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American Morning

Bringing Troops Home; Delay Under Fire

Aired April 11, 2005 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Beautiful day here in New York. Good morning, everybody. 8:31.
In a moment here, this question Jack's been talking about today. Tom Delay drawing criticism from members of his own party over the weekend. Who's really in danger politically speaking? We'll talk about that with Kamber and May, a Monday edition coming up here in a moment.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Also, here's a question for you: Are silicone breast implants safer now than they've been before? They're back on the market now. Sanjay Gupta's going to have a look at that for us this morning.

HEMMER: All right, first to the headlines. Back to Carol for that and more.

Carol, good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, a major anti-U.S. protest under way in the Iraqi city of Baqubah. New pictures into CNN this morning show hundreds marching in the streets. They're yelling anti-U.S. slogans and burning the American flag, as you see right there. The protesters are apparently students calling for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.

Here in the United States, a message for commuters in the Denver area: Leave early. The roads are an absolute mess. A spring blizzard dumped close to two feet of wet snow on parts of the front range. Schools and some businesses are closed this morning. The heavy snow also breaking trees and cutting off power to some homes. No word, though, on any major injuries. They were prepared in Denver.

Officials at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio are making grief counseling available to students this morning after an off-campus fire killed three students. Seven other in the house managed to escape. An early investigation shows the blaze was an accident.

In the Michael Jackson trial, more abuse allegations from the past. On Friday, Jackson's former chief -- former chef, rather, testified that he saw the singer inappropriately touch actor Macaulay Culkin nearly 15 years ago. Culkin has publicly denied anything happened. Jackson's attorney tried to cast doubt on the chef's credibility, saying he had tried to sell the story to a tabloid. And today, the Boston Red Sox get another chance to rub in their World Series victory before taking on their arch rivals the New York Yankees. The players will collect their championship rings at a ceremony right before the home opener against the Yankees. The long- anticipated World Series banner will finally be raised over Fenway as part of the festivities. And it is opening day in Boston today. We tried to get a reporter from Boston to report on Cardinal Law performing this mass in Rome. They're all covering opening-day ceremonies. They were not available.

HEMMER: But the baseball Gods allowed the Boston Red Sox to do this deal today in front of the Yankees, too, at Fenway. Terry Francona is back too, the manager. Yes, a little ill last week. So he's coming back.

Thank you, Carol.

O'BRIEN: We're now learning the Pentagon continues planning for a significant reduction in U.S. troop strength in Iraq. CNN's Barbara Starr has been following that story out of the Pentagon.

Barbara, good morning to you. What's the latest word on this plan?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Soledad, as CNN first reported last month, top U.S. generals, both here in the Pentagon and in Iraq, are continuing to lay the groundwork for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq over the next several months. There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq right now. If the insurgency attacks against U.S. forces continue to decline, what they hope to do is implement this withdrawal over the next many months, and by next summer perhaps bring that 140,000 troop level down to just about 100,000 troops. Now the new Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, is saying it could be at least two years before Iraqi security forces are completely prepared to stand on their own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JALAL TALABANI, IRAQI PRESIDENT: I think that we are in great need to have American and other allied forces in Iraq until we will be able to rebuild or military forces, rebuild our security forces, and until we'll be assured that there will be no danger from terrorism and from foreign intervention in our internal affairs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: So while there's a lot of optimism, this is not to say that the insurgency has evaporated, because while attacks against U.S. troops are declining, certainly the attacks against Iraqi security forces and civilians continue every day. Very vulnerable targets there, and still a lot of concern about the insurgency itself. The estimates continue to be that there are more than 12,000 fighters in that country -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So that plan is pitched because if things continue to improve, then that's sort of what they'd go with. But what if thinks don't continue to improve? What's the opposite plan.

STARR: Well, indeed, there is what they call plan b. If it does not continue to improve, the U.S. military is prepared to continue with a deployment schedule that would keep 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq over the next two years. These are a variety of planning scenarios that they have now, because it's easier, they say, to keep people in the pipeline and then maybe not have to send those troops at the last minute if things get better than rather have to scramble and find the troops to send. So all of the planning scenarios remain on the table, but they are very hopeful that over the next several months, they will now be able to bring those troop levels down in a phased manner -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon for us this morning.

