is "aimed at uncovering thousands of Americans who are
suspected of evading U.S. taxes."
According to The Wall Street Journal, the investigation "could produce in total 10,000 account identities, according to people familiar with the situation."
Update at 9:37 a.m. ET. The AP now adds that:
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman says Swiss banking giant UBS will give his agency the details of 4,450 client accounts suspected of holding undeclared assets.
Shulman said in prepared remarks that the deal will give the IRS thousands of long-sought account names and is expected to provide even more UBS clients who voluntarily disclose their financial details to the agency. UBS has an estimated 52,000 accounts of U.S. customers.
One explosion was near the Foreign Ministry (in background). (Khalid Mohammed / AP)
By Mark Memmott
Good morning.
There have been a series of explosions in Baghdad today. Dozens are reported dead and more than 300 are said to have been wounded. Carl Kasell introduces this report from NPR's Deborah Amos, who is in the Iraqi capital:
Violence also continues to flare in Afghanistan, where the presidential election is scheduled for tomorrow. On Morning Edition, co-host Renee Montagne spoke with NPR's Jackie -- who is in Kabul. Then Renee, who just returned from Afghanistan, talked with co-host Steve Inskeep about what's happening there as the time to vote draws near:
For those who like to mix some history with their news, Morning Edition also aired a conversation between Steve and Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East studies at the Marine Corps University, about the events of 1979 in Afghanistan (when the Soviet Union invaded):
As for other stories making headlines, they include:
-- The New York Times -- "Democrats Seem Set To Go It Alone On A Health Bill": "Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority's cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks."
Related story by The Washington Post -- "Debate's Path Caught Obama By Surprise": "President Obama's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president's top legislative priority."
-- Morning Edition -- "Health Co-Ops Touted As Alternative To Public Plan": "The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the idea that a health care overhaul has to include the option of a government-run insurance program. If this public plan is removed from the bills currently under construction in Congress, it could be replaced by nonprofit health insurance plans run on the co-op model, where people who buy the insurance are the ones who own the insurance company." NPR's Joanne Silberner reports:
-- From a related story by the Associated Press -- "Forecasters say the dangerous hurricane could get even stronger. ... The most significant threat could be to Bermuda, which the storm could pass in three or four days."
-- Morning Edition -- Sanctions On Myanmar Are 'Huge Strategic Error,' Sen. Webb Says: In a conversation with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Democratic Sen. James Webb of Virginia talked about the trip he just made to Myanmar, his meetings with its reclusive leader and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and why he thinks it no longer makes sense to have economic sanctions aimed at that country:
-- The Wall Street Journal -- "Reluctant Shoppers Hold Back Recovery": "Major retailers reported that American consumers are continuing to hunker down, casting a cloud over the durability of the U.S. recovery and underscoring the importance of overseas demand in restoring the world economy to health."
-- USA TODAY -- "Climate Plan Calls For Forest Expansion": " New forests would spread across the American landscape, replacing both pasture and farm fields, under a congressional plan to confront climate change, an Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows. About 18 million acres of new trees -- roughly the size of West Virginia -- would be planted by 2020, according to an EPA analysis of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June."
There's been much sound and fury recently about people bringing guns to the public viewing areas set up outside President Barack Obama's town-hall meetings.
Yesterday, one fellow drew a lot of attention by bringing an AR-15, a civilian version of the military's M-16 , to an area outside the Phoenix venue where the president spoke. He was one of about 12 people who were obviously packing outside the event.
CNN reported today that the man with the rifle who appeared to be interviewed by a reporter was part of a staged event by supporters of Rep. Ron Paul.
Staged or not, however, the sight of average citizens carrying weapons at these events disturbs many an observer.
In part, it's because of the nation's history of presidential assassinations. Add to that the particular worries for the president's safety related to his being the nation's first African American president and the concerns are understandable.
But there's another way to look at these gun-toters outside presidential events. They are indeed protected by the Second Amendment and state laws that allow them to carry their weapons.
Things will be busy today at the White House, where President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak late this morning, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the early afternoon and former president Bill Clinton in late afternoon. Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea, where he met with leader Kim Jong Il, is sure to be on their agenda.
Also today, at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Commerce Department reports about July home construction.
As for the stories making headlines, two familiar subjects -- health care and Afghanistan -- lead the way again. And there's word from South Korea that former president Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace between the North and South, has died. He was 85.
The day's top stories:
-- Politico -- "Liberals Revolt Over Public Option": "The White House's signal that it's willing to back off support for a public health insurance option has sent congressional liberals into full revolt, bluntly warning the administration that no legislation will pass without a government-run plan."
Related story on Morning Edition -- "Even though some Democrats want to hold on to what's known as the public option, the plan is losing appeal. A likely alternative to that plan is a network of nonprofit health co-ops:"
Related story by The New York Times -- "Alternate Plan As Health Option Muddies Debate."
-- Morning Edition -- "Is Britain's Health System Really That Bad?" "The National Health Service in the United Kingdom has become a punching bag for some critics of proposals to remake the U.S. health care system. Britons are offended by how some U.S. media outlets have singled the British system out for what not to do."
Related conversation on Morning Edition -- Host Steve Inskeep talks to Lord Ara Darzi, a surgeon and British government advisor, about Britain's National Health Service:
-- USA TODAY -- "Unemployed Workers Flock To COBRA": "A federal subsidy designed to make health insurance more affordable for laid-off workers has led to a doubling in the number of people who have opted to continue their former employer's coverage. The coverage, known as COBRA, allows people who leave their jobs to continue their former employer's health coverage for up to 18 months."
-- The Associated Press -- "Bomb Attack Kills At Least 7 Near Kabul": "A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy Tuesday on the outskirts of Kabul, killing at least seven civilians and wounding 50 people, including several international troops, officials said. A U.N. spokesman said three U.N. staff were also wounded. The attack occurred two days before national elections in which Afghans are to select a new president."
Related story by Reuters -- "Suicide Car Bomb, Rockets Strike Kabul Ahead Of Vote."
Related story on Morning Edition -- The head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan says he expects there will be more violence ahead of Thursday's voting:
Related graphic at WashingtonPost.com -- How The Afghan Election Will Work. A key point: If no presidential candidate wins more than 50% of the votes, a runoff of the top two will be held, most likely on Oct. 1.
Locations and projected paths of Ana and Bill. (National Hurricane Center; USGS / AP)
-- The Associated Press -- "Hurricane Bill Gathers Strength Out In Atlantic": "The first hurricane of the Atlantic season loomed far out in the ocean Tuesday, gaining power and moving on a track that forecasters said could take it close to Bermuda by the end of the week."
-- YnetNews.com -- "Israel Agrees To Freeze Settlement Construction As Gesture To U.S.": "In a subtle overture to the U.S., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Housing Minister Ariel Atias agreed upon a de facto moratorium on new building in the settlements."
-- BBC News -- "Russia Detains Ship 'Hijackers' ": "Eight people have been arrested for hijacking the cargo ship Arctic Sea, Russia's defense minister says. Anatoly Serdyukov said the group of suspects included Russian, Estonian and Latvian nationals."
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett takes the oath of office, April 20, 2004. (Morry Gash / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was released from the hospital following surgery for injuries he sustained when he was attacked by a man with a collapsible police baton after Barrett came to the defense of a grandmother during a domestic dispute.
The attack on the 55-year old mayor was fairly vicious, judging by the description of his injuries described by his brother John as reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Earlier Monday, Barrett's brother, John, said the mayor was hit so hard in the face that the blow knocked out a bottom tooth and some top teeth.
Barrett's hand was shattered and repaired in a three-hour surgery. A doctor placed stitches in the mayor's head, and he had plastic surgery to repair another cut that extended from his cheek to his nose.
John Barrett said the assailant threatened to use a gun during the altercation Saturday night and then punched the 55-year-old mayor so hard in the stomach that he buckled.
The man then told Barrett to lie face down on the ground.
"This is when Tom thinks 'Yikes, this guy could kill me,'???" John Barrett said.
At that point the mayor came up swinging and the assailant, Anthony J. Peters, opened up an extendable, police-style baton and started beating him, John Barrett said.
Anthony J. Peters, 20, was arrested for the assault. Charges have yet to be filed.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama called the mayor and praised him for his bravery, reports Susan Bence from NPR member station WUWM.
The problems with New Jersey politicians and corruption are bad enough to drive some to the desperate and dubious notion that all political candidates and officeholders submit to lie-detector tests.
The Associated Press reports:
TRENTON, N.J. - A political consultant proposed a last-ditch effort to lawmakers Monday to help rid the state of its reputation for political corruption: Require lie-detector tests for
candidates and officeholders.
George Dredden told members of the New Jersey Assembly Republican Policy Committee that the polygraph tests would be a means of reform for a state where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption this decade.
"I know it's out of the box," said Dredden, who has worked on several political campaigns, including state Sen. Joe Pennacchio's run for U.S. Senate in 2008. "But we've done some things to get us into the box."
Of course, there's no evidence that polygraph tests would stop those committed to using political office to illegally like their pockets.
