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American Morning
Reaction to President Bush's Speech on Immigration; Duke Rape Investigation; Screening Revelers
Aired May 16, 2006 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Soledad O'Brien.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Thanks for being with us.
President Bush desperately trying to find some political middle ground in the volatile immigration debate. The president says he wants a guest worker program that could legalize many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the county.
Guest workers in that program would have tamper-proof I.D. cards so employers could determine their status. The president says this isn't amnesty, simply realistic.
The president also wants up to 6,000 National Guard troops positioned along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico to support the Border Patrol. He wants those guard troops to come from the border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. And he aims to hire 6,000 more Border Patrol agents by 2009.
The president trying to woo the right flank of his party with all this. That's where there is strong resistance to guest worker or amnesty ideas.
AMERICAN MORNING'S Bob Franken in Hamilton, Ohio, this morning to tell us how the speech played there.
Good morning, Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's interesting, Miles, because we watched it with people who can best be described as the GOP faithful. That's what you find a lot of here. But these faithful were interesting because they expressed quite a few feelings about skepticism.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will make it clear where I stand.
FRANKEN (voice over): These are among those who party leaders mean when they talk about the Republican base. They were invited to the home of Butler County, Ohio, commissioner Michael Fox, along with some reporters, to watch and see if President Bush could soothe the anger here over how he's handled immigration. BUSH: I've asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance, the reform of America's immigration system.
FRANKEN: The question was whether the president's speech was a step in the right direction. The most common answer, maybe.
ARNOLD ENGEL, SPEECH VIEWER: I liked the speech, but as it is right now, it's nothing but talk.
HALL THOMPSON, SPEECH VIEWER: I thought it was a pretty good speech. I think it's a beginning. I don't think it's by any means the end.
HEATHER MCINTYRE, SPEECH VIEWER: It was a nice step, but we need to see some real action. The words are nice. I'd like to see some real action before I believe this.
FRANKEN: The most prominent hard-liner in the county on immigration is the sheriff, Richard Jones. But he was almost gushing about the speech. Almost.
SHERIFF RICHARD JONES, BUTLER COUNTY, OHIO: I'll tell you who he reminded me of tonight. He reminded me of Ronald Reagan. Now I want to see the beef.
FRANKEN: And as for the host for this president's speech watch, County Commissioner Fox was one of the most disappointed.
MICHAEL FOX, BUTLER COUNTY, OHIO, COMMISSIONER: The president's a good man but doesn't have a good plan. I think the weakness is the border security and the enforce enforcement piece. For my county it didn't do anything.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRANKEN: As Ohio goes, they say, so goes the election. And how Ohio goes is determined quite a bit by what the Republicans here do. And that's going to be determined, Miles, by how the issue of immigration is handled.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, and it all boils down to -- for the Republicans to what happens in places like Hamilton. If people in Hamilton are upset, that could have implications in the congressional elections, couldn't it?
FRANKEN: The congressional elections, the next presidential election. What happens here is, if the base is alienated, this Republican base, the people who are in it stay home. Enter the Democrats.
M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken in Hamilton.
Thank you very much -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: We're also looking at the weather this morning. The Northeast could use a break. More rain, though, is expected today.
Some of the worst flooding in Massachusetts in decades is what we're seeing. Thousands of people forced from their homes, rivers spilling over their banks, many roads just submerged. I mean, take a look at these pictures.
The situation not a whole heck of a lot better in parts of New Hampshire, in Maine, too. Floodwaters have damaged homes and roads and bridges, and they're threatening the stability of some of the dams.
Nearly 1,500 people back in their homes in Edgewater, Florida. They were forced out by a new wildfire in Volusia County. The fire and the smoke also closed a stretch of I-95. Now they're saying that's indefinite.
You can see the interstate smoke there -- the interstate, rather, there. And look at all the smoke just around it. The state of emergency ordered last week because of a series of wildfires. Well, that state of emergency is still in effect today.
All that brings us right to Jacqui Jeras and a look at the forecast this morning.
Hey, Jacqui. Good morning.
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Soledad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
JERAS: Back to you guys.