Barbara, thanks.

HEMMER: House majority leader Tom Delay is under fire again. Already under attack by Democrats. He was criticized by a fellow Republican over the weekend, and another Republican asked him to come clean. Let's discuss that this morning. In Miami, Democratic consultant Victor Kamber.

Vic, good morning. Welcome back to you.

VICTOR KAMBER, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: Good morning, Bill. Thank you.

HEMMER: Also, former RNC director communications director Cliff May back with us as well for Kamber & May.

Cliff, start us off -- is this generating so much heat right that Tom Delay will not be able to turn back?

CLIFF MAY, FMR. RNC COMM. DIR: I think that's what lot of people hope. I think this has all the earmarks of a calculated campaign against Delay. It's all talking about charges, and is he a liability? But at some point, let's talk about the charges. He took a trip to Russia. Newsflash, the beaches in Russia are nothing to write home about. The other charge, he had members of his family working on his campaign. This is a common practice. I bet you anything Victor's worked for politicians whose have members of their family working on the campaign. As long as it's from funds coming from people who have voluntarily given it and it's all open and above-board, there's nothing wrong with it. I'd like somebody to say, anyone who's ever done that, I want them to resign. I don't think you're going to see Vic or anybody else say that.

KAMBER: Well, I think if Cliff believe was he just said, I have some swampland in Florida here that I'd like to talk to him about.

MAY: And you're in Florida.

KAMBER: I am in Florida.

The fact is this is an ethically challenged member of Congress. It's not one trip; it's his whole relationship with a group of lobbyists, a whole series of votes that have taken place.

MAY: What's the charge?

KAMBER: I believe in partisan politics. And Tom Delay is as partisan as they come. There's nothing wrong with partisanship. The difficulty is this is a man who forgot where he came from, he forgot the institution, and he's not thinking about the institution.

And in terms of charges, it's Chris Shays that called for his resignation; it was a Republican. It's not a concerted liberal effort to get rid of him. Republicans, as well as Democrats, believe he should step down.

HEMMER: You mentioned Chris Shays. Here's what he said every the weekend, apparently on Saturday up in Connecticut, on the screen for our viewers, "He's an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party. If he ever runs for speaker, I get to vote on the House floor, and my no vote, combined with the Democrats, means he will never be speaker."

Cliff, more to the point, guilty or not politically speaking. If it continues to grow against him, is Tom Delay the kind of guy who will say, OK, I concede, or is Tom Delay the kind of guy who says I'm going to fight this to the very end?

MAY: I know Tom Delay a little bit and I would suggest he's the kind of guy who will probably fight pretty hard. He'll remember, for example, the kind of campaign that was waged against Newt Gingrich, very similar to this. Charges were thrown to try to make something stick. Eventually Gingrich was exonerated, but most probably don't recall that, because that wasn't much of a news story.

And let me point out that Vic just said a lot of things about Tom Delay -- no charge of anything that was wrong. I mean, this is just generalizations, and....

KAMBER: Cliff, we don't have an ethics committee because of what Delay has done.

MAY: What did he do?

KAMBER: We don't have an ethics committee that can even investigate it, because the Republicans changed the rules.

MAY: What did he do?

KAMBER: What would you like?

MAY: Name one.

KAMBER: The series of things with Jack Abrahamoff, the lobbyist in terms of the whole series of trips he's taken -- Scotland, Russia, Ireland. The votes he's made in Louisiana, that changed -- his vote changed from where he had been, his major position to help an Indian tribe. There's a series of things like this. Now they may not be illegal... HEMMER: Isn't Victor making the point that Rick Santorum made over the weekend, too? Come clean with it, throw the record on the table, either move on or you're guilty?

KAMBER: Let's come clean through an ethics committee.

MAY: I think he absolutely wants to get out there and make the case for himself. But again, when you have people like Vic saying look, it's a politician and he knows lobbyists, my god, there's 435 politicians...

KAMBER: I didn't say he knows lobbyists. I said let's have an ethics committee that's bipartisan, not a stacked one the way he's changed the rules.

