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American Morning
Task Force Rejects Mammograms Before Age 50; Obama in China; Exclusive on Militia Life; Sarah Palin Pursuing Good Publicity
Aired November 17, 2009 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: It's 8:00 right on the nose here in New York on this Tuesday, November 17th. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING.
Glad you're with us today. I'm Kiran Chetry.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans, in for John Roberts. Here are some of the morning's top stories.
A major about-face on mammograms. An influential government task force now recommending most women under 50 should not be screened for breast cancer. And those self-examinations women have been taught to do for years? Forget about them. The new recommendations leaving millions of women wondering where to turn now.
CHETRY: Also, President Obama attending to one of our most complicated yet critical relationships, and that is our one with China. This morning, he's in Beijing.
But amid all the meetings, can the president count on the Chinese to help with Iran, with North Korea, the environment, and the economy? We're traveling with the president.
ROMANS: And militias and extremist groups are on the rise in this country. So, what's life really like inside a militia family? We're going inside one family's home this morning in part two of our special A.M. series, "Patriots or Extremists?"
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be "Lee and Kate plus eight plus a gun rack," I guess, I don't know. I don't know. Thank you, Emily.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Are you normal guys?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we don't have barbed wire or barricades or gun emplacements around the house. I mean, we're normal people.
I love that sound.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: They're kind of like "Leave It to Beaver" meets the "A-Team." Jim Acosta brings us their story.
We begin, though, this morning with stunning new government guidelines in the fight against breast cancer. A powerful task force of health experts going against decades of advice, now recommending: most women in their 40s should not be getting mammograms. So, what now? We're paging Dr. Gupta.
CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is joining us live in Atlanta now.
Sanjay, why these changes?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a little hard to say. I think it's worth pointing out that there is no new data really that's being looked at here. This is the same data that was reviewed five years ago and they're coming to a really different conclusion than was, you know, previously recommended. And I think that's why it's causing such shock waves to the medical community.
Now, it is worth saying, Christine, there's always been the sort of friction between what is good for the public health and what is good for individuals. Screening tests, while they can, you know, save lives and catch cancer early. They can also cause anxiety because of false positives. They can cause worry. They can cause biopsies that ultimately were not really necessary. That's sort of the rub here.
But, you know, in the past, what we've always heard is that the task force recommends women get mammograms and breast cancer screenings starting around t age 40 every one to two year. And now, what they're saying specifically is the same task force recommends against routine screening mammography in women age 40 to 49.
When we talk to them, Christine, they say, the operative here is routine. They say, "Talk to your doctor first, learn about the risks and benefits of getting a mammogram before getting one."
The problem is, you know, I'm a doctor. I talked to lots of other doctors about this. I think, you know, the recommendations ultimately aren't going to change. They're still going to say, our best advice is to still start getting that screening test around age 40.
ROMANS: And every patient is different. Obviously, a patient with a history of breast cancer in the family, doctors are going to be much more aware that a screening might be helpful.
You know, how is the American Cancer Society responding, Sanjay?
GUPTA: Yes, you're absolutely right. Women are -- everyone is different. And that is one of the challenges, Christine, I think you'd hit on exactly right, is that ultimately, we need to do a better job of figuring out who should be screened at what age. Maybe that's going to mean different tests for different women at different ages. But we're not there yet.
And the American Cancer Society feels very strongly about this overall in terms of what they're saying. They're specifically saying that, look, with these new recommendations -- the task force is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives, just not enough of them.
Christine, that's a pretty powerful statement, if you think about it. All the women out there right now with breast cancer, about 15 percent of them, found their breast cancer because of a routine mammogram. Think about what this statement means to them.
The task force is saying, "Yes, we know this can be helpful, just not to enough people." What about those people it did help? This is why it's so contentious.
ROMANS: And 85 percent of them did not find it through a routine screening or a routine mammography. So, that's kind of the flip side of that, I guess.
So, Sanjay, will insurance companies be able to claim that they won't have to pay for routine mammograms for women under 50 because it's no longer in the guidelines, it's no longer recommended?
GUPTA: Well, we asked that same question to the sort of trade organization, the lobbying organization that helps guide AHIP, the American Health Insurance Plans. And what they is, for the time being, they got no plans to sort of change their recommendations to the insurance companies.
But there are really two things. One is that they have sort of taken the guidance from this task force in the past, number one. And number two, it's hard to predict how this is going to play out one year to several years from now. You know, if they decide not to cover these mammograms for women at several ages, it's going to make it another battle between patients, their doctors, and insurance companies.
So, this is a -- that's the question they're probably getting more than other from a lot of -- a lot of our viewers today.
ROMANS: Talk to your doctor, I guess, right, Sanjay? I mean, the bottom line is you have to talk to your doctor.
All right, Sanjay...
(CROSSTALK)
GUPTA: Yes, you know, that's always the advice -- yes, let me just say, you always talk to your doctor, it's always the advice, but part of the issue: the doctors, nothing really changed in their minds between two days ago and today. There's nothing new for them to really say to these patients, "Oh, you know, now, we think you shouldn't get the mammogram." I think the advice in the eyes and hearts of most doctors is not going to change as a result of what's happened over the last 24 hours.