It's going to take more than one or two Republican votes to get health care legislation through the Senate, one of the chamber's top Democrats told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel just a few moments ago:
That's a sign he doesn't think Democrats -- though they and their allies control 60 seats -- have the votes to block any and all filibuster attempts. It takes 60 votes to do that.
And, says Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, it's important that any legislation have a broad base of support -- which means more than just a few GOP votes:
There will be more from Robert's interview with the senator on today's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
For much more about the health care overhaul and other health-related topics, check the NPR Health Blog.
President Obama spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix this afternoon. We updated this post with some highlights. Click your "refresh" button to see our latest additions.
Update at 2:10 p.m. ET. With the event now long over, we're taking out the video player we had placed here.
Update at 1:40 p.m. ET: As he finishes, Obama tells the story of Jim Norene -- a D-Day veteran who died this year while visiting Normandy for the 65th anniversary of the Allied landing there.
"Back where he had served 65 years before," Obama says, "Jim Norene passed away. At night. In his sleep. Quietly. Peacefully. The 'tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.' "
Update at 1:35 p.m. ET. Turning to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Obama says:
"We're keeping our promise to fulfill another top priority at the VA cutting the red tape and inefficiencies that cause backlogs and delays in the claims process. This spring, I directed the departments of defense and veterans affairs to create one unified lifetime electronic health record for members of the armed forces -- single electronic record, with privacy guaranteed, that will stay with them forever. Because after fighting for America, you shouldn't have to fight over paperwork to receive the benefits you earned.
"Today, I can announce that we're taking another step. I have directed my Chief Performance Officer, my Chief Technology Officer and my Chief Information Officer to join with Secretary Shinseki in a new reform effort. We're launching a new competition to capture the very best ideas of our VA employees who work with you every day.
"We're going to challenge each of our 57 regional VA offices to come up with the best ways of doing business, harnessing the best information technologies and breaking through the bureaucracy.
"And then we're going to fund the best ideas and put them into action. All with a simple mission -- cut those backlogs, slash those wait times and deliver your benefits sooner. I know, you've heard this for years. But with the leadership and resources we're providing, this time we're going to be able to do it."
Henry Louis Gates Jr. take note. Even Bob Dylan can get queried by cops like a man who's up to no good.
Bob Dylan in 2006. (Jeff Christensen / AP Photo)
One of the most famous musicians and songwriters of all time happened to be in Long Branch, N.J., a stop on a tour he's doing with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp.
He was ambling down a residential street, like a rolling stone perhaps, just checking out the houses and trying to pass the time before the show, when someone dropped a dime on him, saying he looked shady.
A police officer arrived on the scene. A cop who didn't know Bob Dylan from Dylan Thomas.
Associated Press reporter Wayne Parry has a classic lead on his story about the incident:
Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.
Another troubling Tasering story makes the national news. Today, a mother who was Tasered in front of her 15 and five year old children who watched in horror from the family's van filed a lawsuit against the Onandaga County Sheriff's Department in New York State.
Harmon was on the Today Show with her lawyer Terrance Hoffman. Hoffman indicated one reason for the lawsuit is to bring to light the misuse of Tasers by police and to get officers to use them more judiciously.
Harmon said she believes the officer, Sean Andrews, stopped her because he thought she was using a cellphone without a hands-free device which is illegal in New York State. But it turned out she wasn't using a cell phone. He accused her of speeding. But she challenged him on that.
She also admitted that she got out of her car without the officer asking her to then got back in before he cleared her to do that. The police car's dash cam video shows their interaction.
A General Electric plant overlooks the Hudson River in Fort Edward, N.Y. in this May 17, 2001 file photo. (Tim Roske / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Parts of an old British fort dating back to the mid-1700s survived the past two centuries in the Hudson River at Fort Edward, N.Y.
But they couldn't survive a crew of dredgers clearing the river bottom of carcinogenic PCBs dumped there over the years by a General Electric factory.
As the Associated Press reports:
FORT EDWARD, N.Y. - Crews dredging PCBs from the Hudson River have ripped away remnants of what was once Britain's largest fort in Colonial America.
Neal Orsini says he was awoken Friday by the sound of dredging along his riverside property in Fort Edward, north of Albany.
Orsini says he discovered dredgers had torn out the riverbank along with two wooden beams that were part of the fort's waterfront bastion. A third beam was found still buried.
He says crews were to stay away from that stretch of river bank because of its archaeological significance.
General Electric is dredging PCBs from the river bottom as part of a $750 million cleanup project. A GE spokesman says crews couldn't see the beams because they were buried in silt.
If this site was so archaeologically important, maybe there should have been an archaeologist keeping an eye on the dredgers. Surely, $750 million is enough for GE to pay for an archaeologist or two.
In an interview set to air this evening on BBC Two's Newsnight, Lynndie England defends the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison as being "nothing ... compared to what they would do to us" and not much worse than hazing at U.S. colleges.
"If it helps get whatever information they might have, sure," England says of the tactics that included stripping prisoners, forcing them into piles, putting leashes on some and other abuses.
England, who Army Times has called "one of the most recognizable figures of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq" because of her appearance in graphic photos, was among 11 soldiers convicted of crimes for actions taken at the Iraqi prison in the early months of the war there. She served about 18 months of a 36-month sentence.
England last month told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that the way prisoners were treated "was just normal everyday activity to us there. ... When we got there we just took over. That stuff was happening before we got there and after we left. It was like the passing of the baton. That's just the stuff that was going on there. We were told to continue on with it, to keep doing it." Here's that report:
With some of those she championed, in 1975. (Marty Lederhandler / AP)
By Mark Memmott
From Hyannis, Mass., the Cape Cod Times reports that "thousands are expected to attend the public wake for Eunice Kennedy Shriver at a Cape Cod church later today."
And at the Special Olympics website -- retitled EuniceKennedyShriver.org -- there's word that some of the events will be webcast so that those around the world who fondly remember the Special Olympics founder can observe.
The Mass is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. The wake is set for 1-7 p.m. ET.
Shriver, 88, died Tuesday. As this Washington Post graphic details, she was the fifth of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children, who also included former president John F. Kennedy, Sen. Edward Kennedy and former senator Robert Kennedy.
A water bottle in the Arizona desert in this May 5, 2004 file photo. (Matt York / AP Photo)
By Frank James
When is being a good Samaritan punishable under federal law? When the Samaritan litters in the process of helping other human beings.
Walt Staton, a volunteer with the group "No More Deaths" which provides humanitarian aid to illegal immigrants making the perilous trek across the arid southern border, left water jugs for migrants passing through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.
In June, a federal jury found him guilty of littering and on Wednesday a federal judge sentenced him to do 300 hours of trash pickup on public lands and one year of unsupervised probation. Furthermore, he's not allowed to enter the refuge for a year.
The newest justice. (Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
"This nation's faith in a more perfect union ... allows Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx to stand here now," Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said this morning at a White House reception in her honor.
President Barack Obama said that "this moment is not just about her. It's about every child
who will grow up thinking to him- or herself -- 'if Sonia Sotomayor can make it, then maybe I can too.' "
Sotomayor is the High Court's first Hispanic justice and only the third woman.
Policymakers at the Federal Reserve finish up two days of meetings this afternoon and many eyes will be on the statement they make afterward. It's widely expected they will leave short-term interest rates alone, but investors will parse the Fed's words for clues to how its policymakers think the economy's doing.
And The Washington Post looks at the signs that we're having an economic recovery "only a statistician can love."
Over at the White House, President Barack Obama this morning will host a reception for the newest Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor. In the afternoon, he will hand out 16 Medals of Freedom. The honorees include Bishop Desmond Tutu, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy and tennis legend Billie Jean King.
As for stories making headlines, they include:
-- Morning Edition -- Marines Move Into Taliban-Held Town In Southern Afganistan. From Helmand province, where she is embedded with U.S. Marines, NPR's Soroya Sarhaddi Nelson tells host Steve Inskeep that the U.S. forces she's with were met with a lot of resistance that lasted for several hours today, but that all is now quiet in the village:
The U.S. operation is part of an effort to push the Taliban out of towns and villages in Helmand prior to Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election. NPR's Renee Montagne, who's also in Afghanistan, reported on Morning Edition about a much different effort to boost voter participation -- a "rock the vote" style concert featuring one of the country's most popular singers:
One more Afghanistan-related story to pass along. Morning Edition's Inskeep talked with defense analyst Anthony Cordesman, who makes the case that even more troops are needed to fight corruption and build that country:
-- The Wall Street Journal -- Democrats Say E-Mails Show Improprieties By Rove In Firing Of U.S. Attorneys: "House Democrats turned over to federal prosecutors thousands of investigative documents Tuesday, alleging they are evidence of impropriety by Karl Rove and other Bush White House officials in the controversial 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys. It remains far from certain whether the 5,400 pages of emails and other documents released Tuesday contain information that would help prosecutors bring criminal charges against Mr. Rove, who served as former President George W. Bush's political adviser, or against any other former Bush officials."
