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Children Return to Polygamist Ranch; General Urges Preparedness for Hurricanes; Fire Consumes Portion of Universal Studios
Aired June 02, 2008 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Sixteen days after a brain tumor set off seizures in Edward Kennedy, the Senator strikes back. The Senator and his hand-picked high-powered neurosurgeon at Duke University. We're live with the very latest.
MELISSA LONG, CNN ANCHOR: Real-life drama in the land of make- believe. A day after fire consumed a big part of Universal Studios in Los Angeles, firefighters are fuming over a lack of water. We have a follow-up for you.
Hello. I'm Melissa Long in today for Kyra Phillips at the World Headquarters of CNN in Atlanta.
LEMON: And I'm Don Lemon. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
A veteran senator is in the fight of his life: not on the campaign trail but on the operating table. Edward Kennedy is in surgery right now at Duke University Medical Center, just the beginning of his battle against brain cancer. And we'll take you live to North Carolina in just a moment.
But first, let's check in now with our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Doctor, first question, are you surprised that he is having this surgery?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: No. You know, when you look at people who have these types of tumors, one of sort of the key parts of their treatment is actually take as much of that tumor out as possible. Remove as much as you can. I don't think that they can get all of it. It gives him a much better chance, Don, of responding to chemotherapy and radiation down the line. That's really part of the key for him.
LEMON: What's involved? Understand that he's going to have to stay awake during the surgery, and they're going to ask him key questions. So what's involved in all of this?
GUPTA: We don't know that for sure. That's one way that they could do it, is have someone awake. They could have him asleep, as well. It sort of depends on the surgeons and the patient's preference.
Let me show you here. I think a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words. This light purple area over here, Don, that's known as the parietal lobe. The reason people are paying so much attention to this is because it's located close to a very important structures.
Over here, for example, is a part of the brain that controls your motor movements. So if you damage that, someone can be paralyzed on the other side of their body.
Down here in the yellow is an area of the brain that's responsible for speech. Not only ability to speech, Don, but the ability to understand speech. So when someone says something to you, to comprehend what they're saying.
LEMON: Right.
GUPTA: Crucial areas, obviously. They want to take out as much of this tumor as they can without damaging those areas. Sometimes, to your point, they'll actually do what's called mapping in the ER.
So he'll be awake, and they'll say, "Squeeze my hand, Senator." And if he's having trouble squeezing his hand, then they'll say, "OK, we're too close now." And they'll back off a little bit. Or if he's having trouble speaking, speech becomes sort of garbled, then they'll back off on him again. That could be what's happening in the operating room now.
LEMON: Obviously, this is very touchy. So they -- sort of it's touch and go. And they try to figure it out.
All right. So you talked about the surgery part of it. What about the radiation and chemotherapy? Because we're hearing, obviously, that he's going to get that, as well.
GUPTA: Yes. Right. So after you remove as much of the tumor as you can, then chemotherapy and radiation are sort of the basic tenets of care after that.
The idea is this: there's still going to be some tumor cells left in the brain. They can't get them all. So the chemotherapy and radiation could help sort of destroy the rest of those tumor cells. That's the goal.
Let me point out one thing I think is very interesting. He obviously made the move from Boston to North Carolina. One of the things that happens down at Duke is they have this vaccine trial. It's amazing stuff, Don. They actually teach the body. They teach the body's immune system to attack the tumor cells.
LEMON: Wow.
GUPTA: They create a vaccine for the brain tumor. It's something that's happening at Duke. They may do that, using some of his own tumor that they remove today. That could be why he's down at Duke. That's one of the things they do that other places don't.
LEMON: And he's in very good hands, we're told. One of the best in the business?
GUPTA: Allan Friedman is -- you know, there's about -- fewer than 3,000 of us neurosurgeons in the country. So we all know each other by reputation or personally. And he is a very well-regarded, excellent surgeon and very good researcher, as well.
LEMON: Great information. Our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Thank you.
GUPTA: Thanks, Don. Thank you.
LONG: And we are watching for developments out of the Duke University Medical Center.
And Rusty Dornin is there following the latest on the surgery -- Rusty.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Melissa, so far we have not heard any word from the hospital about how the surgery is going. He was scheduled to go in at 9:00 a.m. this morning. And it was supposed to last about six hours, give or take an hour.
Hospital spokesperson just came out, said there was not going to be any kind of formal press conference when the surgery has been completed. They may give us some kind of update. But so far, they haven't released any information out of respect for the family.
The Kennedy family has said they do not want any information about the surgery to be released, and any information will first have to be cleared by them.
