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Campbell Brown

Arizona Shuts Down Ethnic Studies Program; Shocking String of Attacks in China

Aired May 12, 2010 - 20:00   ET

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

JOHN ROBERTS, ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Campbell Brown is off tonight. I'm John Roberts.

What a difference a few months can make. Take a look at the picture of the day today, Presidents Obama and Karzai side by side at the White House, downplaying tensions and pledging to work together in the war on terror.

I've talked with one reporter who says the war is not winnable unless we end the drug trade that is bank rolling the Taliban.

But the story that continuing to divide the country tonight is immigration. Arizona the state that brought you America's toughest immigration law is at it again. The governor has just signed a controversial new bill. One that would shut down the Tucson School District's ethnic studies program. Is this an approach that could spread across the country?

Also tonight the latest on a shocking string of attacks in China, why are armed intruders rampaging through kindergarten classrooms.

And later, do-it-yourself genetic testing coming soon to a Walgreens near you. Is it a potential life saver or prescription for DNA distress?

Now, we've got lots to get to you tonight and we being with the number story in the country, the latest on the Gulf oil spill. A shocking charge today from Representative Henry Waxman that BP knew that its well was having problems hours before that deadly blast.

Also today, we saw new video of the spill itself that went from the web to newscasts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That yellowish geyser is a mix of oil and gas spewing from the ocean floor. The darker is gets the more oil there is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today on Capitol Hill, a congressional panel zeroed in on the piece of equipment designed to stop the accident that killed 11. The blowout preventer, a 450-ton emergency brake on the oil flow that didn't work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even a battery in this case, the one control panel we did find the battery wasn't working, correct?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what we were led to believe, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Congressional investigators produced a confidential BP memo titled "What We Know" that points to a hydraulic leak in the blowout preventer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the largest oil and oil service companies had been more careful, 11 lives might have been saved, and our coastlines protected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Experts have said the total cost of the spill could range from $2 billion to $14 billion, maybe even higher depending on when the leaking well is finally closed.

But the story that grabbed our attention tonight, brand new uproar on two fronts in Arizona. First, Los Angeles has become the nation's largest city to approve a boycott of the state because of the new immigration law, and now Governor Jan Brewer is under fire for signing another controversial bill today. This one bans the teaching of ethnic studies in the Arizona schools.

The states school superintendent has long pushed for the law because he believes courses such as Mexican-American studies divides students by race. I spoke with Margaret Garcia-Dugan. She's Arizona's Deputy Superintendent of Schools and Cathy Areu. She is the publisher of "Catalina Magazine" and a contributing editor for the "Washington Post" magazine. She has a masters in Education and author of "Latino Wisdom."

Margaret, let me start with you, the driver behind this was the Chicana or Mexican-American studies in the Tucson school district, what is wrong with the program?

MARGARET GARCIA-DUGAN, SUPERINTENDENT, ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF SCHOOLS: Well, what's with that program is that it divides students based on nationality and we believe that what they're doing is teaching students that they are oppressed in this classroom and first of all, we don't believe that that's a good way to teach students is to separate them based on nationality or ethnicity, and also to teach them that they are oppressed in living in this country.

ROBERTS: Well, how does it separate them by nationality and by race and how does it teach them they're oppressed?

DUGAN: Well, by the very nature of -- they have classes, courses, RAZA, which translates to the race. First, Hispanics, the books that they are using in that classroom, one of them is "Occupied America" which teaches the kids they are living in Mexico, and this is a country that was taken from them, and that they need to take it back. We believe -- ROBERTS: We spoke with the author of that book, Rodolfo Acuna (ph), who says that "Occupied America" is just an historical reference to the Spanish invasion, got nothing to do with Arizona.

DUGAN: Well, there's also a quote in there that's very disturbing to me that says that says "to kill the gringo" and to me that is very disturbing that we have students being referenced that type of information.

ROBERTS: Let me bring in Cathy if I could here, Cathy because supporters of the program say they're connecting students with their cultural past, there's nothing in here about teaching resentment against another ethnic group or against another race. What do you think of what Arizona is doing?

CATHY AREU, CATALINA MAGAZINE: Well, I think what Arizona is doing what s what it has been doing. I think it's an anti-immigrant movement. I think that Governor Brewer is acting like Governor Wallace from Alabama from the '60s and I think her signing this bill today just shows that they're moving more toward -- it's actually anti-Mexican movement. I don't know if you'd say anti-immigrant movement. It's anti-Mexican and they're saying it's for the sake of education and enlightening the children but it's not, it's purely political.