-- The New York Times -- "Shiites In Iraq Show Restraint As Sunnis Keep Attacking": "Shiite clerics and politicians have been successfully urging their followers not to retaliate against a fierce campaign of sectarian bombings, in which Shiites have accounted for most of the 566 Iraqis killed since American troops pulled out of Iraq's cities on June 30."
-- Morning Edition -- Debunking The "Kill Grandma Scare Tactic". NPR's Julie Rovner adds to the reporting that shows "no, the health care overhaul bill now working its way through Congress would not require seniors to learn how to die prematurely":
-- The Associated Press -- More Found Alive In Taiwan Towns Hit By Mudslides: "Rescuers have found nearly 1,000 people alive in the area around three remote villages devastated by Typhoon Morakot, which pummeled the island over the weekend, Taiwan's military said Wednesday."
Related report by NPR News' Giles Snyder -- Many Still Missing:
"Dear Mrs. Shriver, your vision and action has changed lives of millions of people, not only Special Olympics athletes and their families, but also many more ordinary people like me. Thank you for changing the world to a better place for all people!"
Annie
That's just one of many tributes showing up at SpecialOlympics.org, which today has been turned into EuniceKennedyShriver.org in honor of the organization's founder, who died today.
Shriver, the sister of president John F. Kennedy, was 88.
The Special Olympics website also has a biography of Shriver, and is posting statements from her family and those who knew her.
Update at 11:30 a.m. ET. Here's one of the many photos available from Special Olympics. It's from the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Ireland:
Shriver, center, with some she inspired ( / SpecialOlympics.org)
That's what Continental Airlines has offered to 47 passengers who had to sit for six hours in a cramped commuter plane that smelled like dirty diapers and had a toilet that was flowing over. There wasn't any food or water.
The story of what happened to travelers on a Houston to Minneapolis flight Friday night is ricocheting across the news media universe. The plane was diverted to Rochester, Minn., because of bad weather. Then it sat.
"It was almost a surreal quality that kind of developed during the night," passenger Link Christin told the Associated Press. "It felt like you were trapped in a cave underground."
The airline says passengers weren't allowed off because there were no security screeners on duty at the terminal. But the Pioneer Press says that excuse might not hold up:
"For the life of me I don't understand why they didn't come to the terminal," said Steven Leqve, manager of the Rochester Airport. Even in the overnight hours on Friday and into Saturday, Delta Air Lines had three people on site and the airport had one employee there as well, he said.
Stories like this pop up several times a year. They're always followed by vows from the airlines that it won't happen again.
Will there be disruptions at President Barack Obama's town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., this afternoon?
That's one of the stories to watch today.
Obama is due to hold a town hall on his health care overhaul plans, and as you're probably already aware there have been verbal fireworks at many of the such meetings that the president's fellow Democrats have been holding around the country in recent days. The White House is bracing for what could be a "vigorous" exchange with voters at the 1 p.m. ET event.
But as the New Hampshire Union Leader reports, to get one of the 1,800 tickets to the town hall you had to fill out a form on the White House website. Then, the White House contacted those who had applied before issuing the tickets. According to the newspaper, "police said only ticketed guests will be allowed onto Andrew Jarvis Drive, the road leading into the school."
We're planning to live-blog the town hall, so check back later to see what happens.
Update at 8:28 a.m. ET. From Portsmouth, NPR's Don Gonyea filed this preview of the town hall meeting:
Don will be reporting from the scene, where opponents of the president's health care plans are reportedly already gathering.
As for other stories making headlines as the day gets going, they include:
-- Morning Edition -- Top U.S. Commander In Afghanistan Says Voters Will Be Able To Get To Polls. NPR's Renee Montagne spoke with Gen. Stanley McChrystal about Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election and the current state of the war there. "We will win," McChrystal said. Of one troubled region, he said that "the vast percentage of voters in Helmand are going to have the option to vote":
-- BBC News -- Myanmar's Suu Kyi Returned To House Arrest: "Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to an additional 18 months' house arrest by a court in Rangoon. Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, was convicted of violating state security laws by allowing a US national into her lakeside home after he swam there."
From a related Associated Press story: Suu Kyi looked alert but tired during the 90-minute court session. She stood as the verdict was announced and then thanked foreign diplomats for attending her trial. 'I look forward to working with you in the future for the peace and prosperity of my country and the region,' Suu Kyi said in a soft voice to diplomats seated nearby. She then was led out of the courtroom."
-- The Associated Press -- 300 Typhoon Victims Rescued In Taiwan: "Taiwan's military rescued about 300 people Tuesday after a mudslide touched off by Typhoon Morakot consumed a village, but scores remained missing. A helicopter on a relief operation in the area crashed into a mountain with three crew aboard."
-- Politico -- "Congressional Jets May Be Scrapped": "After an uproar over a proposed purchase of new executive jets for use by senior government officials, including members of Congress, the top Defense appropriator in the House has offered to eliminate funding for the planes -- but only if the Pentagon, which operates the jets, agrees. 'If the Department of Defense does not want these aircraft, they will be eliminated from the bill,' Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommitee said Monday evening."
Billy Mays, the well-known television pitchman who died suddenly of a heart attack in June, had cocaine in his system at the time of his death which contributed to his death, according to the medical examiner whose office conducted the death investigation.
Mays, 50, was found dead in Tampa on June 28. The autopsy was performed the next day.
"From the presence of metabolites of cocaine and the absence of cocaine itself, it was concluded that Mr. Mays used cocaine in the few days prior to his death but not immediately prior to death," a Hillsborough County press release states. "Cocaine can raise the arterial blood pressure, directly cause thickening of the wall of the left ventricle of the heart, and accelerate the formation of atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries."
Mays has a family history of heart disease.
Cocaine use caused or contributed to his heart disease, the release states.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the 88-year old sister of President John F. Kennedy and the founder of Special Olympics, is very ill, according to reports.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 2007. (Bizuayehu Tesfay / AP Photo)
The Associated Press is reporting that she is in a Massachusetts Hospital and that her family, including her husband Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy aide and the first director of the Peace Corps, have gathered by her side. Sergeant Shriver suffers from Alzheimer's Disease.
Eunice Shriver is also the mother-in-law of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In May, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution, installed a portrait it commissioned of Eunice Shriver, making her the first person who was neither a former president or first lady to be so honored. It shows her with children and adults with intellectual disabilities.
"First Lady Jenny Sanford announced Friday she is moving with her four sons to Charleston and will no longer live in the Governor's Mansion" in Columbia, The State reports.
In a statement, she said that in Charleston, "we will work to continue the process of healing our family."
The odds may be small, but in case you missed the news about Gov. Sanford: In June, the Republican governor left for what his staff said was a hike on the Appalachian Trail -- only to return to say he'd been visiting a mistress in Argentina.
Chief Bratton announcing his departure Wednesday. (Philip Scott Andrews / AP)
By Mark Memmott
"It's not just Bill Bratton in the LAPD," says the outgoing Los Angeles police chief.
William Bratton tells All Things Considered guest host Madeleine Brand that he isn't worried about the department slipping back -- relations with the city's minorities were bad when he came aboard in 2002 and corruption was a chronic problem. He tells her he's put in place a management team that can keep things going after he's gone:
As Morning Edition said, Bratton's announcement yesterday that he's heading back to the private sector stunned many in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times said his departure "poses a major challenge for L.A." because he is "one of the nation's most influential law enforcement figures."
Bratton was among Governing's 2007 "Public Officials of the Year" and won accolades for the declines in crime during his tenures heading the Boston and New York City police departments. Crime has also come down in Los Angeles during his time there.
The chief will stay at his job another three months. According to the Times, "several people from inside the LAPD are obvious candidates for the job -- Bratton's three assistant chiefs, Jim McDonnell, Earl Paysinger and Sharon Papa."
There will be much more from Madeleine's interview with Bratton on this afternoon's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
In May, NOAA predicted "nine to 14 named storms," of which four to seven would become hurricanes. Now, two months into the season with no storms yet, NOAA is looking for seven to 11 named storms before the end of November, of which three to six would turn into full-blown hurricanes.
What's behind the good news? NOAA says it's "the calming effects of El Nino."
The agency warns, though, that "the season's quiet start does not guarantee quiet times ahead." The nation is heading into the "historical peak ... when most storms form."
Septuagenarians be warned. Just because you've reached the advanced age of three score and ten, and then some, doesn't mean the police won't Taser you.
That truth has been once again borne out, this time in Wyoming.
According to trib.com, the online face of the Casper Star-Tribune, police in the town of Glenrock, Wyo. Tased a 76-year old man who had been driving an antique tractor during a parade.
The man failed to obey police directions to the point where the police felt they had no choice but to Taser him.
This latest Tasering follows, of course, the police Tasering in May of a 72-year old Texas woman which was captured on by a dashboard camera in the police cruiser.
Chief Bratton, says the 'LA Times', is going to the private sector. (Reed Saxon / AP)
By Mark Memmott
Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, one of the nation's best-known crime fighters, is stepping down, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Quoting unnamed sources, the Times says Bratton plans to announce this afternoon that he is resigning to take a job at the helm of a private security firm.