Now, Senator Kennedy himself was the one who cleared up a lot of the rumors this morning when he finally released a statement about the surgery and about the fact that his doctors and his family had been researching nationwide, worldwide, to find, really, the best team and what the best procedure was to remove this malignant tumor or whether even to have surgery.
He issued in his statement, "The best course of action for my brain tumor is targeted surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation. This morning, I will be undergoing surgery with Dr. Allan Friedman at Duke University Medical Center and expect to remain there to recuperate for approximately one week."
After that time he'll go to Massachusetts General Hospital. That's where he'll undergo, hoping that things are going well, radiation and chemotherapy there.
And in his statement, of course, he said he was going to be back to the U.S. Senate and gave a little political plug to the party, claiming he was going to be back, trying to work on Senator Barack Obama's campaign for president.
So sounding very optimistic, but of course, this is a very complicated and very long surgery -- Melissa.
LONG: Do we know why the family's chosen Duke and this doctor for this contentious surgery? DORNIN: Well, I mean, even as Sanjay was just talking about, he's very well-known for this. This particular center has been doing brain tumor operations since 1937. It was one of the first in the country.
Dr. Allan Friedman is the director of neurosurgery here. He performs 90 percent of the tumor removals, the malignant tumor removals here at Duke. So he also is very proud of the fact that they like to try new things. Try aggressive, different ways of doing things, which may be another reason why the Kennedy family chose Dr. Friedman as well as the Duke Center.
LONG: Understand. Rusty Dornin, live from outside the medical center. Rusty, thank you.
And what is it like to go through hours of brain surgery awake? We don't know whether or not the Senator is going through the surgery awake or not, but we will be talking to someone who did experience that. She's also one of the nation's leading health professionals. Dr. Bernadine Healy (ph) will join us live in the NEWSROOM, coming up a little later in the afternoon.
LEMON: And Melissa, we're also keeping an eye on Texas, where parents from a polygamist sect are rushing to foster-care facilities across that state. A state judge has signed the order to give them their children back under certain conditions, of course.
Our Susan Roesgen has that from the courthouse in San Angelo.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The agreement hammered out here at the courthouse in San Angelo allows about 450 kids to be returned to that polygamist ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
However, this agreement has some restrictions. Three of the most critical seem to be these: first of all, the parents themselves or the guardians must pick those children up. And they have been scattered to 16 different shelters all across the state of Texas some hundreds of miles away.
Secondly, the children are not allowed to leave the state of Texas, which means they won't be allowed to go to another Warren Jeffs polygamist compound in some other state or across the border.
And finally, perhaps the most important restriction is that the Child Protective Services agency here for the state of Texas has the right to make unannounced visits to that secretive Eldorado ranch between the hours of 8 a.m. in the morning and 8 p.m. at night, during daylight hours, to check on the progress and the condition of the children.
Those are the three main restrictions for this order, which allows the children to start going back as early as today. And by all accounts, Child Protective Services here says this agreement was done in the best interest of the children. MARLEIGH MEISNER, CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES: Our goal at Child Protective Services is always to try to reunite families, to reunite children when they can be safe in their own parents' care. And we hope they can be safe there. And we hope that we are going to be able to provide services to make them better parents for these children.
ROESGEN: Of course, critics would say, then why did the state of Texas take all of those children to begin with? Apparently now, this investigation's going to focus in particular on just five underaged girls, five girls between the ages of 16 and 17, who either have been pregnant or are currently pregnant. The state attorney general's office is considering a criminal case.
Susan Roesgen, CNN, San Angelo, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LONG: Fire crews are busy mopping up the hot spots at Universal Studios in California. The studio is scheduled to reopen this hour after that massive fire on Sunday.
Nine firefighters and a sheriff's deputy were slightly injured. Pieces of film history, including movie sets from the "King Kong" exhibit, were destroyed. A film vault at Universal was also damaged.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RON MEYER, PRESIDENT AND COO, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS: The video library was affected and damaged, but the -- our main vault of our motion picture negatives was not. Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost. We have duplicates, and obviously there's a lot of work to replicate what's been lost, but it can be done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LONG: Now, authorities are investigating water pressure problems that forced the crews to pump water from lakes and ponds on the back lots.
LEMON: More than 50 contests down, just two more to go. The presidential primary season ends tomorrow with contests in Montana and South Dakota.
After a big win yesterday in Puerto Rico, Hillary Clinton is hoping for more. But polls show Barack Obama in the lead in both states. Wins tomorrow could put him very close to clinching the nomination. Our latest estimate shows he's just 46 delegates short of the magic number, 2,118. Thirty-one delegates are at stake tomorrow.