S. O'BRIEN: All right, Jacqui. Thanks.
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Jacqui.
A third lacrosse player is facing a rape charge at Duke University. And unlike his two former teammates, is he speaking out. A day after he graduated, former lacrosse captain David Evans said he and his teammates are the victims of what he calls some fantastic lies.
CNN's Jason Carroll with more from Durham.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The third Duke lacrosse player to be indicted turned out to be the first to publicly come out to defend himself to try to clear his name. David Evans says he actually felt relief at being able to speak on behalf of his family and his team members. He says he's absolutely innocent, saying that he's been fully cooperating with investigators ever since the very begin.
He also says that his attorney had him take a polygraph test, a test he says he passed. He even offered to take another test for the district attorney, Michael Nifong, but he says that offer was denied. He also not only spoke out in his own defense, but he also spoke out for the other two players who were also indicted.
DAVID EVANS, DEFENDANT: I am innocent. Reade Seligmann is innocent. Collin Finnerty is innocent. Every member of the Duke University lacrosse team is innocent. You have all been told some fantastic lies.
CARROLL: Evans voluntarily turned himself into police immediately following his public statement. The 23-year-old former Duke senior and team captain from Bethesda, Maryland, was fingerprinted and posted bond.
The D.A. said in a statement he's not expecting any more indictments. The defense is still expecting to get more evidence from the D.A. They should get that from him during the next scheduled court proceeding, which is this Thursday.
Jason Carroll, CNN, Durham, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Interesting developments there.
Ahead this morning, a New York City deejay arrested for what he said on the air. We're going to tell you what he said and tell you why some folks think his comments just crossed the line from free speech right to crime.
M. O'BRIEN: Also, nightclub security in the 21st century. All you need is a fingerprint and a photo. But is it an invasion of privacy?
S. O'BRIEN: And Dr. Sanjay Gupta's series on the world of sleep. Today he explores how the brain decides what you're going to dream about every night.
First, though, a look at some of the other stories making news on this Tuesday morning.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: A look overseas now, and a little bit of perspective for you parents. While you're getting your children ready for school, young boys in Sudan are heading into battle.
Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello. I'm Nic Robertson in Am Bache, Chad. We've been following up on reports that refugees as young as 13 years old are being forcibly recruited from refugee camps by Sudanese rebels, taken away, given military training, and indoctrinated. We've been told that this is happening often with the complicity of Chadian officials.
It's worrying the U.N. They say it means these camps could become targets for attack.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: The riots in Sao Paolo, Brazil, appear to be over. Gang warfare has killed at least 81 people there since Friday, left smoldering cars and buses in the streets. You can see them right there.
Authorities say the unrest was directed from inside prisons by criminal gangs. And hundreds of its members -- after, rather, hundreds of members were sent off to maximum security facilities.
Officials announced overnight that some 200 prison guards taken hostage have been released. Some officials, though, worry that the violence could resume in Rio.
As part of an effort to weed out drunken violence, revelers in one British town are having their fingerprints scanned when they enter pubs and nightclubs. The program is called In Touch. It's the first of its kind in Britain.
CNN's Paula Hancocks has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It looks like an ordinary Friday evening, except this is nightclubbing 21st century style. No driver's license needed. All you need to get into this club is your index finger.
It takes about 60 seconds to log in your personal details, have a photo taken and scan your fingerprint. Then you're in.
PC BRETT GITSHAM, AVON & SOMERSET POLICE: Once you enter the premises, it picks up my screen. And I've already registered a few weeks ago. So it's just brought my details up. And the licensee now knows if there's any previous incidents recorded.
HANCOCKS: Alcohol-fueled violence has become commonplace on weekends, as these surveillance videos show. Police hope this new system will cut down on this.
The system allows clubs to share information. So if you're banned from one club, you're unlikely to be able to sneak into a different one. So far, it's a work in progress to see whether fingerprinting at the door can really keep out troublemakers and underage drinkers.