ROBERTS: Margaret, this has actually caught the attention of the United Nations. They released a statement of what's going on there in Arizona calling it "a disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants." This together with the recently passed immigration law, are Latinos under siege in your state?

DUGAN: Well, it's unfortunate there was a timing of 1070 also, but we have been looking into this curriculum for the last four years. I am Hispanic descent and when I went to the public schools, they taught me and taught other students of our Hispanic descent that we could go to our public schools and be successful and go on to college and be whatever we wanted to be in this country because it was the land of opportunity, not that we were oppressed by the democracy of this country.

ROBERTS: Cathy, a couple of news organizations have taken a look at these programs going back to 2006, AP found a Hispanic rights activist told students in the classroom that "Republicans hate Latinos." The "LA Times" also reported that some of these classrooms have revolutionary posters and slogans on the walls. You heard what Margaret just said. Can you see some might be uncomfortable with what's being taught in these classrooms?

AREU: Well, I was a high school teacher. I have a masters in education and I taught in two states in the south and you always meet some rogue teachers, you might see some teachers saying things that are not always exactly appropriate, but that doesn't necessarily mean the course work is bad or that the actual books are teaching inappropriate matters, So I don't think the school system in Arizona was teaching such inappropriate coursework that now it had to be outlawed or had to be banned from the schools. That's impossible. I'm sure many principals had walked into those classrooms and saw that it was appropriate.

DUGAN: If I could interrupt I went down to Tucson after the Dolores Squarta (ph) gave the speech that said "all Republicans hate Latinos." I went down to speak to give the counter to that argument. When I gave my speech and it was not to indoctrinate them to any political view, but to tell them to think for themselves, research, and then make their decision.

These students half way through my speech got up, turned their backs to me, their mouths were taped and walked out. The principal had no control of those students. They walked out, treated me with total disregard of a guest. I, in my 30 years in education, I've never seen students treat a person, a guest in a school the way I was treated.

I would say that they did not learn that at home from their parents. They learned that from teachers in that school, from the type of teaching going on in that school about the political ideology that's in those classrooms.

ROBERTS: Cathy, you want to make one more point then we got to wrap it up.

AREU: I have to disagree. You can't say all of the opinions of students have in life comes from the classroom, from a teacher. We only have them a small part of the day. The majority is spent watching TV, hanging out with their parents and hanging out in society. So you can't say the opinions were formed because of one ethnic class and one statement from one woman.

ROBERTS: Folks, we're going to hear a lot more about this and we'll keep watching the story very closely. Margaret Dugan, Cathy Areu, thank you for being with us tonight. I really appreciate it.

Coming up next, Arizona is not the only state where ethnic tensions in the classroom are suddenly heating up. Temperature are escalating in California days after students were sent home for the crime of wearing clothing displaying the American flag.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Ethnic tensions are not just dividing Arizona. Last week, we told you about a group of teenagers who got in trouble at their California high school for of all things wearing the American flag on their clothing, but it was on the traditional Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. It is turned into a furor that's dividing the town of Morgan Hill and as CNN's Dan Simon shows us tonight time seems to have done nothing to heal the wounds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It began when Austin Carvalho and four of his friends showed up at school wearing American flag t-shirts and red white and blue bandanas. They wore the colors on Cinco de Mayo, May 5th holiday, that is widely celebrated by Mexican-Americans was viewed by school administrators as incendiary. So the students were asked to flip over their shirts and hide anything to do with the American flag. Three of them refused and were sent home.

MATTHEW DARIANO, WORE AMERICAN FLAG: They told us basically we either take it off or they're going to, or we get suspended, they threatened us with suspension so we all decided we were going to leave school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a lot of Mexican friends. I don't dislike Mexicans, but I think we should be able to wear an American flag whenever we want.

SIMON: And so a controversy was born.

DONNIE CROW, PARENT: It's crazy. It's crazy, the day you're getting kicked out of school for wearing red, white and blue. Come on.

SIMON: Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, is 40 percent Hispanic. The following day 100 students, most if not all Hispanic skipped school and marched to City Hall saying they had been disrespected by their fellow students.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not that they were sitting at the bench having lunch minding their own business. They were actually taunting other kids.