Bratton, 61, has been in charge of the Los Angeles police force since October 2002. In the early 1990s, he ran the police departments in Boston and then New York. His LAPD bio is here.
Left New York as the world's most celebrated police chief. Business school professors hailed his "tipping-point leadership" and studied innovations such as Compstat, the computerized statistics system that Bratton developed to measure results and motivate commanders. Prot??g??s applied the Bratton playbook in cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Providence and Miami, often with impressive results.
Yet there were also skeptics. Criminologists pointed to nationwide crime declines in the late '90s and asked if Bratton's achievements in New York were really unique. For Bratton himself, there was also a personal question: How do you follow up on a success like New York? In 2002, after several years in the private sector, Bratton answered that question by returning to policing as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. In New York, Bratton had policed a city of more than 7 million residents with 38,000 officers. In Los Angeles, a geographically larger city with a population of nearly 4 million people, he had a mere 9,100 officers.
President Barack Obama's opponent in last year's presidential election has announced he will vote against the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
"An excellent resume and an inspiring life story are not enough to qualify one for a lifetime of service on the Supreme Court. ... Her writings demonstrated that she does not subscribe to the philosophy that federal judges should respect the limited nature of the judicial power under our Constitution. Judges who stray beyond their constitutional role believe that judges somehow have a greater insight into the meaning of the broad principles of our Constitution than representatives who are elected by the people. These activist judges assume that the judiciary is a super-legislature of moral philosophers. ...
"Again and again, Judge Sotomayor seeks to amend the law to fit the circumstances of the case, thereby substituting herself in the role of a legislator. Our Constitution is very clear in its delineation and disbursement of power. It solely tasks the Congress with creating law. It also clearly defines the appropriate role of the courts to 'extend to all Cases in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties.' To protect the equal, but separate roles of all three branches of government, I cannot support activist judges that seek to legislate from the bench. I have not supported such nominees in the past, and I cannot support such a nominee to the highest court in the land."
Sotomayor is the Democratic president's first Supreme Court nominee. The full Senate is scheduled to vote on her confirmation this week, and with Democrats and their allies controlling 60 seats approval is assured, barring a huge surprise. A handful of Republicans, including one of McCain's closest allies -- Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have also said they support the nominee.
Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher. (U.S. Navy photo / AP)
By Mark Memmott
Word that Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher's remains have been found in Iraq, 18 years after he was shot down over that country on the first night of the first Gulf War, has brought some closure to his family.
"We're discrediting the rumor that he died in the crash," (lawyer) Cindy Laquidara said in an interview. "That's just not accurate."
That information does not fit with data the family has collected over the years, she said, an issue it will bring up during an expected meeting with the Defense Department.
As the Times-Union adds:
In 1995 -- two years after the Pentagon said the crash site was found -- Speicher's family was told his jet had been found with evidence he ejected and survived, and in 1999, an Iraqi defector told investigators he drove an American pilot to Baghdad about a month after the Persian Gulf War began.
The Tallahassee Democrat reports that the news of the remains' discovery "brought a sense of sadness and resolve to those who had been intensely following Speicher's disappearance, including U.S. Bill Nelson, members of a high-school support group in his native Jacksonville and supporters on the (Florida State University) campus, where the $1.2 million Scott Speicher Tennis Center was named in his honor in 1993."
Donkeys have apparently become such a nuisance at the Army's Fort Irwin, located in California's Mojave Desert, that the Bureau of Land Management plans a donkey round-up to relocate the offending creatures.
Among the problems they're creating, the donkeys have the habit of getting in the way of live-fire training on the base's ranges, wandering into the line of fire.
Ironically, the base is used to train soldiers headed to Iraq; it even has mock Iraqi village. And donkeys are a fixture in Iraq. So having them trotting about the base might actually add even more verisimilitude to training there. But it sounds like that's not an option.
There's still time to get in on the "cash for clunkers" program, a leading Democratic senator says.
The Associated Press writes that Carl Levin of auto-centric Michigan:
Says he's been assured by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the financially strapped "cash for clunkers" program will be good at least through Friday.
Update at 11 a.m. ET: The House is pushing to put together legislation to add $2 billion to the program, the AP says. The original funding -- $1 billion -- was designed to cover 250,000 cash-for-clunkers sales and it was hoped to last into the fall. Instead, it took less than a week to go through the funding.
The space shuttle Endeavour has fired its braking rockets and is on its way to a 10:48 a.m. ET touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a 15 day mission in space.
The White House just released the names of 16 people receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom this year, and they include some of the world's most prominent lawmakers, scientists and artists. As the announcement says:
America's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
Here is the official White House list of those being honored on Aug. 12. As you can see, two awards are posthumous:
Though he doesn't agree with her "political and judicial philosophy," the third-ranking Republican in the Senate announced this morning that he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
He'll do so, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said in a statement released by his office and which he read on the floor of the Senate, because "she is well qualified by experience, temperament, character and intellect to serve as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court."
This brings the number of Republicans who have said they will support Democratic President Barack Obama's nominee to six. The others: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; Richard Lugar of Indiana; Mel Martinez of Florida; and Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
There are 58 Democrats in the Senate, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 40 Republicans.
A vote by the full Senate on Sotomayor's confirmation is expected next week. Alexander is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Everett Skinner in Grants Pass, Ore. is in the former category.
Skinner actually didn't eat the large black bear that entered his house through an open window over the weekend and didn't seem inclined to leave even after Skinner confronted him in his den. That would be Skinner's den, not the bear's. Skinner only shotgunned it to death.
As the Associated Press reported:
The bear ripped off a window screen and climbed into their den Saturday night, Skinner said.
Skinner's daughter Nicole awoke at about 11:30 p.m. to a strange shuffling sound and was the first to spot the bruin. She quickly retreated to her parents' room to get help.
Everett Skinner grabbed his shotgun and went to the den, where he and the bear saw each other at about the same time. He said the animal stood up and headed toward him, so he fired.
"It didn't even faze him," Skinner said. In all, he fired his shotgun four times, killing the animal.
Grants Pass' local newspaper, The Daily Courier, has a video that feels like it's a minute too long of Skinner explaining how he bagged the big one. (Warning: it features a grisly photo of the bear looking exactly how you'd expect a shot-gunned bear to look.)
Meanwhile, The Daily Courier reports on its front page that Grants Pass is getting two more policemen courtesy of a Justice Department grant. And it sounds like they're coming not a moment too soon.
The woman who called Cambridge, Mass., on July 16 to report a possible break-in -- leading to the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates and renewed national attention to the issue of race relations -- just made her first public comments.
At a news conference, Lucia Whalen said she hopes one lesson that come out of all this is that people learn not to be so judgmental:
The controversy over the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley may continue for some time.
But we seem to be zeroing in on which brands of beer the two men are likely to enjoy tomorrow when they kick back with President Barack Obama at the White House.
Mr. Obama will likely sip a Budweiser, Sgt. Crowley a Blue Moon, and Mr. Gates either a Red Stripe or Beck's, the White House said.
Update at 3:45 p.m. ET: NPR's Scott Horsley tells us that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs now says the president will be having a Bud Light at tomorrow's get-together.
Update at 11:45 a.m. ET. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert said last night that the "real" victim of profiling was Sgt. Crowley:
By a 13-6 vote the Senate Judiciary Committee just recommended the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
The vote was mostly party-line, with all Democrats on the committee lining up behind President Barack Obama's choice and all but one Republican -- Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- voting against her confirmation.
If, as expected, Sotomayor is confirmed by the full Senate next week, she will be the High Court's first Hispanic justice and only the third woman on the court.
Update at 2:20 p.m. ET. Courtesy of the Associated Press, here is video of the committee members casting their votes:
She said it last year and now she's said it again:
President Barack Obama's original birth certificate, showing he was "born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," is safe and sound in official files, the director of the state's Department of Health said Monday.
Dr. Chiyome Fukino also said in a statement that she'll have nothing more to say about the doubts that so-called birthers have been trying to raise regarding Obama's eligibility to be president.
And, as the Honolulu Advertiser reports, a spokeswoman for Fukino's department yesterday knocked down another theory of the so-called birthers -- who have tried to raise doubts about Obama's eligibility to be president. Some have tried to make the case that birth announcements published in Hawaiian newspapers shortly after the president's Aug. 4, 1961, birth were put their by some of his relatives. The Advertiser writes that:
Such vital statistics, however, were not sent to the newspapers by the general public but by the Health Department, which received the information directly from hospitals, (Health Department spokeswoman Janice) Okubo said.
Also Monday, the House unanimously approved a resolution celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood. That resolution includes this line:
Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii;
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., had initially opposed a vote on the resolution -- arguing that there was not a quorum present. She ended up, however, voting in favor.
Researchers from the institute used equipment to continuously observe drivers "for more than 6 million miles of driving," and found that any use of cell phones while driving increased the potential for a crash or "near crash." But texting was by far the worst thing to do. The researchers say a driver who is texting is as much as 23.2 times more likely to get into an accident than a "non-distracted" driver.