ROMANS: All right. Sanjay Gupta -- thanks, Sanjay.
CHETRY: Another story that we're following this morning is President Obama in China. It is now the third stop on a four-nation tour in Asia. He's already been to Japan, to Singapore. Later tonight, he's heading to South Korea.
But it is China that's arguably the most important nation to the United States. And President Obama spent yesterday encouraging China's president to join Washington in addressing the world's thorniest issues.
Here's our Ed Henry in Beijing.
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDET: Kiran and Christine, President Obama is the first U.S. president to visit China during his first year in office, a clear signal that he believes it's critical for these two nations to work together to battle the global recession and try and stop the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(on camera): In Beijing's bitter cold, President Obama was all about showcasing a new warmth with China, as he toured the historic Forbidden City and its Hall of Supreme Harmony.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Beautiful. What a magnificent place to visit.
HENRY: By the end of this week, Mr. Obama will have visited 20 nations, the most in the first year of any American president. Though he told Chinese President Hu Jintao in the ornate Great Hall of the People, their relationship may be most pivotal of all.
OBAMA: In this young century, the jobs we do, the prosperity we build, the environment we protect, the security that we seek -- all these things are shared.
HENRY: It was not, however, all sweetness and light. While Mr. Obama avoided a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington last night to not ruffle feathers before this visit, here in Beijing, he gently but publicly pushed the Chinese to cool tensions with the Tibetan spiritual leader.
OBAMA: While we recognize that Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China, the United States supports the early resumption of dialoguing between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama to resolve any concerns and differences that the two sides may have.
HENRY: And while they spoke of broad economic cooperation, Hu slapped at the U.S. for recently hitting Chinese tires and steel with new levies.
PRESIDENT HU JINTAO, CHINA (through translator): Our two countries need to oppose and reject protectionism in all its manifestations in an even stronger stand.
HENRY: But the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases vowed to work together to get concrete action on climate change at a summit next month in Copenhagen.
OBAMA: An accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect. Now, this kind of comprehensive agreement would be an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution to our climate challenge.
HENRY (on camera): But the Chinese president stopped far short of endorsing new sanctions against Iran, though both sides are pledging cooperation to try and work to stop North Korea's nuclear program, just a couple of days before Mr. Obama visits South Korea, the final stop on this long Asian journey -- Kiran, Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: Ed Henry for us -- thanks.
We also want to mention that Ed Henry is going to be interviewing President Obama tonight in Beijing. We'll have that interview for you tomorrow morning right here on AMERICAN MORNING, starting at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.
ROMANS: The governor of New York thinks it's a terrible idea to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists back to Manhattan to stand trial. Governor David Paterson says the White House warned him six months ago this could happen. And while most Democrats support trying the suspects at a federal courthouse near ground zero, Governor Paterson believes it would be too much of an ordeal for New Yorkers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. DAVID PATERSON (D), NEW YORK: This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn't just attack. It's anxiety -- and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country.
Remember, our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11th, 2001. And New York was very much the epicenter of that attack, only over 2,700 lives were lost. It's very painful. We're still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site. And having those terrorists tried so close to the attack is going to be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Some family members of 9/11 victims are already on record saying a trial will help them heal if they can witness it in person in New York.
CHETRY: Also new this morning, the military taking a hard look at itself. The Army is reportedly can conducting an internal investigation to find out what led Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim man, to allegedly murder 13 people at Fort Hood and whether the Army missed warning sings, some related to his extreme beliefs.
ROMANS: Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen has been told he has cancer. His investment firm tells CNN that he's undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. This comes 25 years after Allen left Microsoft for radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin's disease.
CHETRY: Telling the other team it's number one. Well, in a certain way, I guess you could say. It's gotten Tennessee Titan's owners Bud Adams a quarter of a million dollar fine from the NFL.
See that, when you say number one, you should use your index finger. It gets you in less trouble. The 86-year-old owner was spotted making a couple of obscene gestures towards the Buffalo Bills as he celebrated Sunday's win. Commissioner Roger Goodell was at the game, even had breakfast with him earlier. Adams issued an apology saying, he caught up in the moment.
ROMANS: Even one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood is now a victim of the housing crisis. Oscar winner Nicolas Cage has lost two homes in New Orleans with a total close of $7 million in a foreclosure auction. The city says he owed close to $6 million in mortgage payments and another $150,000-plus in real estate taxes.
CHETRY: Wow.
Well, for all of us who love dogs, you've got to check this out. It's so adorable. A hero's welcome for a then-lieutenant. He had just returned home from a five-month tour in Afghanistan and his best friend could not contain himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get him!
(INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gracie. Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: See, she's Gracie.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gracie?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I told you.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gracie, do you remember daddy (ph)? Honey, do you remember, daddy?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you're going to make me cry?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honey, do you remember daddy? I missed you so bad. Honey, I'm sorry so sorry I went away. I missed you so bad.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: It's so real. It's so real. I mean, that is just pure emotion.