SIMON: That accusation those students denied. But by then the incident had blown up. Watch as an American flag is ripped off a pickup truck in the middle of the student protest. The school district pleaded for cooler heads, but at the same time acknowledged it was wrong to tell the students to remove their American flags.

(on camera): The principal later apologized, saying a mistake was made but the damage was done. Tempers on both sides have been elevated ever since which leads us to what's happening inside this gymnasium.

MARK ZAPPA, PARENT: This was no small infraction. There was not a speeding ticket. I want to see the principal and the vice principal fired or you will face legal action. Thank you.

SIMON: What school board members hoped would be a healing event turned into a shout fest at this board meeting Tuesday night. Student Teresa Corona said the administrators made the correct call.

TERESA CORONO, STUDENT: On the fourth of July, you don't see the Hispanic students going down the parade wearing Hispanic flags.

SIMON: The debate went on for more than an hour. JOY JONES, PARENT: Please know the students were not making a political statement.

JULIAN MANCIAS, PARENT: I would rather be here discussing the constitution than discussing what happened if a kid would have got injured on that campus.

SIMON: In the end school board members wanted the forum to serve as a teaching moment. Instead, it spotlighted what appears to be a deep division. Dan Simon, CNN, Morgan Hill, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: And with me now to talk more about this controversy and the controversy over the ethnic studies action in the state of Arizona is Philip K. Howard. He's the author of "The Death of Common Sense, How Law is Suffocating America."

So you heard, Philip, what a lot of the parents had to say, it would be ridiculous to tell a kid he can't wear an article of clothing just got the American flag in place on it. You might think school administrators have taken leave of their senses saying you can't wear that but you come down on the opposite side.

PHILIP K. HOWARD, AUTHOR, "THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE": Absolutely. I think the people who run schools ought to have wide latitude to enforce values of those schools just as they do in charter schools and other schools.

And if the principal thinks that wearing the flag in this context was disrespectful, maybe in the same way as walking on a flag or burning a flag, particularly on this holiday, I think the principal ought to be able to enforce values that say we're not going to have a racially tinged statement in clothing or otherwise, just as public schools in New York ban the wearing of certain kind of gang bracelets or other things because they get people riled up. I think the principals ought to have that authority.

ROBERTS: Some people would think equating an American flag t- shirt with a gang bracelet that is a little bit of a stretch.

HOWARD: Well, maybe not. Maybe not when it's Cinco de Mayo and maybe not when the kids are really flashing it in the face of the other Spanish kids, and the American flag is meant to be a symbol of honor and freedom, not meant to be a bandana, with all due respect.

ROBERTS: But you heard the debate over the other issue, the ethnic studies bill in Arizona banning ethnic studies, takes aim particularly at the Tucson School district and a study program they had there. Do we really need to get the law involved here?

HOWARD: No, again, this is sort of madness. If they are really teaching subversive things in the school there are other mechanisms in democracy to fire the people, for the school board, to overrule the educational materials. I don't know if they are or not, but the notion we're going to pass state statutes every time somebody doesn't like something that's being taught in a school, I mean why don't we just descend into some giant horrible jungle of law, which is where we're going anyway for everything in society. What ends up happening is not healing but what you saw in the town meeting. This is people yelling at each other.

ROBERTS: I first read your book, it's got to be more than a decade ago now I think since then are we getting more mired in the law or losing even more common sense?

HOWARD: Completely. You see it at every level. You see it with kids being suspended because they wrote on a desk with a magic marker and led away in handcuffs, which happened recently in Chicago. You see it with Obama riding into Washington on a white charger, really I think meaning to change things and immediately gets stuck in the goo. There's legal goo, you can't do anything.

ROBERTS: All right, Philip K. Howard, it's always great to talk with you. Thanks for coming in here.

HOWARD: Great to be here.

ROBERTS: Really appreciate it.

Tonight, the White House and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, they appear to be playing kiss and make up as President Obama talks about when U.S. troops will start coming home.