HEMMER: Gentlemen, let's leave it there, because I know we can keep on talking about it. Come back again later in the week. Victor, thanks. Cliff, thanks. Good to see both of you.

Here's Soledad.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: If you're strapped for cash, NASA comes up with a -- some might say is a questionable way to raise money. Andy's "Minding Your Business." We'll have that in a moment.

O'BRIEN: And we are "Paging Dr. Gupta." 13 years after doctors said they were unsafe, why are silicone breast implants going back on the market potentially? That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" now about the safety of silicone breast implants. An FDA panel this morning will revisit the question of whether to lift a 13-year ban on the implants.

And Sanjay's live for us from the CNN Center this morning. Sanjay , good morning to you. At the end of three days of hearings, will there be some strong conclusion?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's what they're hoping for, a decision finally. Listen, this has been going on for some time, 13 years now. People remember the significant ban of silicone breast implants. But it dates back even further than that. '62 -- 1962, so long time ago, 43 years, the first woman recipient. Just 15 years after that, the first trial win for a woman with ruptured implants. 1990 is when we remember the congressional safety hearings. A lot of people started paying attention to silicone best implants.

Then, two years later, the FDA formally restricted the clinical trial use. You remember all that, around that time, Soledad, Dow Corning went bankrupt, lots of payouts. 2003, the FDA advisory committee recommends lifting the ban. And then, in a somewhat rare move, the FDA itself asks for further studies and said we're not going to lift the ban quite yet. And that's where we are, almost 40 years after the fact, after the first implant was put in.

A couple of things at issue here. What exactly is going on? Are these implants rupturing? That's the question they're trying to answer. Again, I mentioned Dow Corning went out of business. Two other companies now presenting their data. Inamed saying a rupture rate of three to 21 percent over ten years. Mentor, another company, saying one to five percent over three years.

The FDA says in women who are not having the implants for reconstructive surgery, it's about a 74 to 75 percent rupture rate and 93 percent rupture rate over 10 years for women who are having reconstructive surgery. Widely varying numbers.

Monday are going to be open hearings, that's today. Tuesday will be deliberations, and Wednesday, they're going to have a vote. Should settle it once and for all. We'll see, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we will see. Why would the FDA even consider the implants and putting them back on the market, when there is so much controversy? I mean, 13 years of study and following that timeline, which involved many millions of dollars and lots of lawsuits, as well. Why is this even up for discussion?

GUPTA: Two reasons, primarily. One is that people think silicone breast implants are a superior product to saline implants. You remember the saline implants actually replaced the silicone implants during this time period. The second reason is, there's been a lot of studies, some of them big ones, from the Institute of Medicine, for example, concluding in 1999 that these silicone breast implants were not the cause of all of these symptoms that had been described, the muscular pains, the joint pains, the multiple sclerosis-like pains.

All those sorts of things. So, you know, they're putting this back up for discussion again. Again, people think silicone, if approved, if safe, is a superior product -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Can I ask you a related question? The death of Al Lucas, pretty shocking. And I'd be curious to know, how often does a severe spinal cord injury, which it seems is the reason for his death, how often does that lead to death, Sanjay?

GUPTA: Well, you know, we're talking about the arena football player. And it's actually pretty uncommon for a player to die on the field from a spinal cord injury like this. Typically, what you think of are significant head injuries and, you know, if you see some of these tackles and some of the force, some of the momentum, the head injuries are not that hard -- are not that surprising.

These spinal cord injuries, what happens -- the reason that a player would die on the field or soon after, would be because the injury to the spinal cord was so high in the spinal cord that it damaged not only the part of the body responsible for movement, but also responsible for breathing itself. And that is an unfortunate consequence. It is not all that common in sports. Out of all the spinal cord injuries, about 40 per million that lead to significant function loss, only about 21 percent of them occur in sports, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Wow, what a terrible story this weekend. All right, Sanjay, thanks for information on both of those stories. Appreciate it.

Still to come this morning, Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." NASA may have reached a final and controversial frontier for raising money. That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: All right. Welcome back.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: NASA looking for corporate sponsors for the space shuttle and stuff. And the government paying for a study on pretty people. Andy and I weren't in it. Those stories and a market preview, Andy Serwer "Minding Your Business."