The video is actually from 2005. And during the past several days, it's really become a YouTube sensation. In an interview, Andrew Schmidt, he's now a captain, says that he knew that he was home when his Gracie, his golden retriever, came running out.
ROMANS: Remember how little kids, your family, you know, imagine -- that's the pet. Imagine how people's kids are when they come home.
CHETRY: Yes.
ROMANS: It's amazing.
We are going to talk about more Sarah Palin kicking off her media blitz to sell her book, "Going Rogue." She was on "Oprah," sat down with Barbara Walters, ABC later this week.
What did we learn that we didn't know about Sarah Palin and what -- what's she selling us? Is she selling political aspirations? Is she selling a book? Is she trying to write her legacy?
We'll talk about it -- next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONAN O'BRIEN, TV HOST: The other day, Sarah Palin said she'd like to have coffee with Hillary Clinton. Now Hillary is saying, she looks forward to it. Now, the two have agreed to meet at the never- will-be-president cafe.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Sarah Palin back in the monologues and headlines. Her new book, "Going Rogue," is out today. She was on "Oprah," sat down with Barbara Walters as well.
So, how much Sarah Palin is too much Sarah Palin?
Joining us now to talk about it, public relations consultant, Ken Sunshine from San Francisco; media strategist, Glenn Bunting.
Ken, let me ask you first. What'd you think about her performance yesterday?
KEN SUNSHINE, VETERAN PUBLIC RELATIONS CONSULTANT: It's -- she's doing what she needs to do to sell books and appeal to her base. Look I work with a lot of people selling books. That's what you do, go on Oprah, do Barbara Walters, you go to the people that are going to buy your book first and you -- I don't think there's anything more. I don't think she's running for President by doing what she did, she might eventually. But has a long way to go to be taken seriously for candidate.
ROMANS: When she was a candidate for vice President, she had this famous interview with Katie Couric that many people said just stoked all of this, all of this concern among her base, but also derision among democrats that he didn't know what she was talking about. Listen what she talked about that Katie Couric interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My friend opens the curtain for me to get backstage and there's the perky one again with the microphone and the cameras rolling. And I'm like, dang; just give me a couple minutes --
OPRAH WINFREY, HOST: The perky one, you mean Katie?
PALIN: With all due respect, yeah.
WINFREY: Because you're pretty perky, too.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Glenn, was that a dig and was that too much? What did you make of that?
BUNTING: Yes, I thought it was too much. You know, this is a chance for Sarah Palin to reintroduce herself to the American people. And she ought not to squander it by taking shots at Katie Couric or the media or these anonymous McCain campaign staffers. You know, I think that the Katie Couric interview was a bad one for her. She should be honest and humble about it and she should move on and talk about the things that she wants to talk about.
ROMANS: You say her original advice to her after the campaign would be to go back to Alaska, to get more experience, to think more about policy. She did go back to Alaska, but she resigned the governorship. Now what do you think she should be doing and what kind of a -- what kind of image should she be cultivating?
BUNTING: Well, you know, it depends whether she wants to be a pundit or whether she in the back of her mind wants to run for President? If she wants to be a pundit, sex sales and she's got a lot of salacious things she can talk about.
But if she wants to be taken seriously, I think it's an opportunity for her to sit down, figure out what her core convictions are, and really demonstrate to the American people a level of sophistication and intelligence that's kind of been lacking. I mean I think she's widely seen as a lightweight and I think this is a chance -- many people get the opportunity to kind of rewrite and to start over. And she has that chance right now. So she ought to be studying things about policies and things that she's interested in that show a different Sarah Palin.
ROMANS: And you know what Ken, we don't know what she wants to do. We don't know if she wants to right books or she wants to be a pundit or a TV host as some has said or if she has a future in politics. She was asked about 2012, she said, all I know for sure, and she's said this before. All I know for sure is that my son is going into kindergarten.
Meanwhile, a CNN opinion research poll shows that 28% of Americans polled think she's qualified to be President, ranking her below Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Hilary Clinton, and others. You can look at that poll a couple of ways. She's not a candidate for office, you know, national office, yet 28% of the people think she is qualified, but a lot of other people think she isn't. What's next for Sarah Palin?
SUNSHINE: You know the fact that you're guessing, publicly, and lots of other pundits are, makes her a winner here. You know, right now, I think she's having a little fun zinging it to the people that she thinks didn't serve her well. And also selling a lot of books and becoming a media darling. And she has become, in a weird way, a media darling.
I don't think it's conceivable she would ever become President, but she's going to titillate everybody for a while and I think frankly she's doing a masterful job.
ROMANS: Well she's going to be a national figure, and so would you be recommending she do these sorts of things? That she does Oprah and Barbara Walters? Is she overexposed? Does she open herself to risk that there's a gaffe or something?
SUNSHINE: To sell books, she's doing exactly what she needs to do. To become President, she ought to -- like Glenn said, she ought to study the issues and become a little more sophisticated. She's not doing any of that.
ROMANS: OK, Ken Sunshine, public relations consultant. Thank you so much. And Glenn Bunting, media strategist, thanks you, both of you, Kiran.