Also why are the children of China being murdered in their own classrooms? The latest on a savage attack all part of a horrific trend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: A top international story tonight. President's Obama and Karzai and their Kumbaya moment at the White House today. To hear them tell it there are no tensions at all between Afghanistan and the United States. The story played out differently on the network newscasts this evening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Karzai is getting the red carpet treatment on this trip to Washington, it's part of a charm offensive by the White House as it seeks to reduce tensions that became so heated in recent months that Karzai reportedly threatened to join the Taliban if U.S. officials didn't start treating him with more respect.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For all of the attention and name calling recently the two men said they stand side by side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are in a campaign against terrorism together. There are days we're happy and days we're not happy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president today claimed that the U.S. is starting to reverse the momentum of the insurgency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just days after his aides charged the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the Times Square attack. The president declared terrorists had become a cancer inside Pakistan's borders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: President Obama says the United States is on track to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July of 2011 but there will be a long-term relationship with Afghanistan for years to come. He's also predicting things are going to get worse in Afghanistan as far as attacks on U.S. forces go before they get better.

With me now to take a closer look in Afghanistan and our future there is Gretchen Peters. She's the author of "Seeds of Terror, How Drugs, Thugs and Crime are Reshaping the Afghan War" and Brett McGurk, with the Council on Foreign Relations. He served in the National Security Council under Presidents Obama and Bush.

Gretchen, let's start with, a real change from the way things were about a month ago, real change from the way they were about six months ago. They certainly made a move to look at if they have made up their differences but have they really?

GRETCHEN PETERS, AUTHOR, "SEEDS OF TERROR": Well, I think both sides are trying to press the reset button, if you will, and start over before what's going to be by all expectations a very heavy summer in Afghanistan, particularly as an offensive gets under way in Kandahar, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, and Hamid Karzai's home province.

But the big question really is going to be, how well they continue to work together. It's one thing to have, to play nice at a press conference. It's another thing to continue to work together well, when there is a major offensive under way and that still remains to be seen, John.

ROBERTS: And on that point, Brett, is to whether or not they can work together, what do you think is going on behind the scenes? What's going on outside of public view here?

BRETT MCGURK, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: The one thing they're trying to do here is there is a lot of history here. Afghanistan, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, they say, you know, the only thing worse with dealing with adversaries is dealing with our friends.

And when viewed from those capitals to Washington the only thing worse than being an enemy of the United States is being a friend. You know, Americans want things so fast sometimes our capabilities are limited. So we're trying to get on the same wavelength of what's coming up over the six months.

So behind the scenes we're talking about the offensive in Kandahar Province, which is going to be happening. President Karzai will be launching a reconciliation initiative with elements of the Taliban trying to wean away the rank and file fighters, the fighters that Gretchen has written about and covered so extensively from the leadership.

And that's going to be happening over the next six months. We want to make sure we're on the same page so we don't get these public disagreements and spats, which would really hamper our policy over the last few months.

ROBERTS: Gretchen, two big issues when it comes to the United States and Afghanistan, corruption and the drug trade, is Hamid Karzai doing enough on either one of those fronts?

PETERS: Well, on corruption he has proved to be a relatively unreliable partner. What's most worrisome of his behavior is not just refusing to get rid of political allies and cronies and members of his own family that are accused of being - of protecting and participating in the opium trade, but pardoning a number of political allies who actually had gone through the Afghan court system and been convicted of involvement in the drug trade.

That sends, in my opinion, a very, very bad signal from the top. At the same time, I think there is much broader understanding on the part of the Obama administration and the U.S. military that a lot of the reconstruction and development efforts that Washington has funded for years has really fueled this corruption and again, the reset button needs to be pushed in terms of not throwing around money in ways that fuel corruption across Afghanistan.

In terms of the drug trade, again, this is very corrupting in any country whether it's Mexico, Columbia, Afghanistan. It's going to be very, very difficult to combat this problem, to replace corrupt police officials and other officials with clean ones. It's going to take time. I think the American public needs to be prepared for the fact that that's going to take a lot longer than 18 months.

ROBERTS: You know, another big issue is of course the Taliban and what to do about the Taliban. Hamid Karzai last month surprised people when he stood up he was giving a speech saying, you know, if the United States keeps interfering or foreign powers keep interfering in our government, the Taliban becomes the legitimate resistance in Afghanistan and I might just join them. Certainly took a lot of people by surprise raising again the question of what kind of a partner is he?

MCGURK: Well, you know, I spent some time with Hamid Karzai. He's a biting, dark sense of humor, that was said in a private meeting with some parliamentarians. I'm sure he's saying these Americans can drive me mad. I might drive the Taliban. I don't think he was serious about it.

However, that's not a good thing to say given that we have Americans on the ground who are fighting for his government. He has to be careful. I mean, there's a lot of audiences. The July 2011 date President Obama wants to send a message to the American people, we're not going to be there forever and to the Afghans you need to get your acts together. However, that date has been seen in the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the Americans are heading for the exits as they did in this part of the world after the soviets left. So there's a long memory. They want to know we're here to stay. That's what you heard from President Obama today. Strategic partnership, we're going to formalize that partnership.