Hillary Clinton is in South Dakota today. Barack Obama, well, he spent the weekend there. CNN's Jim Acosta joins us now from Keystone, South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore.
I see, Jim, you've got some guys looking over your shoulder right there. You've been following these campaigns. What's your read on how this -- this campaign will end? JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, just imagine if Washington and Lincoln had to battle, you know, their rivals for the presidency the way Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have.
We are almost to the finish line. And about a day from now, they will be the midst of voting in both South Dakota and Montana. Thirty- one delegates up for grabs. You were laying out some of the numbers earlier. If they essentially split those delegates right down the middle, Barack Obama essentially only needs about a couple of dozen, maybe three dozen super delegates to get him that number, that magic number of 2,118 delegates to clinch that nomination, as you mentioned.
Barack Obama was in South Dakota over the weekend. Hillary Clinton is in Rapid City, South Dakota, right now. She's got a speech coming up momentarily.
But we want to take you to Barack Obama in Michigan. He is in Troy, Michigan, and is wrapping up a speech, an event there. And just a few moments ago, he talked about, and we heard some of this over the weekend, Don, his praise for Hillary Clinton. And he indicated that there might be a role for her coming up in the general election campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now I know that during this campaign in the primaries there have been worries about whether or not the Democratic Party will be divided after it's all over. There's been thinking, well, are the Clinton folks going to support the Obama folks and are the Obama folks going to get together with the Clinton folks?
Let me tell you something, first of all, Senator Clinton has run an outstanding race. She is an outstanding public servant. And she and I will be working together in November. That's No. 1.
But the other reason I know the Democratic Party will be unified is because, no matter what else happens, come November, when you go into that polling place, the name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: So there you have it, Barack Obama in Troy, Michigan. He is going to wrap up Tuesday night in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where the Republicans are holding their convention later on this summer. And Don, that is essentially Barack Obama throwing down the gauntlet to the GOP.
If he has the number needed to clinch the nomination, 2,118, he told reporters over the weekending he essentially will go ahead and announce that he considers himself the nominee of the Democratic Party.
Don, this all started about five months ago in Iowa in January. It is now South Dakota, Montana, here in June. Polls are closing an hour later in South Dakota and Montana tomorrow night. That's where all of this ends. And yes, throughout the duration of this campaign we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, Don.
LEMON: And that would be the ugly, right?
ACOSTA: Yes. Yes. Basically, you're right. And I'm just hoping that the hat doesn't block the heads behind me, because that's why I'm really here.
LEMON: Yes. I have never seen you...
ACOSTA: Well, I had to work in the hat. I'm sorry.
LEMON: I never seen you at a loss for words, but the ugly part got you.
Hey, you sort of summed up the question I had about approaching the finish line. You kind of answered that. But don't give it away. But I understand you have -- you caught, witnessed, a very funny moment about Barack Obama, his ears and Mt. Rushmore. And we're going to hear a little bit later on, at 3:00 p.m., in the 3:00 p.m. hour, about that.
Jim Acosta, we love the hat. Thank you.
ACOSTA: You're welcome. You got it.
LEMON: All right. All the latest on the campaign news that's right at your fingertips. Just go to CNNPolitics.com. We'll also have analysis from the best political team on television. It's all right there: CNNPolitics.com.
KEILAR: A new hurricane season is under way. Are you ready? Anybody ready? Lieutenant General Russel Honore helped pulled the Gulf Coast through that nightmare of Hurricane Katrina. And now he is on a new mission. He will join us shortly in the NEWSROOM.
LEMON: And facing big roadblocks, a CNN crew finds a way to get firsthand look at quake lake. That's in China. We'll show you what they found.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: You can see right there behind the monitor, we're all sitting here and we have something very special for you. Day two of the Atlantic hurricane season. And already, we've seen one main storm. Already, on day two.
Tropical Storm Arthur made its way across southern Mexico yesterday, dumping a whole lot of rain.
General Russel Honore, of course, we all remember him. He helped turn chaos into calm after Hurricane Katrina, and he has a new mission.
Hey, it's an honor to be sitting here with this home boy from Louisiana, my hometown. But you really took the helm there and got the situation on track during all of this. And out of that chaos you found your mission. And you're helping people. I guess, you know, you turned lemons into lemonade, so to speak, when it comes to your life and your mission.
GEN. RUSSEL HONORE, U.S. ARMY: Well, that's good one on words there, yes. Well, the idea is to help America build a culture of preparedness. And the future is now, and now it's hurricane season. And we need to focus on that and tornado season. So, one of the key parts of being prepared is being informed.
LEMON: Right.
HONORE: Gathering your plan. Make sure you know where you're going to evacuate to if you're told to evacuate. And know how you're going to get there. And create decision points for when you're going to leave, whether it's at hurricane warning or at watch.