CHETRY: All right well still ahead, the government may have -- no way -- overpaid to bail out AIG? Some new questions and some new accounting. Stephanie Elam minding your business next. 19 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: A little Green Day to get you going at 8:21 this morning, Eastern Time. Welcome back, plenty of us have done it on Face book and now it's official. Unfriend. What is this? Is the word of the year, right? It's even the word of the year. It's being added to the dictionary at the folks at Oxford University. Unfriend, is to remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook. Other finalists this year were Netbook, that's a small lap top sexting, no, no, no. That's sending sexually explicit text and pictures with your cell phone. That'll get you grounded. And perhaps arrested.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: Or divorced.
CHETRY: And all of them have to do...
ROMANS: Or unemployed.
CHETRY: Exactly.
ELAM: Have you ever unfriended somebody?
ROMANS: Only once. Some weird, weird viewer.
CHETRY: I just gave up the whole Facebook thing, got a little weird.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You don't have a picture.
CHETRY: I have a picture. But there's all these non sanctioned sites that have cropped up that are not really mine.
ELAM: They're not really you.
CHETRY: Yes.
ELAM: I see.
ROMANS: Stephanie Elam is here "Minding Your Business."
ELAM: I friend everybody on my Facebook page.
ROMANS: There are really interesting conversations, I think on our Facebook page -- I've only had to unfriend one person who was inappropriate.
ELAM: Well if they're in appropriate I like to know where the crazy people are. And keep those people closer -- I don't want to unfriend one person who was inappropriate.
(CROSSTALK)
ELAM: I like to know where they are.
ROMANS: You keep them.
ELAM: All right, let's move on and talk a little bit about business here and what is going on with AIG in the eyes of the special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout money. That would be Neil Barofsky. Well he's taking a look at how the bailout was handled for AIG and basically what he's saying is that the fed didn't throw around its weight enough when it came to bailing out AIG. Here's what's basically happened. As the housing bubble collapsed or popped in 2007, banks had all of these bad assets, we were talking about those, on their balance sheets. They went to AIG and said, hey, give us some collateral, help us out. So AIG did that, as an insurer, that's what it does, but when it did that, it started hemorrhaging tens of billions of dollars. And so therefore being deemed too big to fail, someone needs to do something, so the fed steps in.
When that happen, the fed didn't negotiate any concessions with AIG's business partners, these banks, so $62.1 billion of tax payer in AIG funds was basically funneled to these 16 banks. You just got a menagerie there on the board in front of you.
ROMANS: This is your taxpayer money going twice to AIG. First a bunch of these banks got their own bail out. And then we bailed out AIG and then AIG paid billions more through the back doors to these banks again. And make people crazy...
(CROSSTALK)
ELAM: Well here's the reason...
ROMANS: And the treasury didn't do anything to stop it.
ELAM: Here's the thing though, what they're basically saying, is that when we did this, we didn't want there to be a drop in the overall rating of AIG, because then the bank could still collapse. And at the same time, they could have asked for concessions so at least one of these banks would say, hey, we're willing to work with you and pay less for this. We'll go and get less because they had the bad assets on their balance sheet. This were the banks.
So in essence, it actually looked like they're bailing out the banks. It worked like a bailout for these other 16 banks. So basically Barofsky is saying that all the limitations of a regulator, that's how the fed acted, but didn't take the benefits of it. If you want to read more about it, cnn.com
(CROSSTALK)
CHETRY: They didn't use their clout. They didn't use their leverage when they had it. Now all these people are screaming about banks like Goldman Sachs got paid twice with your money and it wasn't fair.
ELAM: Fourteen billion dollars for Goldman Sachs, apparently.
ROMANS: Stephanie Elam, thanks. And you might want to see this. A camcorder, a Bugatti. Is that how you say it, Bugatti? See, I wouldn't know, it's so expensive, $2 million.
Catching the luxury sports car plunge into a marsh, priceless. Here it is, two guys in Texas had their video camera trained on the most expensive car in the world when all of a sudden it swerves into a salt water lagoon. The owner got out okay, but the same can't be said about his new car. East come, easy go, baby. The owner told police he dropped his cell phone, went to pick it up, and was then startled by a low-flying pelican.
CHETRY: All right, it looks like they salvaged the darn thing, right?
ROMANS: The car is worth $2 million and your cell phone and a pelican send you...
CHETRY: leave the cell phone alone if you're driving the car.
ROMANS: I wonder what his insurance company says about that. You could have a clause in your insurance contract that could say, if you're texting while driving...
CHETRY: Right or hanging out in high-pelican areas. The bottom line, if you can afford $2 million for a sports car, you can get a new one.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: We do not pay if there's a pelican...
CHETRY: Yes. $2 million for a sports car -- get a new one.
(CROSSTALK)
CHETRY: Two million dollars for a sports car is a little bit over the top.
ROMANS: I guess, or if you can afford it -- call somebody back later.
CHETRY: Exactly.
ROMANS: You're running things, aren't you?