The reason is logical: Texting draws drivers' eyes away from the road more than any other cell phone task.
Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech institute, one of the world's largest vehicle safety research organizations, said the study's message was clear.
"You should never do this," he said of texting while driving. "It should be illegal."
The two men turned out to be Gates and his driver. Both are African-Americans.
-- Haas, the Associated Press reports, said this morning that his department is planning to release that 911 call and the radio dispatches made by officers during the July 16 incident at Gates' home.
Gates was originally charged with disorderly conduct because, police said, he caused a scene outside the home. The charge was later dropped.
President Barack Obama became part of the story when he said at a news conference last Wednesday that the police had acted "stupidly" when Gates was arrested. Obama has since spoken with both Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley. The officer, Obama said later, is "good man."
It's possible that Gates, Crowley and the president will be together this week at the White House for a beer and a conversation about race relations.
Update at 2:05 p.m. ET. Here's a short clip from the 911 call:
Update at 1:36 p.m. ET:
The Globe has posted audio players with both the 911 call and the police radio transmissions on its homepage. Crowley can be heard saying that a "gentleman" is being "uncooperative."
Update at 1:17 p.m. ET. No sign of Gates shouting on the tapes. The Globe writes that:
One thing the tapes didn't show: any obvious background sound that indicated Gates was shouting during the incident, though an officer can be heard describing the person in the house as "uncooperative."
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET.WBZ-TV says that on the 911 call, the woman:
A woman tells the police dispatcher that she saw "two gentlemen trying to get into a house" and that they were "pushing the door in" with their shoulders.
When the dispatcher asks the woman are they "white, black or Hispanic" the woman, Lucia Whalen, says, "One looked kinda Hispanic, but I'm not really sure. The other one entered, but I didn't see what he looked like at all."
Sarah Palin's no longer the governor of Alaska. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is talking -- a rare thing for a Fed chairman to do. Health care is again atop Washington's agenda. North Korea says it's willing to talk. Chinese and U.S. diplomats are sitting down in Washington, while the mainland and Taiwan have exchanged letters. And the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan says that nation's upcoming election is critical to its future.
Those are some of the stories making headlines:
-- Morning Edition -- It's 'Politics, Western-Style' In Afghanistan: Next month's elections "are the most important event in Afghanistan this year," U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke tells NPR's Renne Montagne, who's in that country to cover the voting:
From a related story on NPR.org -- "U.S. Aims In Afghanistan Hinge On Election."
From a related story by BBC News -- " 'Taliban Deal' In Afghanistan: "The Afghan government has agreed on a truce with Taliban insurgents in the north-western province of Badghis."
-- The Associated Press -- "North Korea Says It Is Open To Talks": "North Korea said Monday that it is open to new dialogue to defuse tensions over its nuclear weapons program in what appeared to be a call for direct talks with the United States. The statement from Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry marks a rare expression of willingness to talk by a regime that has rapidly escalated tensions with a flurry of provocations in recent months, including a nuclear test and a series of missile launches."
From a related story by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency -- North Says It Won't Return To Six-Party Talks: " North Korea on Monday demanded a new form of dialogue to resolve the stalemate over its nuclear program and reiterated it won't return to the six-party talks, in an apparent call on the United States to open bilateral contact."
-- The Wall Street Journal -- " 'Blue Dog' Democrats Hold Health-Care Overhaul At Bay": "So-called Blue Dog Democrats continued to resist key aspects of their party's health-care overhaul Sunday, despite pressure from party leaders who fear they will endanger President Barack Obama's most ambitious legislative effort."
-- CBS News -- "Obama To Launch Key 2-Day Talks With China": "Two days of high-level talks between the United States and China are expected to expose sharp differences on trade and soaring U.S. budget deficits, but the discussion could be more amicable in the area of foreign policy."
-- The Associated Press -- Taiwan, China Leaders Exchange Direct Messages: "The presidents of Taiwan and China exchanged direct messages Monday for the first time since the two sides split 60 years ago -- the latest sign of their warming
relations. According to a Nationalist Party statement, Chinese President Hu Jintao congratulated Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou on his election Sunday as party chairman. ... In return, Ma called for both sides to work on peace."
-- PBS NewsHour -- Bernanke Says He Was Determined Not To Be Chairman 'Who Presided Over The Second Great Depression": At a townhall meeting sponsored by the Kansas City Fed, Chairman Ben Bernanke said he had to hold his nose while bailing out some big financial institutions last year, but had to do it to avoid an economic catastrophe.
From Morning Edition -- More on what Bernanke had to say:
-- USA TODAY -- Economists "See Slow Recovery": "The beginning of an economic recovery appears to be just a few months away but unemployment will continue to rise past 10% into next year, say economists surveyed by USA TODAY."
-- Anchorage Daily News -- As She Leaves, Palin Takes Some Parting Shots At The News Media: Said the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee as she stepped down from office a year and a half early: "Some straight talk for some -- just some -- in the media. ... You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you. That is why our troops are willing to die for you. So how about in honor of the American soldier, ya' quit makin' things up?"
From Morning Edition -- Palin's Speech Highlighted Issues That Transcend Alaska:
While they ruled out any chance of the 'birther' lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama's birth and the assertions made by (Phil) Berg and others. "To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations," said (Trevor) Potter (a McCain campaign attorney). "We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state's Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance."
We noted on Wednesday that the "birther" claims -- raised by folks who insist there are doubts, despite the evidence, about whether President Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States -- never seem to go completely away.
State of Alaska photo. Jeff Schultz/distributed by Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gives up her job on Sunday. The man who will replace her, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen that it's "misguided" to say that important state work hasn't been done because of ethics investigations aimed at Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.
But Parnell, echoing words used in the past by Palin, does say he believes too many "frivolous" ethics complaints have been raised and that those complaints are making it hard for some state agencies to do their work.
As we've noted previously, the governor's assertion that millions of state dollars have been wasted by those ethics complaints is in dispute.
Parnell, also a Republican, has asked Alaska's attorney general to study how to prevent leaks of information about ethics investigations.
Liane's conversation with the soon-to-be governor is due to be broadcast Sunday. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
The White House just confirmed that Army Staff Sgt. Jared Monti will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously "for his heroic actions in combat in Afghanistan." It adds that Monti:
Displayed immeasurable courage and uncommon valor -- eventually sacrificing his own life in an effort to save his comrade.
The Boston Globe writes that the 30-year-old Monti, from Raynham, Mass., "died in 2006 trying to rescue fellow soldiers in Afghanistan during a battle against Taliban insurgents. ... Monti was shot to death by Taliban fighters while he was moving fellow soldiers to a covered position, his mother said. He saved the life of one soldier who had been wounded by gunfire, before he was killed."
The Cambridge, Mass., police sergeant who arrested Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates last week is due to at a mid-day news conference being put together by a national police association, WCVB-TV reports.
Sgt. James Crowley told more of his side of the story this morning on WHDH-TV in Boston.
Gates, as has been widely reported, was arrested for disorderly conduct during an incident at his home. The professor accuses Crowley of racial bias (Gates is African-American; Crowley is white). Crowley says Gates became increasingly abusive and ignored warnings to stop.
Police union attorney Alan McDonald just said the president was "dead wrong" when he said Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates. "Had professor Gates simply cooperated" with Crowley, McDonald said, the officer "could have cleared the matter" without any problem.
Update at 12:12 p.m. ET: The news conference has begun. Police union officials say Crowley will not be speaking, though he is there. Earlier, we wrote that he would be making some comments. We've edited the post above to reflect the fact that he's now not expected to speak, and updated the headline.
Sgt. Dennis O'Connor of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association just said that Obama, when he said police had acted "stupidly," used "the right adjective, but directed (it) to the wrong party." Presumably, he thinks the president should have said it was Gates who behaved wrongly. O'Connor said the president should apologize to the Cambridge department.
Sgt. Crowley spoke to some reporters on Wednesday. Steven Senne/AP
By Mark Memmott
"I know what I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for," Cambridge, Mass., police Sergeant James Crowley told WEEI Radio in Boston today. You can hear the station's interview with Crowley here.
Crowley also said "it's disappointing" that President Barack Obama said last night that it was stupid of the police to arrest Gates for disorderly conduct during the encounter at the professor's home.
That charge has since been dropped. But the debate over the arrest and whether Gates' race (he's African-American) was a factor continues.
"He was arrested after following me outside the house" and after being given warnings about being verbally abusive, Crowley said of Gates.
Crowley told WEEI he wouldn't do anything differently.
Earlier, Frank shared his thoughts -- "as a black man who has been stopped by cops" -- and his advice to Gates that "this could have been avoided with a little more common sense on the professor's part."
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters today that when Obama said the police "acted stupidly" by arresting Gates he was not calling Crowley stupid.
The president, Gibbs said, "was not calling the officer stupid. He was ... denoting that at a certain point the situation got far out of hand. And I think all sides understand that."
After acknowledging he is a friend of Gates' and that he doesn't know all the details of what happened last week when the African-American scholar was arrested in his home by a white police sergeant, Obama said that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."