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Speak for yourself. I was not in it, definitely not. We'll get to that in a minute.

Isn't it comforting to know the government is working overtime thinking about you. Some of these great ideas. Let's start off here with this NASA story. Excuse me. May, June will be the first launch of the space shuttle since the Columbia disaster in February of '03, and NASA is seeking corporate sponsorship for its Web site to cover the launch. There will be another sponsorship, another launch in July. NASA says it's got a lot of calls about this, but is not talking about which companies want to do this, being very tight-lipped about that and about how much money they're going to get.

Here's a couple of other government sponsorships I was thinking about, Jack. 1040 tax forms sponsored by Excedrin. Medicare sponsored by Fixodent. The Census Bureau maybe condoms or something like that -- nevermind. And FEMA by the Home Depot.

Here's another government story about -- these guys are really doing some very important work these days. The Federal Reserve in St. Louis came up with this pretty-people study, Jack, that you were alluding to, and it discovered that pretty people get paid more. This is, you know, really startling news here, and important work again. There's a beauty premium. People who are deemed to be attractive get paid 5 percent more. People who are plain get paid 9 percent more. A consultant who say the study says it hurts employment people in the long run, because there are talented people out there who are tall, blond and attractive who don't get jobs.

HEMMER: Who figured that out?

SERWER: Federal reserve of st. Louis.

CAFFERTY: It's time for "The Cafferty File," as we move on.

SERWER: Let's just move on.

CAFFERTY: There we go.

Do we have a new director? We do, don't we?

More people tuned into a horse race on Saturday than the royal wedding. Britain's BBC reports that two million more Brits watched the Grand National Horse Race than the nuptials of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at St. Georges Chapel. 7.6 million tuned into the wedding; 9.5 tuned into the horse race. Three million people who watched the horse race thought they were watching the wedding.

O'BRIEN: That's unnecessary!

HEMMER: Camilla's off the market.

SERWER: I take offense! Sorry.

CAFFERTY: Expect less spam in your inbox now that this guy's in jail. Thirty-year-old Jeremy Jaynes got nine-year prison term for using false Internet addresses and aliases to -- there it is again -- to send mass e-mails. That was the first conviction of its kind.

They ought to do more of this. Prosecutors say this guy amassed a fortune of $24 million for sending e-mails of pornography, fake products, and work-at-home schemes, which claimed to allow people to earn up to $75 an hour. At one point, the guy sending out a million e-mails a day. Even with a response rate of 0.3 percent, he was making $750,000 a month. Now he's in prison.

SERWER: Nice.

CAFFERTY: And hunting season, here's the most disgusting idea I've heard in a long time. Hunting season opened on Saturday. And an online gaming Web site, liveshot.com. Liveshot gave a quadriplegic living in Indiana the chance to shoot, via remote control, an exotic black buck. However, the man spent most of the day looking at horses that wandered into the crosshairs and ate the alfalfa that was intended for the antelope. He paid $1,300 for a season hunting license, which means he has until the end of August.

Liveshot.com owner, John Lockwood, has been getting criticized for his Web site. Some call it pay-per-view slaughter. Fourteen states are in various stages of prohibiting online hunting. It ought to be just flat banned across the board. Can you imagine?

SERWER: I'm not quite sure how it works.

CAFFERTY: By remote control, operate a real hunting rifle and you can shoot -- it's like a video game.

SERWER: You're working on your mouse, but there's a real gun out there.

CAFFERTY: And there's a real gun at the other end, and you get the thing in the sights and you push the whatever and it fires a bullet, and...

SERWER: That's wild.

O'BRIEN: That's so sick.

CAFFERTY: It is sick, isn't it? I don't like that.

SERWER: There's something wrong about.

CAFFERTY: Did you know that three million people who watched the Grand National Horse Race thought they were watching the royal wedding?

O'BRIEN: That also is sick.

HEMMER: Camilla's off the market.

Break here in a moment...

CAFFERTY: And the market went up.

(LAUGHTER)

CAFFERTY: Sorry.