CHETRY: All right, well, we're going to talk more about what it's like when you have a husband, you've got eight kids, you've got 22 guns in the house, and you're basically a family of militia members. Jim Acosta goes visiting, 26 minutes pass the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Twenty-nine minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Since President Obama's election, there's actually been a record increase in militia activity here in the U.S. and a lot of people are asking, who exactly are the people that are joining these groups?
ROMANS: Jim Acosta joins us now with part two of our a.m. series, "Patriots or Extremists?" Jim, you went to the home of a leader in Southeast Michigan, right, volunteer?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right.
ROMANS: Tell us about.
ACOSTA: Lived to tell the tale, and just a go, to show you that these folks are not what meets the eye. This gentleman that we went home with is a postal worker in Detroit, downtown Detroit. So he's trying to change the way people see militias.
And you said it, the militia movement is growing in this country. And most of these groups are highly secretive. Their members rarely talk to reporters, but the leader of one militia took us home to try to change some of that. He invited us home to get to know him and his family. Giving us an up close look at what it's like growing up in a militia.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEE MIRACLE, MILITIA LEADER, SE MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER MILITIA: Emily, we only fight over the important things, baby, and spinach pie.
ACOSTA (voice over): It's dinner time, and Lee and Katrina Miracle have their hands full. For starters, they have eight kids, ages 6 to 18.
(on camera): With eight kids, you've had combat experience.
LEE MIRACLE: Oh, we've had more than combat experience with eight kids.
We're practicing target acquisition.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Then there's Lee's weekend hobby, leading training exercises once a month for the southeast Michigan volunteer militia.
LEE MIRACLE: It would be "Lee and Kate plus 8 plus a gun rack" I guess, maybe, I don't know.
ACOSTA (on camera): Are you normal guys?
LEE MIRACLE: Yes, absolutely. We don't have barbed wire or barricades or gun emplacements around the house. We're normal people.
I love that sound.
ACOSTA (voice-over): For the Miracle family, normal includes keeping more than 20 guns in the house, not all of them under lock and key.
ACOSTA (on camera): And this is one of how many in the house?
LEE MIRACLE: Twenty-two, I think.
ACOSTA (voice-over): And they bring their children, like 13- year-old Megan, on militia outings.
ACOSTA (on camera): And they use the weapons, they use the firearms?
KATRINA MIRACLE, WIFE OF LEE MIRACLE: Sure, they've all shot, from the youngest to the oldest.
ACOSTA: And the youngest is how old?
LEE MIRACLE: Six.
ACOSTA: Six-year-old?
LEE MIRACLE: Yes.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Even six-year-old Morgana.
KATRINA MIRACLE: I do want to point out though that she's not using it by herself. She's being highly supervised.
ACOSTA (on camera): Are you raising them to be in the militia?
LEE MIRACLE: No, that's their choice. Megan, of course is, she's already in, as far as I'm concerned.
ACOSTA (voice-over): The Miracle family is out to show there's more to the militia than what critics see, gun-toting extremists venting their frustrations at the government.
From Lee's YouTube page...
LEE MIRACLE: When you hear a story about the militia in the media, this is probably the image that you get, a crazy guy with camouflage on and a wacky helmet holding a rifle. I'm here to show you a different picture.
ACOSTA: ... to his job as a postal worker.
ACOSTA (on camera): Is there a little irony in that, being in a militia and working for the federal government?
LEE MIRACLE: Not at all.
ACOSTA (voice-over): But this self-described "happy warrior" admits he's angry at the government, suspicious of the Obama administration's stance on gun rights, and even opposed to health care reform, which he deems unconstitutional.
LEE MIRACLE: But I'm really angry when 300 million other people are not as angry as I am. So I blame -- a lot of my anger is directed at America as a whole, because they are letting this happen.
ACOSTA: Lee Miracle believes a well-armed population is the best defense against government excess.
LEE MIRACLE: What's one good thing about today?
ACOSTA: Growing up in a militia might not be everybody's idea of the all-American family, but it is for them. KATRINA MIRACLE: What do you want for dinner tomorrow?
LEE MIRACLE: You want taco salad or something?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: The Miracle family is not alone in its militia outings. Every year in the fall, the militia in Michigan welcomes other families to its exercises on the first weekend after Halloween. Why Halloween? Well, they use the left over pumpkins for target practice, of course, and lot of target practice, lots of pumpkin flesh flying through the air.
CHETRY: It makes it easier for the squirrels to eat.
ACOSTA: Exactly, that's right. No clean up.
CHETRY: All right, Jim, a very interesting look, by the way. And your story has generated a lot of buzz, actually on our show blog. It's very interesting some of the comments that we've been getting. You had a chance to look at them too.
ACOSTA: We looked at the comments. Here's one from Lynn. She asked, "Is it legal to have that many guns in a house with children?" And I did look into this. The answer is, yes, in Michigan it is legal.
And she says, "as well as allow them to use it at such an early age." She says, "That's pretty dangerous and someone should do something about it."
Joseph says, "These militias are patriots, but would be seen as extremists when leadership fails them. We are government by our vote," and that's a comment we heard time and again, not exactly in those words, but that the people are the government is something that you'll hear often from folks in militias.
They believe that the Constitution protects their rights through this sort of thing, and they're bent on doing it. They're not going to be stopped.