LEMON: Let's take people through it. No. 1, first thing, first thing you should do if you're in preparation for a disaster?
HONORE: Develop a plan. And a part of the plan is where you're going to go and where other family members might go if they're not in town and you have to evacuate or in a different part of town and they can't link up with you. So where you're going to go, that's a part of the plan.
The other part of the plan is to have emergency food, about three days' supply.
LEMON: Before you get to emergency food, we want to get to that, because I know Chad and I were talking about this. And your question was, when it comes to know where you're going to go, you had a question about how do you get people to go?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Generally, I've been in so many hurricanes, as -- probably as many as you can count. People tell me, "I'm not leaving. I'm staying here."
I said, "Well, it's a mandatory evacuation."
And I said -- they say, "I'm not leaving, because if my house gets opened up, somebody's going to all steal my stuff, so I'm going to stay right here and protect my house."
HONORE: Yes, that's a...
MYERS: How do you overcome that?
HONORE: That is a dilemma. And hopefully, conversations like we're having here, lessons learned from Katrina, and Rita, and Wilma, people will become more conscious of the fact that they need to leave when advised by the National Weather Service and by their local mayor and governor.
People need to understand, Katrina was over 200 miles wide. It spun tornado storms out. So if the eye is arriving, maybe 100 miles from you, you're still in danger from -- particularly, if you're on the right front of the hurricane.
MYERS: Absolutely.
HONORE: it's going to destroy everything in its path.
LEMON: If people learned anything from Katrina, it is get out when people tell you to get out.
HONORE: Get out and take a neighbor with you or anybody else on the street who does not have transportation. Take them with you.
LEMON: OK, No. 2, you said food?
HONORE: Back to taking people with you. The ultimate human experience is to save somebody's life.
LEMON: OK.
HONORE: If you take a neighbor out with you that doesn't have transportation, you will get to experience that by saving somebody's life.
MYERS: You said you found that in New Orleans. The people that died, they couldn't leave. They didn't have any way to get there. They didn't have a car.
HONORE: There were people who made decisions late. Making a decision late is very bad. If you're waiting to see if the eye is going to come to your city, it's too late.
You have to take the warnings that are given out by NOAA, who does a fantastic job in the hurricane center, and the local mayors and governors, who want to tell people when it's time to leave. And when that happens, leave. And if you're able, when you're leaving, look for neighbors. You've got to have a plan for your pets. If you don't plan for them. And if they do take your pets, you have to have cages for them.
LEMON: We have a very short amount of time here. So that's that point: know the plan. And then your evacuation plan. But tell me real quickly: you said you got food and then also this stuff.
HONORE: You need food, but you also need food supplies at home, as shown back here. You need three days of food and water stored at home, just in case you lose power. You're told to stay at home; you're not told to evacuate; but you could lose power. As indication, Katrina, Jackson, Mississippi, stayed without power for several days.
LEMON: OK.
HONORE: So you need food and water at home. The other thing is an evacuation pack.
LEMON: Can I see that? HONORE: This is an evacuation pack for one. It sells for about $60 from the Red Cross. You can order it online. It comes with a lot of goodies.
LEMON: A first aid kit.
HONORE: Red Cross first aid kit. You've got some shelter materials.
LEMON: Are these papers -- are these your papers that you need, important papers?
HONORE: Well, important papers are very important. And cash.
LEMON: OK.
HONORE: Make sure you have cash.
LEMON: The ATMs go down.
HONORE: They won't work. This is a water bag.
LEMON: And then water. I have these little...
HONORE: OK. And this is the food. Now, the crafty thing that the Red Cross, being the world's expert on this, is they put food in here that you would not ordinarily take out as snack on a Saturday night and eat it.
LEMON: Make sure it doesn't taste good. OK.
HONORE: This is for survival.
LEMON: OK. General, we have to move on. But real quickly, the most important thing you said, a radio, notification and these are the...
HONORE: Being informed so you can make decisions. If you lose power, this little radio here or many of them on the market, these are all Red Cross available. Here's a...
LEMON: Charge it up like this.
HONORE: It has a charger on the side. You can charge your cell phone in it. And these are available at direct cost for, again, between $40 and $60. You can get a more fancy version that also includes the weather radio.
So get with your local Red Cross. They have this information. Be informed. Get your family ready. Get your neighbors ready. Hurricane season's coming. When they say evacuate, get out of there.
LEMON: You heard it. You're going to come back.
HONORE: And we're going to show people how to build a kit at home with a cardboard box. We ought to do that sometime soon. LEMON: General, we appreciate it. And I recently got a NOAA weather radio. I was talking to my neighbor, who is a single mother with two kids, and she needs one. So I can give this to her?