ROBERTS: Long-term commitment.

MCGURK: Exactly right. They're trying to rebrand it and we're watching the next six months.

ROBERTS: Brett McGurk and Gretchen Peters, thanks for coming in tonight. Good to see you both. Thanks.

Coming up, another deadly attack on children in China. A shocking story that has devastated parents and has them asking who is going to protect our children? How could it possibly have happened for the sixth time now?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Our number one global story tonight is one that led all of the morning shows and is still one of the most popular stories on Google news. An 8-year-old boy who is apparently the only survivor of a plane crash in Libya that killed more than 100 people. A doctor at the hospital where the boy is being treated tonight tells CNN his name is Ruben Van Assouw (ph).

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's been undergoing surgery at a hospital in Tripoli. He's apparently Dutch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His only words the doctor said were "Holland, Holland." His parents and 11-year-old sibling did not survive.

He has several fractures in both legs, said a doctor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The flight had taken off from Johannesburg, South Africa with 104 people on board. It was due to land in Tripoli then fly on to London's Gatwick Airport.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: The hospital in Libya tells CNN the boy suffered multiple fractures and is sedated now after surgery.

In China today, parents are desperately trying to make sense of a nightmare that played out in a school, the latest in a spree of attacks on small children. This is what happened. A man with a meat cleaver stormed into a kindergarten classroom where 20 kids had just begun their day. He killed seven students and the two women who ran the school in Shaanxi province and then later killed himself. Incredibly, it was the sixth vicious assault on children in China in just eight weeks. Our John Vause is at the hospital in Hanzhong City where parents have been sitting vigil.

John, as a parent, it's stunning to think that this has happened yet again. What do we know about the killer in this case?

JOHN VAUSE, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're learning a few more details about Wu Huanmin (ph). He was 48 years of age and he was a big man, 6'2." He was heavy set man and there is this preliminary investigation out there by police which reportedly says there was a dispute between Wu and the owners of the kindergarten. He was their landlord. He lived just a few doors down.

Apparently, he wanted the kindergarten to move out of those premises at the end of last month. The lease had expired. Apparently, he was angry that they hadn't left but doesn't really explain why a man like that would pick up a kitchen cleaver, a meat cleaver, walk six or seven doors down to that building and then go on a killing spree leaving nine people dead, John.

ROBERTS: As we said, John, this is the sixth time that this has happened. Are there any theories that connect all of them? As you said the fellow in this case lost it because he was upset about something, but what about the other five?

VAUSE: There are no direct links between these attacks but there certainly are similarities. All the attackers are men, middle-aged men. There appears to be some kind of grievance involved. At least three of the attackers had a history, according to state media, of some kind of mental illness. But there seems to be a theory emerging in all of this that the problem here is a lack of justice, an inability to vent some kind of frustration, because of corruption within the local system. There's no real court system, which these men can go to where they feel as if that they have a grievance, they can be justly heard. There's no protests allowed here in this country. There's no freedom of speech. People here can't vote. So if you're angry with the government, well, you can't get close to government officials because security is too tight. So that really just leaves women and children.

ROBERTS: John, what's the government saying about this, if they're saying anything?

VAUSE: So far we haven't heard from the central government, but local officials in this city have ordered an increase in school checks, in school security. As far as the central government is concerned, they've clamped down on all reporting of this story.

We know the government censors have kicked in. There's no reporters here. There's no local reporters covering this story because it seems that the government censors have ordered all state- controlled media or mainland China to only run with the official Xinhua state news agency copy which is a very minimalist story. It just reports the bare facts, nothing else, and that's because they're worried about copycat killings. They're worried if there is widespread reporting of this, it may inspire another attack, but then it gets back to well why would it?

ROBERTS: Really is unbelievable. John Vause for us tonight from China. John, thanks so much.

Well, coming to a drugstore near you, a genetic test to see if you're at risk for life-threatening diseases. But does the home DNA kit actually open up a whole can of genetic anxiety?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Coming up, a major security breach at one of America's most secure airports. But it wasn't discovered until the plane touched down in the Middle East. But first, here's Tom Foreman with other stories in the news tonight. He's got the "Download."