ROMANS: And the Constitution protects their rights to have a gun in their home in most places in the country.
ACOSTA: Absolutely.
ROMANS: All right, Jim Acosta. Thanks, Jim.
ACOSTA: You bet.
ROMANS: You can keep those comments coming. You can check Jim's blog at CNN.com/amfix.
In part three of the series, we go to Las Vegas to go behind the scenes with an organization called Oath Keepers. It's a group of ex- law enforcement officials and military veterans who say they've sworn an oath to the constitution, not the president.
They have a list of ten specific orders they will not obey. One is to confiscate weapons. Jim Acosta will tell us the rest of that story tomorrow. I can't wait.
CHETRY: All right, it's 34 minutes past the hour. We check our top stories.
President Obama is in Beijing this morning. He's trying to win some help from China's president in addressing some of the biggest world concerns. Among them, Iran, and also a place that China is heavily invested.
At a news conference last night, the president said that Beijing has agreed that Iran has to show that its disputed nuclear program is peaceful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We agreed that the Islamic Republic of Iran must provide assurances to the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful and transparent.
On this point, our two nations and the rest of our P5 plus 1 partners are unified. Iran has an opportunity to present and demonstrate its peaceful intentions, but if it fails to take this opportunity, there will be consequences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Later today, the president is expected to do some sightseeing before heading to South Korea. It's the last stop on his four-country tour.
ROMANS: The six crew members on the space shuttle "Atlantis" have been up for about four hours now. During day two they're checking out the shuttle's heat shield, getting ready to dock with the international space station. "Atlantis" and the ISS will link up tomorrow. The crew is bringing spare parts that should add years to the station's life.
CHETRY: Some scary numbers for parents out there. Half of all 16 and 17-year-olds who own a cell phone have used it behind the wheel. More than a quarter of those admit that they've been texting while driving. Boys and girls are equal offenders. Those numbers courtesy of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life project.
ROMANS: So a lot of us have our cyberlife and our real life, but the line between them is really starting to blur. We tweet where we are, what we're doing. We post personal pictures, we blog about our vacations, politics, movies, sports. Just about everything.
CHETRY: And now some say with each click, we're really giving away our privacy bit by bit. Our Jeanne Meserve talked to some people that learned that the hard way that once something's online, it's up for grabs.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dick Hardt put photos of his Hawaiian wedding on Facebook to share with close friends. But when he made mention of it on Twitter, he didn't know a link would be attached, giving more than 3,000 followers access to some rather intimate images.
DICK HARDT, INTIMATE PHOTOS SHARED ONLINE: We didn't think they were offensive in any way, but my wife didn't prefer for everybody to see those photos.
MESERVE: While his case was embarrassing, others are downright dangerous. Sarah Downey was horrified when a picture of her young daughter was hijacked from her Flickr account and used in a sexually suggestive Portuguese language profile on Orchid.com, a social networking site.
SARAH DOWNEY, ONLINE IMAGES OF HER DAUGHTER STOLEN: It broke my heart. It broke my heart.
MESERVE: Downey posted a translation to warn other Flickr users, but then, she says, total strangers exploited the Internet to find her phone number and, worse, her home address.
DOWNEY: We would go to the grocery store and I would wonder, has this person seen my daughter? Are they here, you know, trying to find us, trying to get close with my daughter?
MESERVE: Since then, Downey has tried to protect her private information. Has it worked? With her permission, we gave her name to Steven Rambam, a private investigator who harvests information from the Internet. In less than 90 seconds, he turns up 100 pages of possible links.
STEVEN RAMBAM, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: Frankly, anything you'd want to know about this young lady seems to be available on the Web.
MESERVE: On sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, more and more Americans are making their private information public. Put it together with public documents like newspaper accounts and property records and a portrait emerges.
Take Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Using free, publically available information on the Internet, a Fordham University Law School class came up with 15 pages of information, including Scalia's home address and phone number, even the movies and foods he likes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we were willing to spend $100 for the project, we would have been able to acquire far more intrusive, far scarier information.
MESERVE: Private investigator Rambam says anytime you hit the "send" button your information is no longer your own. He says your frequent flier program, movie account, book purchases, even some searches can be tracked, stored, and sometimes sold.
RAMBAM: I have a window into your soul. I know what you believe, I know what you think, I know who your family is, I know who your friends are. I know your politics.
MESERVE (on camera): Orchid.com says it has updated its policies and tools to find and remove fake profiles like the one of Sarah Downey's daughter. And Google says it gives customers the tools they need to protect their personal information. Many of us could be more careful.
In addition, some privacy experts would like to see standardized and simplified website privacy policies or even government restrictions on secondhand use of private information.
MESERVE (voice-over): Steven Rambam sees a lot of positives as to having so much information on the Internet and says the genie is already out of the bottle.
RAMBAM: Ten years from now you're going to have a choice of getting used to minimal privacy or subleasing the Unabomber's cabin. That's going to be your two choices. The fact of the matter is there's nowhere to hide.
MESERVE: As Rambam puts it, privacy is dead. Get over it.
Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: OK, a new report to tell you about. A lack of exercise, apparently, is not to blame for teen obesity. It's not a lack of exercise. A surprising study from Dr. Gupta, that's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. A CNN special investigation reveals why four Iraqi prisoners were shot execution style in 2007 at a Baghdad canal. Three U.S. army sergeants were convicted of gunning them down.
CHETRY: Some are asking this morning, was it murder or was it battlefield justice? CNN obtained nearly 24 hours of extraordinary army interrogation tapes that detail the crime and also talked to a soldier who says the sergeants did the right thing.
Special Investigations Unit Correspondent Abbie Boudreau is here with us with a preview of her series, "Killings at the Canal, The Army Tapes." It actually begins tonight on "A.C. 360." It's really an extraordinary case, and, as we said, with all of this interrogation tape, it's fascinating.
ABBIE BOUDREAU, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT: It's a really complex story. The soldier we talked to was one of the last people to see the men alive. He describes how his first sergeant decided not to take the four Iraqis they had just captured to a detainee center. He feared they would be released since there was not enough evidence to hold them.
I asked Joshua Hartson what happened before the men was killed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSHUA HARTSON, FORMER ARMY PFC: My first sergeant comes up to me and pulls me away from everybody. Then he asks me, if we take them to the detainee facility that they're going to be right back on the streets doing the same thing in the matter of weeks. He asked him if I had a problem if we take care of them, and I told him no.
BOUDREAU: And what do you think he meant by that?
HARTSON: To kill them.
BOUDREAU: How could you be OK with that?
HARTSON: They were bad guys. If we were to take them in, we risked the chance of them getting out and killing us, killing other people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOUDREAU: The four Iraqi men were then lined up next to a Baghdad canal and killed. All three sergeants were eventually convicted of premeditated murder.
For our special, we take a hard look at the army's policy for detaining prisoners in our four-part investigation, "Killings at the Canal, The Army Tapes." It begins tonight on "A.C. 360."
CHETRY: Fascinating. Abbie Boudreau, we won't miss it. Thank you.
Still ahead, heavy rain, there's snow, there's flooding, strong winds, in fact 95-mile-per-hour winds recorded out west. Our Rob Marciano is keeping track of all the hot spots for us. He gives us his complete extreme weather report in just a moment.
It's 44 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Good morning, Chicago. It's 46 right now, a little bit cloudy; a little bit later, showers, 48 degrees for a high. So not really changing that much. A little gray in the Windy City today. But, hey, that's not the worst of it.
Rob Marciano is tracking extreme weather for us. Where are we clocking 95-mile-per-hour winds, Robby?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, if you're hanging out on the beach along the Oregon coastline, that's what they had yesterday.
Hi, good morning again, guys. Quite an impressive storm system both on the East Coast last week with Ida, or the remnants thereof and in the West Coast last night. And in the middle, this little guy has kind of been sitting and spinning by itself; no real steering mechanism with it. You can kind of see it's not really, it's not really moving all that much.
And the back side of this certainly has a little bit of snow with it. So a very wet snow and most of the winter weather advisories with this thing have since come to an end or will in the next 10 to 15 minutes.
But some of the rain -- snowfall totals fairly impressive. Morrowville, Kansas, 12 inches; Haddam, Kansas, seeing eight inches; Baileyville, seven inches; and Beattie, seven inches as well; and Dawson, Nebraska, seeing similar numbers.
But nothing compared to what we saw out west. There's some storm damage in western Washington, which saw also a battering of winds the last day and a half; a really a series of two storms doing some wind damage here. Sporadic power outages are mostly because of obviously the trees coming down. But not quite as bad as it was for last year's November and December storms across the Pacific Northwest.
But it's not over. There's a series of storms out here that will be rolling in. And I think Thursday may very well be the worst of it.
As far as what you can expect on the East Coast, today, I was mentioning, this thing's kind of sitting here. Because you've got strong air, strong high pressure right here, just going to kind of block it.
So I think it will dry across the northeastern third of the country, probably for the next day and a half, maybe even two days. So good looking fall weather shaping up for you folks right there. No 95-mile-an-hour winds for the big apple. So you have that much to enjoy.
You see there's still a few leaves on the trees there in Central Park and they'll hang out there for the next couple of days, it looks like, basking in probably to mostly sunny skies.
CHETRY: Yes.
ROMANS: There's garbage bags in the trees in Central Parks too.
CHETRY: Oh no.
ROMANS: When the leaves go away, then you start to see the litter. It's really horrible.
CHETRY: But you know what? That huge wide shot we had, it still looks pretty for a while there.
MARCIANO: It does, from here, at least.
CHETRY: I know, thanks, Rob.
MARCIANO: Ok, guys.
ROMANS: Ok, he sure was full of bull, and now some of that bull is on the auction block. Bernie Madoff's beautifully restored 55-foot fishing yacht named "Bull" is the prize catch in a private auction this afternoon. Twenty-nine people have put up $100,000 deposits just for the right to bid.
Also off the block, Madoff's 38-foot runabout named "Sitting Bull" and 24-foot console named "Little Bull." His Mercedes is up for grabs, too. Proceeds from the sale of the boats and the car and all of the stuff will go to investors who got burned in Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
CHETRY: All right, there you go. I sense a theme.