HONORE: Yes.
LEMON: Great.
HONORE: Courtesy of the Red Cross.
LEMON: Thank you very much, General Russel Honore.
HONORE: And join the Red Cross to be a volunteer, or give blood.
LEMON: Thank you, sir. We appreciate all that you did during Katrina.
HONORE: Thank you very much.
LEMON: Thank you very much.
LONG: Thank you. Terrific champion, certainly, for the Red Cross, as well.
Coming up, a story about being blocked by Chinese authorities. They found another way. A CNN crew treks up a mountain to see a dangerous quake lake for themselves. Their exclusive report is coming up.
And relief is in sight for the crew aboard the International Space Station. The Shuttle Discovery about to deliver a new pump for what? They're out-of-order toilet. We're going to bring you the docking, coming up a little bit later in the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LONG: On Wall Street, another chief executive of a big financial company is sent packing, and this time it's the head of Wachovia. Susan Lisovicz now joins from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with the details on this latest casualty of the credit crisis -- Susan.
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Melissa.
Robert Thomson spent 32 years at Wachovia, but he is CEO no longer, pushed out by the board of directors just about a month after he was stripped of his title as chairman.
Of course, he won't leave empty handed. The "Wall Street Journal" says that he'll leave with nearly $1.5 million in severance pay, along with $7 million in stock.
Thomson joins a growing list of ousted bank CEOs, including Chuck Prince of Citigroup, Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, Jimmy Cayne of Bear Sterns and just today, Washington Mutual stripped its CEO of it -- of his chairman title. So you are seeing a common thread here related to the mortgage meltdown and also the common thread of accountability when things go dreadfully wrong -- Melissa.
LONG: Point five million severance, the $7 million in stock. Pretty nice package to leave with.
In terms of Wachovia, Susan, of course, they have been really struggling with bad credit, mortgage losses. What is the situation right now in terms of Wachovia's bottom line?
LISOVICZ: Well, Wachovia says that the bank is well positioned to withstand even unprecedented conditions in the financial -- financial industry. It says it needs new leadership to rejuvenate the company.
Having said that, the numbers don't lie. The first-quarter loss for Wachovia, the nation's fourth largest bank, more than $700 million. It slashed its dividend by nearly half.
And then there's the issue of timing. Wachovia bought a big mortgage company just about a year before the housing market went terribly south. So Wachovia's shares have lost 35 percent. Year-to- date today, down about 3 percent.
And the market, overall, in this first trading day of June, having a rough time. We've got two economic reports. They actually came in better than expected but continue to show the U.S. economy with its anemic growth. Construction spending, Melissa, declining 26 straight months.
A separate report shows manufacturing sales growth for the fourth consecutive month. Within that report, inflation pressures building, revives the fears of stagflation. That's, rising prices in a slowing economy. An awful combination.
(STOCK REPORT)
LISOVICZ: In the next hour, Melissa, we said it for nearly every day over the past month about gas prices, but the streak is over. And that's not a bad thing. We'll talk about that in the next hour, Melissa.
LONG: It's wonderful news, in fact. We'll look forward to your report. Because usually we have to, of course, face the gloomy numbers. We look forward to some positive news out of Wall Street and out of the gas industry.
Thanks, Susan.
LISOVICZ: You're welcome.
LEMON: Speaking of numbers, Hillary Clinton knows the math, but she's still not giving up. We'll see where things stand with our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider, coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Melissa likes that music. We saw you head bopping in the --
LONG: A little.
LEMON: It's just past the bottom of the hour. We want to update you on some of the stories we're working on for you today here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
Dozens of family reunions about to happen in Texas. A judge is allowing the 400-plus children seized from that polygamist ranch to return to parents' custody. But the court order also allows child welfare workers to visit and interview the kids.
We're watching for developments from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina where Senator Edward Kennedy is undergoing surgery for his malignant brain tumor. The 76-year-old senator faces chemotherapy and radiation down the road.
No special effects here. New pictures of the intense and all-too real battle at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Firefighters battled a blaze yesterday that destroyed some famous studio sets, including the courthouse square from back to the future. Right now investigators are combing through the ruins, trying to pinpoint the cause.
LONG: And now let's check on some of the stories leading our Political Ticker at this hour.
It's the end of the presidential primary season. After a red eye flight from Puerto Rico, Hillary Clinton is spending the day in South Dakota. That state and Montana will hold the final two primaries tomorrow. Thirty-one Democratic delegates are at stake on Tuesday.