Hi, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John. Tonight an up close look at the oil gushing nearly a mile under the Gulf of Mexico. BP reluctantly released this video after pressure from CNN and other news organizations. The video shows oil spewing to the sea from the broken well. Today, the congressional investigation into the disaster revealed massive equipment failures on the rig just hours before that blast.

Just a short time ago, Vice President Biden spoke about his son, Beau, the Delaware attorney general who is recovering from a mild stroke at a renowned hospital in Philadelphia. Here's what the vice president had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's doing great, thank God. He'll be back to work and they're going to make him rest probably for four weeks. Good luck getting them to do that. He's in great shape.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Tonight, doctors say Beau Biden is fully alert and has full motor and speech skills.

Today, protesters tried to attack a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog drew death threats. The cartoonist, Lars Vilks, was about to deliver a lecture at a Swedish university when the demonstrators erupted in anger. Police used pepper spray and batons to fend off the protesters. The cartoonist was not injured.

The mothers of three American hikers in an Iranian prison are one step closer today to seeing their children. They now have the visas that will allow them to travel to Iran. The hikers had been detained for more than nine months now charged with espionage. Their families maintain the three accidentally strayed across an unmarked border into Iran -- John.

ROBERTS: It's great that they've got some good news for a change, isn't it?

FOREMAN: They've been waiting quite a while.

ROBERTS: Tom Foreman tonight with the "Download." Tom, thanks so much. Good to see you.

Coming up, buyer beware. Your local drugstore is about to sell do-it-yourself kits to test for a variety of life-threatening diseases. But is it a good idea to test your own DNA?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Our number one tech story tonight, oops, they did it again. Apple seems to be having a lot of trouble keeping its next generation iPhone under wraps and blogs from New York to New Zealand are burning up with the news. A Vietnamese Web site has video of what it says is an iPhone 4G prototype, which the bloggers at Mashable (ph) think is probably the real deal. They differ slightly from the one that you'll recall surfaced on Gizmodo last month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have the front camera, which is probably there. Two volume buttons are now separate. The hole outside is metallic instead of plastic, bottom dock connectors is the same. The SIM slot has moved from the top to the side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Such a fascination. We'll be able to see the new iPhone for ourselves soon enough. It is scheduled for release this summer.

Well, this Friday, drugstores across the country will be offering customers a real dose of controversy, over-the-counter DNA tests. Genetic information can be yours in the privacy of your own home, information on about whether you're at risk for Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, and other life-threatening conditions. Consumers would swab their saliva, which contains their DNA, and then send it to a laboratory for results. But just how accurate are these tests, and will they be opening up a Pandora's box of confusion?

Joining us now is Art Caplan, the chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Art, great to see you tonight.

ART CAPLAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: How are you doing?

ROBERTS: Walgreens is going to be selling these things. I guess you either swab or you spit in a cup or something. You send it off. Should we all run down to the corner drugstore and get one?

CAPLAN: I would not. I think that if you look at the accuracy of testing right now, what we can do is look for a few conditions, pretty rare ones in general, and most of the things that you're going to be able to get information on, sadly there's not much you can do to change the risk factors. So if someone comes back and says yes, you're at a little higher risk of Alzheimer's disease than the average person, you know, there's not much you're going to do. If somebody says you're a little higher risk of diabetes, well, you can exercise and lose weight but to tell you the truth, you can do that anyway without spending a few hundred dollars on a genetic test.

ROBERTS: What about somebody, though, who has a family history of disease, breast cancer, for example. Would this be good for them?

CAPLAN: Well, you know, I think, John, that's the place where genetic testing right now does have a role. If you have a pattern of disease in your family, and you see that your grandmom and your sister and a first cousin all have breast cancer, and you may want to get some genetic testing done. But I would suggest head to a reputable genetics program at a hospital. This isn't the sort of thing where you want to kind of spit in a cup and get a printout back. It's more complicated. You're going to need some careful counseling. And right now, it's not clear whether that counseling is going to be coming from competent people without a lot of extra charges if you do the home test kit.

ROBERTS: Art, genetic testing even if it's done in a doctor's office, is it really ready for prime time yet?

CAPLAN: You know, for certain rare, unusual conditions, strange genetic diseases that afflict a few families, do terrible things, I think we can do some genetic testing that will really help them make some reproductive choices and sometimes give them a special diet that might help. For the most part, we're not quite there yet.