ROMANS: Yes, exactly.
CHETRY: This is an interesting one. We've all talked about kids these days, what they do is sit around and play video games, they're not outside. When we were little, we used to run around and they call us in for dinner.
It turns out, it's not necessarily that teens are exercising less or being less active. It's actually what they're shoving in their mouths.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta with a surprising study next. Fifty minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: All right, TV and video games get a lot of the blame for the rising obesity among American teenagers, right? But a new report says the amount of food we eat may be more to blame than how much exercise we get.
CHETRY: Yes I mean, you and I -- we're still playing Frogger and Pacman and we still played outside.
ROMANS: Exactly.
CHETRY: CNN chief medical correspondent...
ROMANS: I remember Pacman.
CHETRY: Do you remember that? Donkey Kong?
ROMANS: Yes.
CHETRY: Did you have a Commodore 64?
ROMANS: Oh yes, yes.
CHETRY: Manm times have changed.
ROMANS: The APPLE2E (ph). CHETRY: Yes, well, Sanjay Gupta joins us right now with more details. You know it's funny, because we do blame the sedentary lifestyle. What did you say?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That I ran too -- to at the arcade, I think, when we are kids.
CHETRY: I know, if it weren't for ski ball, we'd all be obese. What about the fact that it's not necessarily how much they are not moving, but how much they're shoveling into their mouth?
GUPTA: Well, this is really interesting here because there are some surprisingly logical conclusions out of this new study, looking specifically at this question. We talk about obesity all of the time. And we have assumed that -- and part of this is because of more sedentary behavior.
Now, the new study showed that really over the last 17 years, kids, teenagers and adolescents have actually become slightly more active than in years past. So that was the first surprising thing. And that's also the good news.
The bad news is that we are still much more obese. And the conclusion is that it probably has a lot more to do with diet than we thought. So diet, a much bigger role when it comes to the obesity epidemic especially among kids.
Part of that is portion sizes as you guys might guess. When we talk about some average dishes for example: spaghetti, 20 years ago, 500 calories, you have one cup of pasta, some meat balls, 500 calories. Over here 20 years later, double the number of calories, just a much bigger portion size. That's how foods are competing really based on size.
Another commonly-eaten foods: Cheeseburgers, again, back 20 years ago, 330 calories; almost double that now 20 years later in 2010. And finally just really quick, breakfast food as well. Bagels, this is something it's always surprising I think to a lot of people. First of all, they were much smaller, just three inches. That would look like a mini bagel now. That's the way they were 20 years ago. Now six inches and again, more than double the number of calories.
Look, you know no one is saying that teenagers, adolescents are getting enough exercise, but what this study out of Hopkins is really concluding is you break it all down, distill all this information down, diet has a much larger role with regard to obesity than we previously thought.
ROMANS: Sanjay, your teenager getting ready for school right now. You're the parent of a teenager; what does this mean for the average teenager out there and their parents?
GUPTA: I think there's a message for teenagers and their parents. One is that it's great that we're getting more activity, spending less time in front of the screen, which again I think is surprising to a lot of people. But to really focus on calories, even starting at a younger age maybe than we thought before.
I think a lot of the thought was, you know, the clean your plate club, as long as you're getting activity, you'll be okay. But portion sizes have made that equation and that sort of philosophy a little bit more moot than in years past. You've really got to watch portion sizes.
Also, there's another message here as well, which is that socioeconomics do play a role here. Part of the reason these portion sizes have gotten bigger is that restaurants and fast food places compete with the size of food much more so than the cost. So they give you bigger portion sizes for the same cost and people who are living, you know, closer to the poverty line are going to be more affected by that.
So socioeconomically, dietary, portion wise, there's lots of different factors to sort of pay attention to.
CHETRY: Another big one, I see the kids walking around with huge, huge sugary sodas. Back in the day, you had a little cup. It was a 22-ounce soda. Now they're this big. They're like tubs of soda.
GUPTA: No question. And it's amazing how many calories you can get in those tubs of soda. There are some sodas out there that kids eat that actually have their entire day's calories in one drink.
ROMANS: Even the car companies have had to redesign the interiors of cars to keep up with how much stuff we're driving around with. These huge -- it's amazing how it's changed. Put some of it back.
CHETRY: Yes. Some of it -- some food for thought, let's just say.
GUPTA: Eat less. That's good.
CHETRY: I didn't do that on purpose. It's just, cliche Tuesday. Thanks, Sanjay.
GUPTA: Thanks guys.
ROMANS: It's 56 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: That's a pretty shot. You can't even see all the paper bags Christine was complaining about, the plastic bags in the trees in the park. It looks beautiful; at least from that high up.
Before we say good-bye, one more shot of New York City. It's 47 degrees and cloudy; a little bit later though we're looking for some afternoon sun, 54 for a high.
ROMANS: And you can continue the conversation on today's stories. Go to our blog at cnn.com/amFix. Right now, it's straight over to Heidi Collins -- hi, Heidi.