HEMMER: The calendar says it's spring. Some folks getting a blustery blast from the past, though. We'll take you there live in a moment. Top of the hour here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired April 11, 2005 - 08:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Beautiful day here in New York. Good morning, everybody. 8:31.
In a moment here, this question Jack's been talking about today. Tom Delay drawing criticism from members of his own party over the weekend. Who's really in danger politically speaking? We'll talk about that with Kamber and May, a Monday edition coming up here in a moment.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Also, here's a question for you: Are silicone breast implants safer now than they've been before? They're back on the market now. Sanjay Gupta's going to have a look at that for us this morning.

HEMMER: All right, first to the headlines. Back to Carol for that and more.

Carol, good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, a major anti-U.S. protest under way in the Iraqi city of Baqubah. New pictures into CNN this morning show hundreds marching in the streets. They're yelling anti-U.S. slogans and burning the American flag, as you see right there. The protesters are apparently students calling for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.

Here in the United States, a message for commuters in the Denver area: Leave early. The roads are an absolute mess. A spring blizzard dumped close to two feet of wet snow on parts of the front range. Schools and some businesses are closed this morning. The heavy snow also breaking trees and cutting off power to some homes. No word, though, on any major injuries. They were prepared in Denver.

Officials at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio are making grief counseling available to students this morning after an off-campus fire killed three students. Seven other in the house managed to escape. An early investigation shows the blaze was an accident.

In the Michael Jackson trial, more abuse allegations from the past. On Friday, Jackson's former chief -- former chef, rather, testified that he saw the singer inappropriately touch actor Macaulay Culkin nearly 15 years ago. Culkin has publicly denied anything happened. Jackson's attorney tried to cast doubt on the chef's credibility, saying he had tried to sell the story to a tabloid. And today, the Boston Red Sox get another chance to rub in their World Series victory before taking on their arch rivals the New York Yankees. The players will collect their championship rings at a ceremony right before the home opener against the Yankees. The long- anticipated World Series banner will finally be raised over Fenway as part of the festivities. And it is opening day in Boston today. We tried to get a reporter from Boston to report on Cardinal Law performing this mass in Rome. They're all covering opening-day ceremonies. They were not available.

HEMMER: But the baseball Gods allowed the Boston Red Sox to do this deal today in front of the Yankees, too, at Fenway. Terry Francona is back too, the manager. Yes, a little ill last week. So he's coming back.

Thank you, Carol.

O'BRIEN: We're now learning the Pentagon continues planning for a significant reduction in U.S. troop strength in Iraq. CNN's Barbara Starr has been following that story out of the Pentagon.

Barbara, good morning to you. What's the latest word on this plan?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Soledad, as CNN first reported last month, top U.S. generals, both here in the Pentagon and in Iraq, are continuing to lay the groundwork for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq over the next several months. There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq right now. If the insurgency attacks against U.S. forces continue to decline, what they hope to do is implement this withdrawal over the next many months, and by next summer perhaps bring that 140,000 troop level down to just about 100,000 troops. Now the new Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, is saying it could be at least two years before Iraqi security forces are completely prepared to stand on their own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JALAL TALABANI, IRAQI PRESIDENT: I think that we are in great need to have American and other allied forces in Iraq until we will be able to rebuild or military forces, rebuild our security forces, and until we'll be assured that there will be no danger from terrorism and from foreign intervention in our internal affairs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: So while there's a lot of optimism, this is not to say that the insurgency has evaporated, because while attacks against U.S. troops are declining, certainly the attacks against Iraqi security forces and civilians continue every day. Very vulnerable targets there, and still a lot of concern about the insurgency itself. The estimates continue to be that there are more than 12,000 fighters in that country -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So that plan is pitched because if things continue to improve, then that's sort of what they'd go with. But what if thinks don't continue to improve? What's the opposite plan.

STARR: Well, indeed, there is what they call plan b. If it does not continue to improve, the U.S. military is prepared to continue with a deployment schedule that would keep 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq over the next two years. These are a variety of planning scenarios that they have now, because it's easier, they say, to keep people in the pipeline and then maybe not have to send those troops at the last minute if things get better than rather have to scramble and find the troops to send. So all of the planning scenarios remain on the table, but they are very hopeful that over the next several months, they will now be able to bring those troop levels down in a phased manner -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon for us this morning.