I think if you look at our samples, we've looked at genes, you know, in maybe thousands of people for diabetes or other diseases, but we don't have big samples from Japanese-Americans, Indian-Americans, Native Americans. We in a sense have to do a lot more work just to pull together a broad demographic before we're going to know what the prevalence of genes are. My attitude is you know what? There are about nine or ten things you can do to stay healthy, do them. Right now, you don't really need much in the way of a genetic test unless you have a family history.

ROBERTS: You know, that would seem so simple to just do those simple things to stay healthy and yet so many of us don't do them.

Hey, Art --

CAPLAN: Well --

ROBERTS: Pathway genomics is the company that makes the spit in the cup or swab test, whatever they're calling it.

CAPLAN: They're calling it Spitomics (ph).

ROBERTS: Spitomics (ph), OK.

They have been quite up front in saying that this has not been approved by the FDA. That this is more consumer information than it is a medical test. So if it's consumer information, of what real value is it?

CAPLAN: Well, there's a little bit of hint here that maybe you could find out if your great ancestor somehow or another had an oddball condition. I don't see it as consumer information. I think that's a little bit of a dodge. I think we've got basically health information here.

ROBERTS: Yes.

CAPLAN: People are going to be interested because they're going to think it's medical and right now, again, you don't have the accuracy in the testing.

ROBERTS: Yes.

CAPLAN: We don't have the counseling in place and remember, John, too, you're giving your DNA over to a private company. If they get bought or someone merges with them, I'm not sure what's going to happen to your DNA samples.

ROBERTS: Yes, so privacy is a big issue. Let me come back to what you just said briefly on this idea of counseling. If somebody finds that they have a genetic disease, they go to a reputable doctor and they get it all done. Do they get some counseling to say, OK, here's what you're at risk for and here's what you should do about it and this test would just leave you up to your own devices?

CAPLAN: More or less, unless you pay additional fees which get pretty steep, you're going to get an 800 number with the extra fees on the Spitomics (ph) test. If you go down to a reputable doc and have a genetic counselor there, you're going to have a face-to-face meeting.

ROBERTS: Yes.

CAPLAN: Right now, I think that's the way to go with genetic testing.

ROBERTS: Art Caplan, great to see you. Thanks for coming in tonight. Really appreciate it.

CAPLAN: Good to see you, too, John.

ROBERTS: All right.

Up next, a colossal security breach at one of the nation's busiest airports. A suitcase packed with an arsenal of weapons including two handguns gets through security and on board a plane at New York's JFK. Someone has got some serious explaining to do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: The story that's burning up the political blogs tonight, the return of fool for love, Mark Sanford. South Carolina's governor and his Argentinean soul mate are apparently back together. Sanford and Maria Belen Chapur were spotted in the Florida Keys over the weekend. So is the Sanford soap opera headed for happily ever after? Over to you, governor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MARK SANFORD (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: As a matter of record, everybody in this room knows exactly who I was with. That is no mystery to anybody even what I said last summer. And you know the purpose was obviously to see if something could be restarted on that front, given the rather enormous geographic gulf between us. And time will tell. I don't know if it will or won't, but what I do know is this. The obsession with one person in my life needs to come to an end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: And the Sanford saga continues right now. After right now, right after at least the governor said that, his ex-wife Jenny Sanford announced that she is stumping this weekend for the woman who is running to replace him, gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.

And it's time now for our very own debate team of Mary Matalin and Roland Martin with their take on the must know issues of the day. Guys, what have you got for us tonight?

ROLAND MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, John, thanks a bunch.

A crazy story out of New York, Mary. A man gets on a plane at JFK, checks bags loaded with bullets and 0.9 millimeters and all kinds of other stuff and flies to Cairo, Egypt, where he is detained. Where in the world is the security? What's the whole point of checking the doggone bag and have them scan it?

MARY MATALIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And you know what? When he got to Egypt, he's being detained and questioned in the state security apparatus. Do you think they read him his Miranda rights?

Look we have to take these lone wolf whatever they're being called, these terrorists, this is where Al Qaeda and those who would wish us devastating harm are going to, these lone wolf acts. Now, I'm sure Mr. Obama, President Obama will come out and say this is nothing but it's part of a bigger hold is where it's going. We have to be desperately better at figuring this out.

MARTIN: Actually they're -- we don't really know what this guy was doing. We don't know anything in terms of his background.

MATALIN: Yes.