After a weekend in South Dakota, Barack Obama is campaigning today in Michigan. And as you may have seen live here on CNN earlier today, Obama spoke at a town hall meeting in Troy. The Democratic frontrunner blamed many of the state's economic problems on Bush administration policies. Michigan is expected to be a battle ground state in November.
John McCain took aim at Senator Obama today over the Middle East in a speech to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. That was happening in Washington. McCain painted his Democratic rival as naive about the region. The presumptive Republican nominee called for wider, tougher, pressure on Iran, calling that country the greatest threat to Israel.
LEMON: The weekend meeting of the DNC Rules Committee was meant to settle the issue of Florida's and Michigan's delegates and unify the Democratic Party. Well today, it is clear that only one of those goals at the most was met. The panel decided Saturday to seat both states' delegations at the August convention. But to give each delegate only half a vote.
Hillary Clinton's campaign is not satisfied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAROLD ICKES, CLINTON CAMPAIGN SR. ADVISER: I am stunned that we have the gall and the chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters.
(APPLAUSE)
ICKES: Was the process flawed? You bet your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) it was flawed. It's hard to find an election in the United States that isn't flawed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: And this response from fellow Rules Committee member, Donna Brazile.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONNA BRAZILE, DNC RULES CMTE. MEMBER: My mother also taught me -- whereas I am sure your mother taught you because you're clearly a fine man and a public servant that I've admire ford years -- that when you decide to change the rules, especially middle of the game, end of the game, that is referred to as cheating.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: A lot of Democrats, including some Hillary Clinton supporters, say the race for the nomination is over and Clinton lost. So, why is she pushing ahead? Good questions for our senior political analyst, Mr. Bill Schneider in New York.
So Bill --
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I'll settle. I'll settle it all.
LEMON: OK. You can -- if you can settle it, there's a bigger position for you than being a senior political analyst for CNN.
All right. So, will the Democratic race be over after tomorrow, or will this go all the way to the convention? That's a concern here and I think the DNC does not that to happen.
SCHNEIDER: Well, those are not the only two choices.
It may not be over tomorrow, but I don't think it's going all the way to the convention. Tomorrow there are only 31 delegates at stake, and Barack Obama, who is ahead in the delegate race, only needs about 45 or 48 to clinch the nomination. But he can't -- even if he takes every single delegate among the pledged delegates at stake in South Dakota and Montana, he still won't make it. You still have to have superdelegates make up their minds.
It may be over this week if we start seeing superdelegates lining up behind one of the candidates. They could shut the contest down and one of the candidates could claim a majority. I don't think it's going to go all the way to the convention, but I wouldn't count on everything ending tomorrow.
LEMON: Wow. OK.
So Senator Clinton keeps making the argument that she's got the higher popular vote count. I'm wondering if that's going to sway superdelegates. Remember the lesson we got on the popular vote versus the Electoral College and all that back in the 2000 general? So I'm wondering -- is that going to hold any sway over the delegates?
SCHNEIDER: Well the superdelegates -- it's their process, it's their party, and I'm not sure they're going to be swayed by the argument that she has more popular votes because the process works with delegates. Popular votes don't really matter in the determination of the nominee because you've got some contests that are caucuses. They are perfectly legal, but they have much smaller turnout than primaries. But they often choose at least as many delegates.
Iowa was a caucus; New Hampshire was a primary. The turnout is always bigger in a primary. So I don't think the superdelegates are going to be much affected by that. They understand the rules. They're their are rules. So I don't know that that argument is going to work.
LEMON: OK, Bill, set us up for tomorrow then.
SCHNEIDER: Well, you've got Montana, you've got South Dakota, two very small states. Only 31 delegates at stake. Even if Barack Obama got every single delegate, he wouldn't have enough to go over the top. So in the end it's going to come down to what the superdelegates are thinking.
And she's making two pitches to those superdelegates. One you just heard Harold Ickes make -- we was robbed. It's like the 2000 election. The insiders meeting in a closed room without any press gave, my god, four delegates, with only two votes by the way, to Barack Obama and this was an outrage. They stole the election.
I'm not sure the superdelegates are going to buy that.
The other argument is that she's more electable than Barack Obama. The polls are not so clear on that. They basically show both candidates are about the same when it comes to who is going to beat John McCain. They're both running a little bit ahead of McCain, but not a great deal. And neither one seems to have a decisive advantage.
LEMON: Bill, I like what you said -- the way you said that almost as much as your hats in the winter time. Can you say it one more time.
SCHNEIDER: What is that?
LEMON: We was robbed.
SCHNEIDER: We was robbed. That's what Harold Ickes said. Well he used the word hijacked. They're trying to create a sense of outrage that somehow the process was perverted because, they're arguing, the popular vote should hold sway. But it doesn't in the primary process.