SGT. JACKIE GOLD, AVON & SOMERSET POLICE: Where you've got alcohol, there's always the potential for violent crime. And we're talking about assaults, we're talking about drunken behavior, we're talking about fights breaking out inside the premises and outside the premises. Now, the beauty of this system is it will keep those troublemakers out the door.
HANCOCKS: Most of the locals seem happy with the system. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a good idea. It's easy. It stops troublemakers. You know, nothing wrong with it. It's great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a little bit of a shock. I didn't expect it, but I suppose it's a good thing. It stops troublemakers and all that.
HANCOCKS (on camera): This is all done in real time, meaning by the time I walk to the next pub I'm going to tonight, my information will already be in there.
So I just put my finger on here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right. Place it on there. Excellent. Welcome to Harry's (ph).
HANCOCKS: Thank you.
(voice over): It worked and it was easy. But it raises the obvious question of who now has access to my information.
The police insist they have no access to the database, only the clubs do. But human rights groups say the scheme is intrusive and a waste of money. Some of the Friday night drinkers seem to agree.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a good idea in one way, but in other ways it just takes away your personal freedom.
HANCOCKS (on camera): Would you do it yourself?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fingerprint I.D., no, I would not give my fingerprints. It's just like, what's next?
HANCOCKS (voice over): It's 11:00 on a Friday night. Few of these clubbers who were allowed in seem to mind.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, southwest England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, the other search engine gets a big makeover, but will it be enough for investors to say Yahoo? Our own Yahoo! fan, Andy Serwer, is here.
Plus, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, sleeping on the job for us. He'll tell us what dreams are made of ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. A look at our top stories this morning.
Strong reaction to President Bush's call for National Guard troops to help secure the border with Mexico.
Parts of the waterlogged Northeast can expect more rain today. Record rainfall is triggering some of the worst flooding in decades.
And helicopters back in the air this morning to battle wildfires all along Florida's east coast.
That's a look at our top stories this morning -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: So, what's your favorite dream?
S. O'BRIEN: Favorite dream?
M. O'BRIEN: Favorite dream.
S. O'BRIEN: I don't know. Scariest dream is when you're falling in your bed.
M. O'BRIEN: I asked favorite, but scary is falling.
S. O'BRIEN: Falling, where you, like, can't stop yourself from falling.
M. O'BRIEN: See, related to that one, my favorite one is the flying over the bucolic setting dream. I love those.
S. O'BRIEN: Really?
M. O'BRIEN: I love those dreams.
S. O'BRIEN: I never had that dream.
M. O'BRIEN: But what do they all mean?
S. O'BRIEN: I don't know.
M. O'BRIEN: Probably nothing. Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets wired up, tries to answer that question for us.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): What's in a dream? A memory? A movie? A solution? A picture?
ROBERT STICKGOLD, BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MED. CENTER.: The dreaming process is a process of memory integration, where different memories are brought together, and how well they fit or don't fit is examined by the brain.
GUPTA: Bob Stickgold is a biochemist and a dream researcher at Harvard's Bet Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dreams, he says, are efforts to fit memories together.
While most of our dreams occur in the REM phase of sleep, about 25 percent of our dreams occur in non-REM sleep, just after you drift off. And it's in this hypnagogic stage of sleep where Stickgold's current study is attempting to determine how the brain forms dreams...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Start the clock. GUPTA: ... with the help of a video game. I spend three 45- minute sessions on this virtual Alpine skier, navigating the winding courses and obstacles.
(on camera): I think I'm done.
(voice over): That night, they wire me up with electrodes around my head, including a specially-wired bandanna to measure my brain waves during various stages of sleep. Each time I doze off into the first stages of sleep, a computer wakes me up and asks me to give dream reports.
(on camera): And there were some fields. It looked like wheat. And I was sort of flying over the fields.
It looked like wheat. And I was sort of flying over the fields.
STICKGOLD: Here's one of those places where you see all the problems of dreams, because I can turn to you and say, "Sanjay, wheat fields?"
GUPTA (voice over): So were those wheat fields I was flying over really ski slopes? Who's to say. But Stickgold says 85 percent of the study subjects report at least once that they were skiing.