The president also said "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionally."
Asked at a softball game in Natick last night about Obama's remarks, Crowley shook his head and said, "I think I'd be better off not commenting on that one.''
Gates, in an interview with his daughter Elizabeth, says at The Daily Beast that the police officer's account of what happened (which accused Gates of "loud and tumultuous" behavior that resulted in a disorderly conduct charge) is "an act of pure fiction."
Update at 9:55 a.m. ET: Sgt. Crowley also tells the Globe that he does not plan to apologize to Gates and that "I am not a racist."
The charge against Gates has been dropped. Based on what you've heard and read about the Gates case:
More than 30 law enforcement officers today searched the Houston office of Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician who was with Michael Jackson when the King of Pop died, the Houston Chronicle reports.
The doctor's attorney, according to the Chronicle:
Said the search was related to a manslaughter investigation.
"Law enforcement ... left with a forensic image of a business computer hard drive and 21 documents. None of the documents taken had previously been requested by law enforcement or the L.A. Coroner's office," a statement on the Web site of attorney Ed Chernoff said.
As the Chronicle adds:
Murray told police he found Jackson lying on his bed and unconscious, with only a weak pulse, on June 25. Because Jackson was so frail, Murray administered CPR with one hand behind Jackson's back. The singer, 50, was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center that afternoon.
And it has posted this short video clip from the scene:
According to the Associated Press, "Murray had been interviewed by police as a witness to the pop star's death, but has not been considered a suspect. Police have said little about the probe, neither confirming or denying the possibility of criminal charges."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is on the floor of the Senate right now explaining why he will vote for the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Democratic President Barack Obama's first nominee to the High Court.
Graham says he relied on a classic standard to make his decision:
"Is this person qualified to sit on the court? Are they a person of good character?"
As we noted last week, Graham gave a couple hints during the Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing that he would support the president's choice.
Sotomayor's confirmation was already all-but certain. Democrats hold 58 seats in the Senate. Two independents will vote with the Democrats on the nomination. And as Ken Rudin points out over at Political Junkie, Graham is the fifth Republican to announce support for the nominee.
Update at 1:20 p.m. ET. As he began his statement, Graham said that elections matter and that the president's choice should be respected if possible:
"Gun control proponents scored a rare victory" today, the Associated Press writes, when a Senate measure that would have allowed the carrying of concealed weapons across state lines fell two votes short.
Sixty votes were needed to approve the provision, an amendment to a defense spending bill. The vote was 58-39.
The amendment would have given people with concealed weapons permits the right to carry their firearms into other states that also have such laws. Forty eight states have some type of concealed weapons laws.
Update at 1:25 p.m. ET. How they voted:
The roll call vote results are posted here. The three senators who weren't present -- Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland -- would not have made a difference in the outcome.
Two Republicans voted against the amendment. They are Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio.
Despite our best efforts, the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama may not actually be an American citizen continues to roll on.
Those "best efforts," by PolitiFact and others such as FactCheck.org, include quoting Hawaii state Health Director Chiyome Fukino -- who says she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has (then) Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
But in recent days, "birthers" theory that the president may not have been born in the USA, but instead in Kenya, has taken on renewed life because of:
-- Comments by CNN's Lou Dobbs, on his radio show, that "there are some issues here that should be really resolved ... all the president of the United States has to do is produce a birth certificate."
-- A YouTube video that's been watched more than 550,000 times, showing a crowd going wild as a woman at a townhall meeting challenges Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., saying Obama "is not an American citizen" that "I want my country back!" At one point, she gets the audience to join her in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
-- Legislation introduced by some conservative members of Congress that would require presidential candidates to produce copies of their birth certificates to prove they meet the Constitution's "natural born citizen" requirement.
-- This much-blogged about appearance by Rep. John Cambell, R-Calif., one of the lawmakers who supports that legislation, on MSNBC-TV's Hardball With Chris Matthews:
Just a guess: Most of the birthers' minds will never be changed.
Update at 1:45 p.m. ET: Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, was on CNN's Larry King Live last night and sought to explain why "birthers" feel the way they do, but didn't dispute those beliefs. Today, though, she's told Politico that "I don't have any question about Barack Obama's right to be president."
Correction at 6:20 p.m. ET: Earlier, we misidentified Castle's party affiliation. It's now correct in the post.
More than 100 people lined up outside a marijuana dispensary in the San Fernando Valley this morning, lured by the offer of free cannabis for the first 100 patients.
Roscoe's Compassionate Collective, a nonprofit dispensary, handed 3.5 grams of marijuana. The dispensary's owner calculates that as being worth $55.
Here he comes again. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Obama's remarks on health care.
By Laura Conaway
Maybe it's not "all Obama, all the time," but it's at least "more Obama, more of the time," as the president continues to press Congress for an overhaul of health care.
When the president addressed reporters at the White House today, he avoided any mention of his original deadline for Congress to pass an overhaul before the scheduled Aug. 8 recess. "We are closer than ever before to the reform that the American people need, and we're going to get the job done," he said, not mentioning when he predicts that will happen.
In his fourth public talk about health care in the past two days, Obama listed the items on which lawmakers, the White House and health industry players agree. Those points include extending insurance coverage to more Americans, preserving coverage for those who leave jobs or get sick, and allow consumers continued choice in policies.
"If you like your plan, you'll be able to keep it," he said.
After the jump, Obama's appearance this morning on NBC's Today show.
As the Associated Press notes, "Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that the Pentagon has enough of the $140 million jets to meet operational needs and President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the defense bill if Congress ignores the request that the program be terminated."
There are 187 of the stealth fighters in operation. The House has OK'd funds for 12 more.
A short time ago, Obama praised the Senate vote -- saying he rejects "the notion that we have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on outdated and unnecessary defense projects to keep this nation secure."
When the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor last week, Republicans said they would try to move back the committee's vote -- which was scheduled for today.
Sure enough, as NPR's Ari Shapiro reports, the committee decided today to hold its vote next Tuesday. As he also notes, the committee is expected to send her nomination to the full Senate -- and Sotomayor is expected to easily win confirmation:
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins plans to vote for the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Collins spokesman Ian Swanberg tells the Associated Press.
Collins is the fourth Republican senator to line up behind the nomination of Democratic President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee.
The other three: Richard Lugar of Indiana, Mel Martinez of Florida and Olympia Snowe of Maine. With 58 Democrats and two independents who generally vote with the Democrats, Sotomayor's nomination has been virtually assured even without GOP support.
Update at 11:40 a.m. ET:WBZ-TV in Boston is reporting that the disorderly conduct charge filed by Cambridge police against Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates is being dropped.
According to the station:
Cambridge police recommended to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office Tuesday that they don't proceed with the charges and the D.A. agreed to drop the case.
The Associated Press says it has been told by "a person with knowledge of the case" that the charge is being dismissed.
Update at 12:40 p.m. ET. According to the AP:
The city of Cambridge issued a statement saying the arrest "was regrettable and unfortunate" and police and Gates agreed that dropping the charge was a just resolution.
"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department," the statement said.
The story of what happened when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his home last Thursday, which Laura posted about yesterday andMorning Edition covered today, continues to get considerable attention.
And the accounts of Cambridge Police and Gates (through a lawyer) could not be much different.
A quick recap: Gates returned to his home in Cambridge, Mass., from a trip. He and his driver had some trouble getting the front door open. Someone called police to say that two men (both black) were trying to force it open.
The dangerous juggle. Darren McCollester/Newsmakers/Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
"Hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers" was kept from public view "in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress," The New York Times reports.
But today:
The full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its website.
Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates had locked himself out of his house. Gates, among the nation's pre-eminent African-American academics, managed to open a door, but soon found himself confronted by Cambridge, Mass., police investigating a potential break-in -- meaning, of course, his attempt to get back into his own house.
The Boston Globe captures the scene last Thursday:
He was booked for disorderly conduct after "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior," according to the Cambridge police log.
Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself African-American, remarks:
"I bet he did exhibit 'loud and tumultuous behavior.' I likely would too. Actually, I wouldn't. But I don't work for Harvard. And my mother taught me how black men are to address the police."
A federal judge has released the Los Angeles Police Department from a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department. The LAPD signed the decree in 2001 after the Rampart scandal, in which anti-gang officers allegedly committed crimes including the framing of suspects. The court ruled that the department has made significant reforms under Chief William Bratton, who joined the force after the Rampart decision.
As NPR's Ina Jaffe reports:
The decree called for more than 100 specific reforms, including improvements in training, the monitoring of police officers and an end to racial profiling. In recommending an end to the decree, the LAPD's court-appointed monitor wrote that in many areas of policing, the department "has become the national and international ...standard."
From left to right: Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong, with President Barack Obama. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
Forty years to the day from man's first landing on the moon, the crew of Apollo 11 is at the White House.
UPDATE: President Obama emerged from their meeting and pronounced himself uncommonly pleased to be standing with three "genuine American heroes." Just as you folks out there still remember the lunar landing, so Obama said:
"I think that all of us recall the moment in which mankind finally was untethered from this planet and was able to explore the stars, the moment in which we had one of our own step on the moon and leave that imprint that is there to this day."