Barbara, thanks.

HEMMER: House majority leader Tom Delay is under fire again. Already under attack by Democrats. He was criticized by a fellow Republican over the weekend, and another Republican asked him to come clean. Let's discuss that this morning. In Miami, Democratic consultant Victor Kamber.

Vic, good morning. Welcome back to you.

VICTOR KAMBER, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: Good morning, Bill. Thank you.

HEMMER: Also, former RNC director communications director Cliff May back with us as well for Kamber & May.

Cliff, start us off -- is this generating so much heat right that Tom Delay will not be able to turn back?

CLIFF MAY, FMR. RNC COMM. DIR: I think that's what lot of people hope. I think this has all the earmarks of a calculated campaign against Delay. It's all talking about charges, and is he a liability? But at some point, let's talk about the charges. He took a trip to Russia. Newsflash, the beaches in Russia are nothing to write home about. The other charge, he had members of his family working on his campaign. This is a common practice. I bet you anything Victor's worked for politicians whose have members of their family working on the campaign. As long as it's from funds coming from people who have voluntarily given it and it's all open and above-board, there's nothing wrong with it. I'd like somebody to say, anyone who's ever done that, I want them to resign. I don't think you're going to see Vic or anybody else say that.

KAMBER: Well, I think if Cliff believe was he just said, I have some swampland in Florida here that I'd like to talk to him about.

MAY: And you're in Florida.

KAMBER: I am in Florida.

The fact is this is an ethically challenged member of Congress. It's not one trip; it's his whole relationship with a group of lobbyists, a whole series of votes that have taken place.

MAY: What's the charge?

KAMBER: I believe in partisan politics. And Tom Delay is as partisan as they come. There's nothing wrong with partisanship. The difficulty is this is a man who forgot where he came from, he forgot the institution, and he's not thinking about the institution.

And in terms of charges, it's Chris Shays that called for his resignation; it was a Republican. It's not a concerted liberal effort to get rid of him. Republicans, as well as Democrats, believe he should step down.

HEMMER: You mentioned Chris Shays. Here's what he said every the weekend, apparently on Saturday up in Connecticut, on the screen for our viewers, "He's an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party. If he ever runs for speaker, I get to vote on the House floor, and my no vote, combined with the Democrats, means he will never be speaker."

Cliff, more to the point, guilty or not politically speaking. If it continues to grow against him, is Tom Delay the kind of guy who will say, OK, I concede, or is Tom Delay the kind of guy who says I'm going to fight this to the very end?

MAY: I know Tom Delay a little bit and I would suggest he's the kind of guy who will probably fight pretty hard. He'll remember, for example, the kind of campaign that was waged against Newt Gingrich, very similar to this. Charges were thrown to try to make something stick. Eventually Gingrich was exonerated, but most probably don't recall that, because that wasn't much of a news story.

And let me point out that Vic just said a lot of things about Tom Delay -- no charge of anything that was wrong. I mean, this is just generalizations, and....

KAMBER: Cliff, we don't have an ethics committee because of what Delay has done.

MAY: What did he do?

KAMBER: We don't have an ethics committee that can even investigate it, because the Republicans changed the rules.

MAY: What did he do?

KAMBER: What would you like?

MAY: Name one.

KAMBER: The series of things with Jack Abrahamoff, the lobbyist in terms of the whole series of trips he's taken -- Scotland, Russia, Ireland. The votes he's made in Louisiana, that changed -- his vote changed from where he had been, his major position to help an Indian tribe. There's a series of things like this. Now they may not be illegal... HEMMER: Isn't Victor making the point that Rick Santorum made over the weekend, too? Come clean with it, throw the record on the table, either move on or you're guilty?

KAMBER: Let's come clean through an ethics committee.

MAY: I think he absolutely wants to get out there and make the case for himself. But again, when you have people like Vic saying look, it's a politician and he knows lobbyists, my god, there's 435 politicians...

KAMBER: I didn't say he knows lobbyists. I said let's have an ethics committee that's bipartisan, not a stacked one the way he's changed the rules.

HEMMER: Gentlemen, let's leave it there, because I know we can keep on talking about it. Come back again later in the week. Victor, thanks. Cliff, thanks. Good to see both of you.