MARTIN: But at the end of the day though, it still speaks to the security, lack of security on our side when you can check a bag and have this kind of artillery in your bags and it go through.

MATALIN: We have that problem, which hasn't improved under this administration although it so often complaining about the previous one. Speaking of this administration --

MARTIN: There you go. MATALIN: -- and its ongoing problems, Roland, what a surprise the CBO released new numbers of the cost of health care reform. $115 billion is the greater cost of discretionary spending. So now we know health care reform is going to raise costs, raise the deficit, raise the debt and lower quality. That's what I call winning reform, winning for conservatives in the fall, that is.

MARTIN: Ah, really? I have something for you, Mary. This is a story dated February 9th, 2005 from "The Washington Post." Guess what? In September of 2004, the Bush administration said the prescription drug bill was going to cost $534 billion. Five months later, the Bush administration said oops, it's actually going to cost $1.2 trillion. So guess what? Democrats and Republicans do this where they sit here and say one thing and it's another thing. But there's the interesting quote in here, a member of Congress says "Those of us who told you it was going to cost twice as much were right." Guess who that was? Congressman Rahm Emanuel. So they all have experience speaking of money as they wish.

MATALIN: Roland, I'm -- you know what, I'm loath to interrupt you, but in the current day, not 2005 or whatever you're reading from, the prescription drug part, the Medicare Part D is the only government program in the history of entitlement that's come in over this long run, 40 percent lower than the projection because it's a hybrid program. It has private enterprise and competition in it, none of which are in this health care reform.

MARTIN: No, no, the point is they told us one thing, and the numbers were revised five months later, up $700 billion. That's the point I'm making and so you can dance around it, but Republicans and Democrats spend our money at will.

Now, there's a new book out talking about golf. You know, I love to play golf any time, anywhere but the question, Mary, who do you play golf with? The story supposedly President Barack Obama playing golf with Rush Limbaugh? Let Rush tell it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST: The "New York Post" today has to do with something -- I think last summer. Said, you know, I know actually would you play golf with Obama? I said, well, sure, but it will never happen, Zev (ph). So Zev Chafets (ph) calls some Democrat activist. And says look, Axelrod won't help me here. Would you see if Limbaugh and if Obama will be willing to play golf with Limbaugh. And the activist calls Zev (ph) back and says "You tell Limbaugh to go play with himself."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: OK.

MATALIN: You know, I had a few days I didn't listen to Rush.

MARTIN: And don't play with yourself. MATALIN: Yes, that's civility. That's your president, Mr. Civility. I like that a lot. One of the few days I didn't listen to Rush I would have loved to have heard Rush's response which I'm sure was far more civil than that statement to the contrary.

MARTIN: But, Mary, golf is a game where you don't have to play with somebody else. And you know what? Also, golf is a game where you don't want to play with somebody who yaps, yaps, yaps, yaps. That probably would be Rush playing golf so yes, go play with yourself so we can enjoy a nice walk.

MATALIN: John, I have nothing to say except enjoy the rest of the show. Back to you, John.

ROBERTS: Well, lately when I play golf, it's always a good walk spoiled. Thanks, guys.

"LARRY KING LIVE" starts in just a few minutes' time. But up next, the gulf oil spill. No laughing matter, right? Well, just tell that to the kings of late night comedy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY LENO, HOST, "THE JAY LENO SHOW": Hey, here's some good news. The price of oil has dropped by $12 a barrel. Yes.

(APPLAUSE)

Why buy it when you can just scoop it out of the water, huh?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Time now for "The Punch Line," our nightly roundup of the funniest lines in late night. Tonight, David Letterman and company are cracking wise about the gulf oil spill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: It's a bad thing to have a 200,000 gallon a day oil spill, so they're geniuses now. They're trying to spin this a little bit. I heard one guy say today that it's a good thing actually because now, when you open a clam, the hinge doesn't squeak.

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST: BP blamed Transocean. Transocean blamed Halliburton and Halliburton blamed BP. You know, if instead of pointing those fingers, gentlemen, if instead you jammed them all into the leak, perhaps we might be able to save a few sea turtles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're now using a special containment dome called the top hat that shoots methanol into the oil leak. A top hat that can shoot methanol. It doesn't sound like an emergency device. Sounds like something Lady Gaga would wear to the VMAs. Hey, that's cool, you see the top hat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: And that's all for now. Join us tomorrow morning from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. for AMERICAN "MORNING."

"LARRY KING LIVE" starts right now.