LEMON: All right. Bill Schneider -- thank you very much, sir. Have a good day.
All of the latest campaign news right at your fingertips ,just go to CNNPolitics.com. We also have analysis from the best political team on television. It's all there -- CNNPolitics.com.
LONG: A veteran senator is beginning the fight of his life. We are watching for any developments out of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. Right now, that is where Ed Kennedy is undergoing surgery to treat his malignant brain tumor.
Later on, of course, Kennedy will face chemotherapy and radiation. And if he has his way, more politics and campaigning. In the statement today, Kennedy says -- and I quote -- "After completing treatment, I look forward to returning to the United States Senate and to do everything I can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president."
For now, experts say Kennedy faces an uncertain future.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
VOICE OF DR. TONY ASHER, PRES., CONGRESS OF NEUROLOGICAL SURGEONS: I think that there's really two factors that relate to his tumors that people need to keep in mind. First of all, these tumors are diffuse lesions, they are not discrete balls of tissue, if you will. It can be hard to explain to patients, but a patient actually one time gave me the best analogy I've ever heard.
They act like a tree root system. The edges will mix in with brain tissues, sometimes vital tissue, and you can't extract the entire tumor without causing unacceptable deficit. Even if you did, oftentimes, the timber can -- rather recur on the other side of the brain.
I think that the other issue is that the cells themselves have very creative ways of evading therapy. So these -- the cells themselves can be very, very difficult to treat with any therapy.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
LONG: Of course we are closely watching this story. We're going to tell you what Senator Kennedy is going through this afternoon, and also you will hear from a noted cancer survivor a little bit later in the afternoon.
LEMON: Blocked by Chinese authorities, they found another way. A CNN crew treks up a mountain to see a dangerous quake lake for themselves. Their exclusive report, coming up.
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LONG: They were stranded for almost three weeks. And now, after China's catastrophic earthquake, two injured miners have been found. They were airlifted out yesterday and taken for treatment. Now the area where they were picked up, it is rugged terrain and something our Wilf Dinnick and his crew found out firsthand.
Here is their exclusive report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILF DINNICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It has been cut off. Some of the hardest hit areas not yet seen close up. Many of the roads too dangerous, blocked by landslides, and by officials.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ask him if we can walk --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This path doesn't work anymore.
DINNICK: They worry about decomposing bodies, and the spread of disease in the rubble beyond here. We are blocked. But also down there, the biggest quake lake, that monster pool of water threatening to swell its banks (ph), flooding millions downstream.
We had to see it.
This is the only other way in. But officials refusing to take us. One last option, locals tell us, is over the mountains. But too tough, they say. Undeterred, we begged a few local guides. Helping carry our kit to broadcast live, some food and water.
The army cut a path for soldiers, the guides tell us, in case helicopters could not fly. But hardly a path. Mountainsides torn away.
Our producer, Samson Desta
SAMSON DESTA, CNN PRODUCER (on camera): Maybe it's a stupid thing that we're doing. But we're going to try to get up there. And see if we can get a quick peek at that lake. It's our understanding that no other foreign media has been up there, so hopefully we'll make it up there and then we'll show it to you.
DINNICK: And it is almost straight up. During breaks, debating whether to turn around. A six-hour hike. Finally, exhausted at the top, the view -- the quake lake. Parts of the mountain had poured down into that river, creating a dangerous dam. Those bulldozers down there, slicing through, creating a man-made river to ease out the water.
But it was on the way out we see nobody has been spared. Farms throughout the mountains demolished, appearing untouched since the quake. And then we stumble on this -- Beichuan County, revealing the awesome power of this quake.
What had not collapsed, barely standing. Locals believe thousands still buried here, where mountains cloud into the city. All the roads in and out, cut off. Officials have not even begun to clean this up. A rare view of the magnitude of this disaster.
We had made it. The first foreign journalists to get this view, to see what the people here now face. Difficult to imagine how to recover from this.
Wilf Dinnick, CNN, Beichuan County, China.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Wow.
Well in Pakistan, at least six people are dead, more than a dozen hurt, in aftermath of a car bomb attack outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad. The blast sheered off the embassy's front wall, blew out the windows and damaged nearby offices. No one has claimed responsibility, but al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently called for attacks on Danish targets in response to publications of caricatures depicting the prophet Muhammad.
A terrible accident today in the French Alps where the a train slammed into a school bus. That bus was full of children. Six middle school students are dead, at least 12 people are hurt. The children were on a field trip to a medieval site. French media sighted a Railway (ph) spokeswoman as saying crossing signals and gates were working properly.