Here's Soledad.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: If you're strapped for cash, NASA comes up with a -- some might say is a questionable way to raise money. Andy's "Minding Your Business." We'll have that in a moment.

O'BRIEN: And we are "Paging Dr. Gupta." 13 years after doctors said they were unsafe, why are silicone breast implants going back on the market potentially? That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" now about the safety of silicone breast implants. An FDA panel this morning will revisit the question of whether to lift a 13-year ban on the implants.

And Sanjay's live for us from the CNN Center this morning. Sanjay , good morning to you. At the end of three days of hearings, will there be some strong conclusion?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's what they're hoping for, a decision finally. Listen, this has been going on for some time, 13 years now. People remember the significant ban of silicone breast implants. But it dates back even further than that. '62 -- 1962, so long time ago, 43 years, the first woman recipient. Just 15 years after that, the first trial win for a woman with ruptured implants. 1990 is when we remember the congressional safety hearings. A lot of people started paying attention to silicone best implants.

Then, two years later, the FDA formally restricted the clinical trial use. You remember all that, around that time, Soledad, Dow Corning went bankrupt, lots of payouts. 2003, the FDA advisory committee recommends lifting the ban. And then, in a somewhat rare move, the FDA itself asks for further studies and said we're not going to lift the ban quite yet. And that's where we are, almost 40 years after the fact, after the first implant was put in.

A couple of things at issue here. What exactly is going on? Are these implants rupturing? That's the question they're trying to answer. Again, I mentioned Dow Corning went out of business. Two other companies now presenting their data. Inamed saying a rupture rate of three to 21 percent over ten years. Mentor, another company, saying one to five percent over three years.

The FDA says in women who are not having the implants for reconstructive surgery, it's about a 74 to 75 percent rupture rate and 93 percent rupture rate over 10 years for women who are having reconstructive surgery. Widely varying numbers.

Monday are going to be open hearings, that's today. Tuesday will be deliberations, and Wednesday, they're going to have a vote. Should settle it once and for all. We'll see, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we will see. Why would the FDA even consider the implants and putting them back on the market, when there is so much controversy? I mean, 13 years of study and following that timeline, which involved many millions of dollars and lots of lawsuits, as well. Why is this even up for discussion?

GUPTA: Two reasons, primarily. One is that people think silicone breast implants are a superior product to saline implants. You remember the saline implants actually replaced the silicone implants during this time period. The second reason is, there's been a lot of studies, some of them big ones, from the Institute of Medicine, for example, concluding in 1999 that these silicone breast implants were not the cause of all of these symptoms that had been described, the muscular pains, the joint pains, the multiple sclerosis-like pains.

All those sorts of things. So, you know, they're putting this back up for discussion again. Again, people think silicone, if approved, if safe, is a superior product -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Can I ask you a related question? The death of Al Lucas, pretty shocking. And I'd be curious to know, how often does a severe spinal cord injury, which it seems is the reason for his death, how often does that lead to death, Sanjay?

GUPTA: Well, you know, we're talking about the arena football player. And it's actually pretty uncommon for a player to die on the field from a spinal cord injury like this. Typically, what you think of are significant head injuries and, you know, if you see some of these tackles and some of the force, some of the momentum, the head injuries are not that hard -- are not that surprising.

These spinal cord injuries, what happens -- the reason that a player would die on the field or soon after, would be because the injury to the spinal cord was so high in the spinal cord that it damaged not only the part of the body responsible for movement, but also responsible for breathing itself. And that is an unfortunate consequence. It is not all that common in sports. Out of all the spinal cord injuries, about 40 per million that lead to significant function loss, only about 21 percent of them occur in sports, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Wow, what a terrible story this weekend. All right, Sanjay, thanks for information on both of those stories. Appreciate it.

Still to come this morning, Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." NASA may have reached a final and controversial frontier for raising money. That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

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HEMMER: All right. Welcome back.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: NASA looking for corporate sponsors for the space shuttle and stuff. And the government paying for a study on pretty people. Andy and I weren't in it. Those stories and a market preview, Andy Serwer "Minding Your Business."