STICKGOLD: The whole point of this research is to help us figure out what the brain uses as its rules for constructing dreams.
GUPTA: Research that is still up for interpretation.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: That's fascinating.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, it's so relaxing, that music.
ANDY SERWER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "FORTUNE": Yes. I sort of liked it.
M. O'BRIEN: That Sanjay's a dreamy guy, isn't he?
S. O'BRIEN: I'm sorry. I think I dozed off. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.
M. O'BRIEN: Tomorrow Sanjay will explore using dreams as therapy. And be sure to catch Sanjay's one-hour special on sleep airing this Sunday, 10:00 p.m. Eastern, when I'll be sleeping, ironically, right here on CNN.
S. O'BRIEN: Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business" just ahead this morning.
What have you got for us?
SERWER: I want everyone to wake up right now, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Wake up!
SERWER: Wake up!
Yahoo! gets a makeover.
Plus, NBC unveils a bold new Internet strategy. Will it work? We'll explain coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.
We start with some of the stories we're working on for you this morning.
We're going to talk this morning to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff about the president's plans to put troops on the border with Mexico.
The Associated Press is reporting that Washington's archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has resigned.
The third suspect indicted in the Duke rape case goes public with his side of the story.
BellSouth now says it never handed over personal phone records to the government for its massive database.
And a new wildfire breaks out in central Florida. It's just five miles away from another fire that forced thousands of people to evacuate last week.
We're talking Yahoo! in business news. Very different today.
SERWER: A makeover.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes.
SERWER: A makeover for the most popular Web site.
S. O'BRIEN: An extreme makeover.
SERWER: I guess -- well, it's pretty extreme for the most popular Web site in the world, which is Yahoo! And these makeovers occur pretty frequently in this business, because new technology, and as more and more consumers get broadband, they can put more stuff on the page. And Yahoo!, of course, has a lot of stuff on its page.
Let's see if we can get them up.
On the left is the old Yahoo!, on the right is the new Yahoo! page. And you can see there, the founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang saying, "Hi, mom." They actually have a "Hi, mom" sign in there. And the company's only 12 years old. Let's see if we can get a chart up and look at the traffic of the pack of portals and see how they stack up.
Number one, as I said, Yahoo!, 105 million unique visitors in the United States. MSN and Google basically tied. AOL after that. And then coming up strong, MySpace, at about...
M. O'BRIEN: Ah, yes. And gaining.
SERWER: MySpace is the real -- and gaining. And they're changing the game, too. They're the one that's disrupted technology, as they say in the business world. Everyone's trying to do what they're trying to do. In fact, Yahoo! is trying to do some of that as well, the customization, pages, people's pictures, and all that kind of stuff.
M. O'BRIEN: When they change these things, does it really have a ripple effect at all? Does it change the number of hits they get?
SERWER: I don't think so, as much as they just have to keep up with the other guy.
M. O'BRIEN: Right. OK.
SERWER: Moving on to NBC, you know we told you about up-fronts yesterday here in New York City, rolling out the new shows, but how important it was to roll out the new technology and to show you're an Internet company. NBC, two new broadband channels, and plus a video player at all their Web sites allowing people to access their programming on the Internet.
One of the broadband channels is the Dot-Comedy (ph), it's called. You go there online, "SNL" shows, "Leave it to Beaver".
"Leave it to Beaver". I'm going to go there.
M. O'BRIEN: There's some shows...
S. O'BRIEN: "SNL".
SERWER: "Leave it to Beaver".
M. O'BRIEN: Ah. It doesn't get any better than that, does it?
SERWER: Ratings are striking (ph) right now, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Really?
(CROSSTALK)
M. O'BRIEN: You kind of like an Eddie Haskell character, you know?
SERWER: You know, there's something about it...
S. O'BRIEN: Are they charging for this or not charging for this? SERWER: They're not charging for this.
S. O'BRIEN: Interesting.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. We've got to -- we've got to go to Jacqui. We're about out of time.
SERWER: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: All right.
M. O'BRIEN: As much as we enjoined that little sojourn down memory lane -- Jacqui.
(WEATHER REPORT)
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