LONG: And now a live picture from space of the international space station getting ready for an important rendezvous with the shuttle Discovery. The astronauts are bringing up an enormous lab, the size of a bus, actually. But they're also bringing up a gadget for their out of order toilet. We're going to see the docking coming up a little bit later in the hour.
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LEMON: Wow, these are always beautiful pictures. Look at that. Just amazing. Space shuttle Discovery, just minutes from docking with the International Space Station.
And we are watching so is our space correspondent, our space expert we should say, Miles O'Brien, he joins us now from New York.
And Miles, we're betting that this station crew can't wait for those hatches to open today.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT: Yes. There's an important piece on board the space shuttle Discovery. We're not talking about KIVO, the Japanese laboratory. As important as that is, that 35-pound pump that will get that toilet back in order, No. 1 priority.I think I've said that too many times but I keep doing it. Because I go for the cheap and easy stuff, always Don.
Let's go to live pictures now, shall we? Let me show you what you're seeing here. This -- you know, this is a live shot from the space station. This is the docking adapter on the space station -- or excuse me to the shuttle to the space station. The commander on board the space shuttle Discovery, Mark Kelly, is looking out of these windows right now and he is flying down an imaginary kind of funnel, a target, to bring these two craft together. And it looks like they're just suspended in, you know, suspended animation. Going 17,500 miles an hour, of course relative speed is the trick here.
Take a look at what happened a little while ago. We didn't get pictures fed down during it but basically what they do in the post- Columbia world, as they approach the space station, the shuttle does this rotational pitch maneuver, RPM -- we call it a back flip, somersault, whatever you like. And the idea is they get 90 seconds plus of photography time. The crew on board the space station gets 400 millimeter lens, an 800 millimeter lens, starts snapping pictures like crazy to see if there's damage to the belly of the space shuttle, as a result of launch.
We did see some pieces of foam fall off. NASA says they're not worried about it, but, you got to check, double-check, verify that kind of thing. They sent down some pretty cool shots of life on board the space shuttle Discovery just the other day.
LEMON: Oh, yes, look at that.
O'BRIEN: You know, food is always a big deal for these astronauts. That's Mike Fossum going through the food. You know, one of the things that they really like in space, Don, spicy things.
LEMON: Why is that?
O'BRIEN: Because, here's what happens. You get in space and you become congested because your fluids go to your head, essentially. And you don't taste things like you do on the ground. And so one of their favorite things is this spicy shrimp cocktail. That's just a little piece of trivia for you there.
LEMON: Well, we appreciate that, Miles O'Brien. And you were talking about -- you were looking at amazing pictures sent back from inside this craft. But there are also some really cool pictures that I'm learning that we have, and you can tell us about them, from Mars?
O'BRIEN: Yes. Let's go a little farther out into the solar system, shall we? From 200 miles in altitude to 170 millions miles away. A picture from the Mars Phoenix lander. Isn't this cool? You know...
LEMON: That looks like a footprint, I don't know.
O'BRIEN: Well, you know, this could start rumors, you know? We could draw in a you know, kind of a flip-flop there. You've heard of the face on Mars?
LEMON: Yes.
O'BRIEN: There's the footprint on Mars. It was actually made by the shovel. You see the shadow of the arm of the Mars Phoenix. It was just kind of touching down, getting the feel for the soil if you will. There's another image I don't have it here, but underneath the orbiter where the rockets are firing as it came down, it appears to have taken the dirt away and shows what appears to be a thick layer of ice. If that's the case, that's big news. Because that ice, as we've told you, water, ice, all of that stuff, is what leads you down the road towards possibly learning about life on Mars.
LEMON: Right. OK, so with that footprint, no Sasquach rumors that will go on for years and years and years?
O'BRIEN: No, let's not start that. Let's not be the ones to start that, OK.
LEMON: No urban legend? OK.
Hey, Miles O'Brien, we appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
O'BRIEN: You're welcome.
LONG: I don't know about you, but, could you warm, could you warm to price hikes and job cuts if it helps fight global warming? Well, the Senate is looking a climate change bill that critics say will cost you, will cost consumers.
We're going to have a live report coming up in today's energy fix segment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LONG: All today, the big story we've been following. Senator Ted Kennedy, in surgery, going in at 9:00 a.m. And we've just learned from a Kennedy family spokesperson, that he is out of surgery. An important surgery, a delicate surgery.
To find out more about it, let's bring in our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, to help us to understand just how difficult this now five-hour surgery likely was -- Sanjay.
GUPTA: Well you know, we're starting to get a little bit more in the way of details. Obviously five hours, a rather lengthy operation.