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Speak for yourself. I was not in it, definitely not. We'll get to that in a minute.

Isn't it comforting to know the government is working overtime thinking about you. Some of these great ideas. Let's start off here with this NASA story. Excuse me. May, June will be the first launch of the space shuttle since the Columbia disaster in February of '03, and NASA is seeking corporate sponsorship for its Web site to cover the launch. There will be another sponsorship, another launch in July. NASA says it's got a lot of calls about this, but is not talking about which companies want to do this, being very tight-lipped about that and about how much money they're going to get.

Here's a couple of other government sponsorships I was thinking about, Jack. 1040 tax forms sponsored by Excedrin. Medicare sponsored by Fixodent. The Census Bureau maybe condoms or something like that -- nevermind. And FEMA by the Home Depot.

Here's another government story about -- these guys are really doing some very important work these days. The Federal Reserve in St. Louis came up with this pretty-people study, Jack, that you were alluding to, and it discovered that pretty people get paid more. This is, you know, really startling news here, and important work again. There's a beauty premium. People who are deemed to be attractive get paid 5 percent more. People who are plain get paid 9 percent more. A consultant who say the study says it hurts employment people in the long run, because there are talented people out there who are tall, blond and attractive who don't get jobs.

HEMMER: Who figured that out?

SERWER: Federal reserve of st. Louis.

CAFFERTY: It's time for "The Cafferty File," as we move on.

SERWER: Let's just move on.

CAFFERTY: There we go.

Do we have a new director? We do, don't we?

More people tuned into a horse race on Saturday than the royal wedding. Britain's BBC reports that two million more Brits watched the Grand National Horse Race than the nuptials of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at St. Georges Chapel. 7.6 million tuned into the wedding; 9.5 tuned into the horse race. Three million people who watched the horse race thought they were watching the wedding.

O'BRIEN: That's unnecessary!

HEMMER: Camilla's off the market.

SERWER: I take offense! Sorry.

CAFFERTY: Expect less spam in your inbox now that this guy's in jail. Thirty-year-old Jeremy Jaynes got nine-year prison term for using false Internet addresses and aliases to -- there it is again -- to send mass e-mails. That was the first conviction of its kind.

They ought to do more of this. Prosecutors say this guy amassed a fortune of $24 million for sending e-mails of pornography, fake products, and work-at-home schemes, which claimed to allow people to earn up to $75 an hour. At one point, the guy sending out a million e-mails a day. Even with a response rate of 0.3 percent, he was making $750,000 a month. Now he's in prison.

SERWER: Nice.

CAFFERTY: And hunting season, here's the most disgusting idea I've heard in a long time. Hunting season opened on Saturday. And an online gaming Web site, liveshot.com. Liveshot gave a quadriplegic living in Indiana the chance to shoot, via remote control, an exotic black buck. However, the man spent most of the day looking at horses that wandered into the crosshairs and ate the alfalfa that was intended for the antelope. He paid $1,300 for a season hunting license, which means he has until the end of August.

Liveshot.com owner, John Lockwood, has been getting criticized for his Web site. Some call it pay-per-view slaughter. Fourteen states are in various stages of prohibiting online hunting. It ought to be just flat banned across the board. Can you imagine?

SERWER: I'm not quite sure how it works.

CAFFERTY: By remote control, operate a real hunting rifle and you can shoot -- it's like a video game.

SERWER: You're working on your mouse, but there's a real gun out there.

CAFFERTY: And there's a real gun at the other end, and you get the thing in the sights and you push the whatever and it fires a bullet, and...

SERWER: That's wild.

O'BRIEN: That's so sick.

CAFFERTY: It is sick, isn't it? I don't like that.

SERWER: There's something wrong about.

CAFFERTY: Did you know that three million people who watched the Grand National Horse Race thought they were watching the royal wedding?

O'BRIEN: That also is sick.

HEMMER: Camilla's off the market.

Break here in a moment...

CAFFERTY: And the market went up.

(LAUGHTER)

CAFFERTY: Sorry.

HEMMER: The calendar says it's spring. Some folks getting a blustery blast from the past, though. We'll take you there live in a moment. Top of the hour here on AMERICAN MORNING.

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