If you want to follow the virtual recreation of the Apollo 11 mission, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum's We Choose the Moon interactive website says there's about one hour, forty minutes to go before touch down on the lunar surface.
President Obama pledged that any health care bill he signed would lower overall costs. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
By Laura Conaway
Continuing his wall-to-wall campaign for overhauling health care, President Obama made his case today from Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Obama spoke directly to the American people, sounding a populist call for Congress to pass legislation remaking health insurance:
"For the average American, it will mean lower costs, more options, and coverage you can count on. It will save you and your family money if we have a more efficient health care system. You won't have to worry about being priced out of the market. You won't have to worry about one illness leading your family into financial ruin. You won't have to worry that you won't be able to afford treatment who gets sick."
The president spoke after days of back-and-forth with lawmakers, budget analysts and political players. The Congressional Budget Office director last week told Congress that the legislation now before legislators would add to the federal deficit over the next several years. The GOP has been criticizing the proposed changes as a dangerous "grand experiment."
Obama again declared the current system of health care -- with spending on medical expenses taking up 17 percent of U.S. gross domestic product -- as a threat to the economy. He warned that if lawmakers do nothing, "businesses will shutter" and Americans will bring less money home in their paychecks.
Obama also struck back at a comment from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), saying:
"Just the other day, one Republican senator said -- and I'm quoting him now -- 'If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.' Think about that. This isn't about me. This isn't about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America's families, breaking America's businesses and breaking America's economy."
President Obama is expected to speak about health care in just a few minutes. Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Committee, is giving him plenty to talk about.
Steele went after the president's agenda for overhauling the insurance system, telling a crowd today at the National Press Club:
"Candidate Obama promised change. President Obama is conducting an experiment. He's conducting a dangerous experiment with our health care. He's conducting a reckless experiment with our economy."
The Washington Post reports that Steele's use of the term "experiment" comes straight from the advice GOP consultant Alex Castellanos gave party leaders. The GOP just launched The Obama Experiment, a website where you can find the welcoming message from Steele above, and loads of opposition to the administration throughout.
Losses from this year's drought rival the previous record, in 2006. D.J. Peters/AP Photo
By Laura Conaway
AP files from Lubbock:
Texas agriculture officials estimate drought crop and livestock losses at $3.6 billion, and without ample rains the year's final tally could top the record set in 2006.
Crops and rangeland are scorched from lack of rainfall and record triple-digit temperatures throughout parts of Texas. Central and southern parts of the state are in the two worst stages of drought.
If things don't get better, Texas farmers stand to lose more than the $4.1 billion they lost to drought in 2006. Total crop losses this year are estimated at $2.6 billion and livestock.
And as if that weren't enough, snakes bites are up in south Texas by 25 percent, as the critters leave dried-up ponds for yards and parks.
After the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 outside Buffalo on Feb. 12, it came out that co-pilot Rebecca Shaw had taken a red-eye flight from Seattle to Newark the night before. And that wasn't unusual for her. Shaw earned about $16,000 a year and was saving money by living with her parents on the West Coast even though she typically flew on the other side of the country.
Pilot Marvin Renslow had a long commute to work as well -- from his home near Tampa.
Shaw, Renslow and the 47 others on board, as well as one person on the ground, died in the crash of the Newark-to-Buffalo flight. Pilot fatigue is being explored as a possible contributing factor to the tragedy.
Today there's this story in the Los Angeles Times that shows another way pilots are trying to save money -- by staying in recreational vehicles parked at Los Angeles International Airport. According to the Times, "100 trailers and motor homes ... form a colony of pilots, mechanics and other airline workers at LAX, the third-busiest airport in the nation." Those who stay in them, "are citizens of one of the most unusual communities in the United States."
"This is the cost of being a pilot today," said Todd Swenson, 40, a first officer with Alaska Airlines. His wife, Amanda, and 2-year-old son, Noah, live in Fresno, a six-hour commute by car. "I've wanted to be a pilot all my life. It can be awful here. But I have to provide for my family, and I love flying airplanes."
Marijuana-laced cookies on sale at one of LA's 400 dispensaries. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
By Laura Conaway
From AP, file this under Write Your Own Headline:
A fire has damaged a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary but no injuries are reported.
Fire Capt. Steve Ruda says the fire was reported at about 5:30 a.m. Monday at the Westchester Collective on the second floor of a two-story commercial building in the Westchester area. The building also houses several other businesses.
It took 69 firefighters an hour to extinguish the blaze.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
California law provides "compassionate use" of marijuana, meaning people with certain medical conditions can get prescriptions for it from doctors and get the drug at dispensaries like the one that caught fire today. The state's policy hasn't made the federal Department of Justice any too happy. Never minding that, Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn is calling for the city to tax medical marijuana, a move also being considered by the state legislature. LA currently has more than 400 dispensaries, the LA Times reports.
Still running: President Obama, seen here with Vice President Joe Biden in June, is about to "take the baton" on health care. Alexis C. Glenn/Getty Images
By Laura Conaway
President Obama went into the weekend swinging hard, with a direct call for Congress to pass an overhaul of health care before the August recession. Now the president is planning the next rounds, including a prime-time press conference on Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern. Obama is expected to address several issues, but the early money is on health care, health care and more health care.
As varying committees in the House and Senate struggle to meet the president's deadline, Obama's agenda on health care has grown less popular. A Washington-Post ABC News poll finds him dipping below 50 percent approval on the issue. Meanwhile, state governors weighing in from the National Governors Association meeting in Biloxi, Miss., say they're worried the overhaul will amount to an unfunded mandate in the form of new Medicaid obligations.
"We can't have the Congress impose requirements that we are forced to absorb beyond our capacity to do so," Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, tells the New York Times.
Obama's hasty press conference Friday and his more planned remarks on Wednesday mark a turning point in White House strategy. Ever mindful of the failure of President Clinton's health care agenda in 1993, the current administration asked Congress to change the system, but avoided telling lawmakers exactly how to do that.
"Had we put a plan out, the entire debate would have been changes to the plan," White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel tells the Washington Post. "It would have been how the president is failing or succeeding."
Now, as the president acknowledged on Friday, he's got to get his agenda across the finish line. To do that, Obama will step out there and fight for it himself. "I don't know whether he will Twitter or tweet," senior adviser David Axelrod told the WP. "But he's going to be very, very visible.
President Obama expressed absolute confidence that Congress will pass a health care overhaul. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
By Laura Conaway
President Obama directly addressed criticism this afternoon of his plan for overhauling health care, which took a couple of hits Thursday over how much it will cost and how the nation should pay for it.
In the hastily called speech at the White House, Obama spoke sternly and took no questions as he described a process of forging an "unprecedented consensus" among interests ranging from insurance companies to the American Medical Association.
"We are going to get this done," the president said. "We will reform health care. It will happen this year."
The House has voted to expand the range of the nation's wild horses and burros by millions of acres and to block a plan to kill thousands of the animals to prevent overgrazing.
Supporters say the additional land and other measures are needed to free thousands of mustangs and burros from holding pens and to prevent their slaughter.
An estimated 36,000 wild horses and burros live in 10 Western
states. Federal officials estimate that's about 9,400 more than can
exist in balance with other rangeland resources.
The measure would stop the government from slaughtering healthy
horses and prohibit keeping them in holding pens for more than six
months.
The bill passed 239-185 (click here to see how members voted; the breakdown was mostly by party line, with 206 Democrats voting "aye" and 138 Republicans voting "nay"). No word yet on whether or when the Senate will take up the measure. Among its opponents: The U.S. Cattlemen's Association.
UPDATE: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has gotten three positive nods today from Republicans, none of them particularly surprising.
Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, both moderates, say they'll vote yes. And Sen Mel Martinez of Florida, the only Hispanic member of the Senate's GOP caucus, called Sotomayor well-qualified and said he takes great pride as a Hispanic American in her historic achievement.
Among her Sotomayor's other outspoken critics, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, tells All Things Considered host Robert Siegel that he remains concerned by the nomination. Sessions says he will continue reviewing Sotomayor's record.
"I'm really troubled by some of her speeches that I think reflect a view of the law that's not the classical American legal view that I believe in so deeply," Sessions said. The interview is schedule to air this evening. (Find a station near you.)
The nomination is expected to get a vote by the Senate Judiciary Commission, and then the full Senate, late this month.
The U.S. Senate voted today to expand the 1969 federal hate crimes law to include people attacked because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Named for a young gay man killed in Wyoming, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed as part of a defense spending bill due for a final vote next week. The House passed a similar measure in April, but as a separate piece of legislation.
Sen. Reid's move to include the hate crimes legislation as an amendment to a must-pass defense bill drew objections from Republicans.
Money, Miss.: The grocery store where Emmett Till supposedly whistled at a white woman. A local man has been trying to buy and preserve it. LunaWeb/Flickr
By Laura Conaway
Emmett Till's family reportedly wants to see his original coffin sent to Mississippi for restoration and possible display in the Emmett Till Museum. That coffin was recently found rotting in a shed behind the Burr Oak Cemetery in Chicago where workers are accused of desecrating 300 graves.
Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was brutally beaten and then shot while visiting relatives in the small Delta town of Money in 1955. He was 14, and his mother insisted on a public viewing of her son's body so that the world could see what had been done to him.
As the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger reports, preserving his legacy has been a struggle. The Emmett Till Justice Campaign says the family is asking for the casket to be sent South. The paper reports that Glendora Mayor Johnny Thomas says he has "told the Till family the casket would be welcome at the Emmett Till museum in his town." Another plan has the coffin going to a museum in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964.
President Obama, who lived in Indonesia for several years as a child, has weighed in on the bombings of two hotels in Jakarta. Eight people were killed and another 50 wounded. Obama's remarks:
I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred this morning in Jakarta, and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones.
The American people stand by the Indonesian people in this difficult time, and the U.S. government stands ready to help the Indonesian government respond to and recover from these outrageous attacks as a friend and partner.
Indonesia has been steadfast in combating violent extremism, and has successfully curbed terrorist activity within its borders. However, these attacks make it clear that extremists remain committed to murdering innocent men, women and children of any faith in all countries. We will continue to partner with Indonesia to eliminate the threat from these violent extremists, and we will be unwavering in supporting a future of security and opportunity for the Indonesian people.
President Obama has refused to open a full investigation of the many laws that were evaded, twisted or broken -- pointlessly and destructively -- under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama should change his mind. A full accounting is the only way to ensure these abuses never happen again.
As NPR's Mara Liasson reported earlier this week, the Obama administration faces growing pressure to look into what intelligence agencies were doing while George W. Bush was president and Attorney General Eric Holder is said to be leaning toward some type of probe.
One of the most outspoken opponents of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has signaled a clear path to a vote for her confirmation. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Sotomayor at today's hearing, "I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess in August."
Sessions said he still had "serious concerns" about Sotomayor, but also said he won't support attempts to block a final vote on her nomination. AP says the committee is expected to vote on confirming Sotomayor late this month.
Frank Ricci and Benjamin Vargas each told the Senate Judiciary Committee that they were disappointed not just in the decision made by the federal appeals court that Sotomayor sits on but also by the single-page, unpublished order issued by the court.
"We were devastated," Vargas testified. He had expected a "reasoned ... open and transparent" opinion from the court.
The appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling that the city of New Haven could toss out the results of a firefighters' promotion test because minorities had scored poorly on it. Ricci is white. Vargas is Hispanic. Both had scored well on the test.
Sotomayor told the committee that week that she and the other two judges on the appeals court felt bound by earlier precedent -- and that the Supreme Court created new precedent when it recently reversed the appeals court's decision.
"That's not gunna fly," the organization writes. "This group is for Chicagoans and whoever else against the name change. It's for the people who will always call the tallest building in the u.s. THE SEARS TOWER."
As she arrived, Sotomayor greeted GOP senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, center, and Jon Kyl of Arizona. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
The fourth and possibly final day of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is underway.
Among those scheduled to testify is firefighter Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in a reverse discrimination lawsuit filed by a group of firefighters against the city of New Haven, Conn. Sotomayor, who serves on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, was on a three-judge panel that rejected the case, but last month the Supreme Court ruled on the firefighters' behalf.
First, Sotomayor will take some final questions from members of the committee.
Update at 2:15 p.m. ET. NPR's Audie Cornish summarizes today's news in this report:
Update at 1 p.m. ET: It looks like there will be a Senate vote on the confirmation before Congress leaves for vacation.
"I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess in August," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Sessions also said, the AP writes, that he would not support any attempt to block a vote on confirmation and didn't believe any other Republican would, either.
Sotomayor's time before the committee is now finished. Coming up this afternoon: Testimony from Ricci and other witnesses.
Update at 12:15 p.m. ET. Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who yesterday caused some buzz by stumping Sotomayor with a question about Perry Mason, elicits a long, personal answer from the nominee by asking why she wants to be a Supreme Court justice. Sotomayor says she "can't think of any greater service that I can give to the country":
Update at 11:10 a.m. ET. On whether the best way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race:
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, presses Sotomayor on the issue of reverse discrimination, by citing the view of Chief Justice John Roberts -- who has said the "best way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race." Sotomayor turns to the Constitution as her foundation for treating people equally. And they finish the discussion by endorsing (with an "amen" from Cornyn) the words of Dr. Martin Luther King:
Update at 10:52 a.m. ET. Sticking with his concern that things she has said over the years indicate she might be a different, more activist Supreme Court justice than the "mainstream" lower court judge she has been, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn asks about comments Sotomayor has made that appeals court judges make "policy."
Sotomayor says she was not referring to the kind of policy that Congress sets. She says she was speaking about the fact that when an appeals courts "issue a holding it become precedent" in that circuit.
Update at 10:48 a.m. ET: After saying to Sotomayor that "your judicial record strikes me as pretty much in the mainstream," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, says that "you appear to be a different person ... in your speeches and in some of your comments."
Update at 10:25 a.m. ET. More hints from Graham that he will vote to confirm?
And no, it didn't set the flags on fire. Matt Stroshane/Getty Images
By Laura Conaway
Things are looking up. After postponing the launch six times, NASA finally sent the space shuttle Endeavour skyward this evening at 6:03, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports:
The international space station is about to get a little crowded. There are half a dozen space travelers living up there already, and another seven astronauts blasted off on space shuttle Endeavour.
Endeavour will arrive at the space station on Friday. Once it docks, the astronauts will do construction work. They'll install the last components of the Japanese research lab--including an outdoor "porch" for experiments that need to be exposed to space. NASA is getting closer and closer to completing the space station, and its aging space shuttles are scheduled to be retired next year.
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer obsessed over some fiery flakes of whatnot that appeared to have come off the shuttle before deciding they didn't amount to much. That's good news all around. Godspeed, Endeavour. Have a great trip.
New York police have arrested the person they say masterminded a pre-dawn blast outside a Manhattan Starbucks on Memorial Day. The alleged mastermind is 17-year-old Kyle Shaw, who's accused of arson, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal mischief. Police commission Ray Kelly said Shaw took his inspiration from the movie Fight Club. As AP relates it:
He was trying to emulate the character named Tyler Durden from the 1999 film about a spineless pencil pusher, played by Ed Norton, who takes up with the dangerous yet manly Durden. The two form a secret "fight club," where men beat one another to a pulp in an attempt to feel more alive.
Shaw formed his own fight club in which boys beat one another in various locales around the city including Central Park, Kelly said. At least one member got a broken nose, he said.
In the movie, Pitt's character devises a plot called "Project Mayhem" that supposed to attack the symbols of corporate America. He fails. In the real-world case, the explosion involved fireworks powder and a plastic bottle. It shattered the cafe's windows but caused no injuries.
Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor just had this exchange with Sen. Al Franken on the hot-button issue of a woman's right to an abortion:
Franken --
"In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court found that the fundamental right to privacy included the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion. And, as Sen. Specter said, that's been upheld or ruled on many times. Do you believe that this right to privacy includes the right to have an abortion?"
Sotomayor --
"The court has said, in many cases and as I think has been repeated in the court's jurisprudence in Casey, that there is a right to privacy that women have with respect to the termination of their pregnancies in certain situations."
A soldier in the U.S. Army Reserve who insists that President Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president will not be deploying to Afghanistan, an Army spokeswoman tells the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer.
Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook had mounted a court challenge to his deployment, saying that -- despite evidence to the contrary -- Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and isn't eligible to be commander-in-chief.
But, the Ledger-Enquirer reports:
Lt. Col. Maria Quon, U.S. Army Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Army Human Resources Command-St. Louis, said Tuesday evening (that) Cook was no longer expected to report Wednesday to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for mobilization to active duty.
In May, according to Quon, Cook volunteered to serve one year in Afghanistan. He got his deployment orders, she told the newspaper, on June 9.
Quon says that "a reserve soldier who volunteers for an active duty tour may ask for a revocation of orders up until the day he is scheduled to report for active duty." That day had been today. The Ledger-Equirer says that Quon:
Added that there is an administrative process to request revocation of orders. As of this afternoon, Cook had not asked for his orders to be revoked, Quon said. She could not say why the soldier's orders were pulled today by 3 p.m. CDT.
"Because of the Privacy Act I couldn't go into it," Quon said.
As for the claim that Obama is not a natural born citizen, that story was raised and rebutted during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Talk about shotgun weddings. When Bank of America completed its deal to buy Merrill Lynch, at the height of the economic crisis, it did so with a warning from the U.S. Treasury not to back out of the $50 billion arrangement.
That's the news from the Wall Street Journal, which is reporting that Paulson plans to tell lawmakers he was right to warn Bank of America's CEO Kenneth Lewis that the firm's management could be fired if it walked away from the deal to buy Merrill. According to the WSJ, Paulson will testify that he told Lewis backing out:
"would show a colossal lack of judgment and would jeopardize Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the financial system."
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