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Obama Nominates New Judges; Verlander Wants Home Run Derby Shot; Conservative Groups Testify against IRS; De-Extinction Debate

Aired June 04, 2013 - 10:30   ET

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


BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These individuals that I nominate are qualified. When they were given an up or down vote in the Senate, when they were finally given an up or down vote in the Senate, every one of them was confirmed. So this is not about principled opposition. This is about political obstruction.

I recognize that neither party has a perfect track record here. Democrats weren't completely blameless when I was in the Senate. But what's happening now is unprecedented.

For the good of the American people, it has to stop. Too much of the people's business is at stake. Our legal framework depends on timely confirmations of judicial nominees. And nowhere is this more apparent than with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The D.C. Circuit is known as the second highest court in the country, and there's a good reason for that. The judges on the D.C. Circuit routinely have the final say on a broad range of cases involving everything from national security to environmental policy, from questions of campaign finance to workers' rights.

In other words, the court's decisions impact almost every aspect of our lives. There are 11 seats on the D.C. Circuit court. When I first took office, there were two vacancies. Since then, two more judges have retired. That means there are four vacancies that needed to be filled. By February of this year more than one-third of the seats on the nation's second highest court were empty.

I mean imagine if a third of the seats on the highest court, the Supreme Court, were empty. We would rightly consider that a judicial crisis. If we want to ensure a fair and functioning judiciary, our courts cannot be short-staffed.

And in 2010 I put forward a highly-qualified nominee for the D.C. Circuit, Caitlin Halligan. Caitlin's credentials were beyond question. She had bipartisan support from the legal and law enforcement community. She had the support of a majority of senators. Nobody suggested she was not qualified to serve on the court.

If Caitlin had gotten a simple up or down vote before the full Senate, I am confident she would have been easily confirmed. But instead for two and a half years Senate Republicans blocked her nominations. Had nothing to do with Caitlin's qualifications -- it was all about politics. And after two and a half years of languishing in limbo, this brilliant and principled lawyer asked me to withdraw her nomination. Now, the good news is last year I put forward another highly qualified nominee, Shree -- Shree Nivasan. And Shree's credentials were also beyond questions and no doubt due to some mounting public pressure along with the vocal bipartisan support that he received Shree was unanimously confirmed a few weeks ago becoming the first south Asian- American to serve on a circuit court judge in our nation's history.

So I'm pleased that the senate acted. I'm glad Republicans chose not to play politics and obstruct Shree's nomination the way they did with Caitlin's. And I'm hopeful that we can now build on that progress because Shree's confirmation was the first to the D.C. Circuit in seven years. So out of the four vacancies that existed, one has now been filled. There are three seats --

(END LIVE FEED)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're going to break away. The President is not exactly striking a bipartisan tone as he prepares to announce his nominees for the D.C. Court of Appeals. You can see the two female lawyers behind him; an African-American judge will also be nominated. We'll find out more about the nominees from Brianna Keilar after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Good morning. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Carol Costello. It's 37 minutes past the hour. Time to check our "Top Stories".

Firefighters gaining ground against a southern California wildfire that scorched more than 32,000 acres and destroyed at least six homes; wildfires also burning in New Mexico and Colorado.

Jailhouse logs are giving us a look at life behind bars for the accused Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro. The report shows he spends most of his days either lying on his mat in his cell, facing the floor or staring out the window in his cell. He's also been doing some cleaning and reading his inmate manual. Yes they keep track of these things. Castro is being held on $8 million bond, he's accused of holding three women captive for nearly a decade.

Trade unions are backing anti-government protesters in Turkey by starting a two-day strike today. The Turkish Medical Association says about 3,200 people have been injured in clashes over the last two days and there are reports of two deaths. The Prime Minister has actually left the country on an official visit to Morocco saying things will be just fine when he comes back.

Justin Verlander arguably the best pitcher in all of base baseball, but the Detroit Tigers ace wants to take a shot at the home run derby during next month's all-star games. Verlander has never had a hit in 24 major league at-bats, something I teased him about during spring training.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So what's your biggest goal of this season?

JUSTIN VERLANDER, DETROIT TIGERS PITCHER: Win a World Series.

COSTELLO: Of course. I guess I was more thinking like develop a new pitch or get a hit.

VERLANDER: Thanks for that. You know, I've been saying for the last seven years that this is my year. So I'm going to go the other direction this year and say, I'm not going to get a hit. Who cares? I don't care if get a hit, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to jinx it the other way.

COSTELLO: Oh I think that's a good idea. So you just admit that --

VERLANDER: I suck.

COSTELLO: You suck. Yes.

VERLANDER: You might be the first person to ever hear me say that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Oh, but he's changed his mind. Verlander has tweeted a link to the MLB.com page where fans can vote for home run derby hitters. And who knows, maybe he can replace Prince Fielder this year. I don't think so.

All right we've been telling you about Congress and the hearings going on today on the IRS and its targeting of conservative non-profit groups. Those groups testifying before Congress today.

Dana Bash has been listening in. She joins us now live on Capitol Hill to bring us up to date.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. Right now what is going on is the members of the Tea Party groups from across the country who were brought in by Congress to testify and tell their stories are doing just that, they're going down the line giving their opening statements.

But I want to play one -- actually the very first one we heard from because it was powerful and really illustrative of the kind of -- of frustration that they've had. This particular group applied for tax exempt status a long time ago and still to this day doesn't have it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN KOOKOGEY, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, LINCHPINS OF LIBERTY: As of today, I've been waiting for 29 months without status. In the interim, I lost a $30,000 launch grant from a reputable non-profit whose executive director advised me that he had never seen such treatment of a 501c-3 applicant in his 25 years of making grants.

I also lost and continue to lose multiple thousands of my own money. And I had to cease any further official activity for fear the IRS would target me for further harassment. For two and a half years the IRS has unlawfully delayed and obstructed my application for determination of tax exempt status by using unconstitutional criteria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So you heard there that that story and before he described the purpose of his particular group, which is called "Linchpins of Liberty", didn't hear anything about politics at all at least the way he described it here, talking about the fact that they try to promote the Constitution and mentor kids about various philosophies with regard to the government, good government, free government with -- with the hand of the federal government out of it.

He also said that part of the questionnaires that that he's gotten have been really, from his perspective, over the top, and I think Democrats and Republicans on this committee would agree. He was asked by the IRS to identify political affiliations of his -- the mentors and also what he plans to teach his students.

He declared here he thought that was unconstitutional. Whether or not that's true that remains to be seen, but there's no question that even the Democrats on this committee say that what these groups have gone through is just absolutely wrong.

COSTELLO: Wow, ok, interesting stuff. I know you'll keep on it. Thank you. Dana Bash reporting live from Capitol Hill.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right, let's go back to the White House now and check in with correspondent Brianna Keilar. President Obama just nominated three federal appeals court judges. Who are they?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: These judges, Carol, are individually pretty noncontroversial, Patricia Millett, Cornelia or Nina Pillard and Judge Robert Wilkins. As I said, if you look at sort of these judge picks individually -- not very controversial but it's the fact that President Obama is picking the three of them together for a very important court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, for the District of Columbia circuit.

This is a court that hears a lot of government-related cases, a lot of cases that ultimately go to the Supreme Court. You could also look at it as a bit of a farm team for the Supreme Court. You see a lot of justices who come from serving on this court of appeals. And what we heard from President Obama, Carol, was a very political speech that he gave flanked by his three picks.

And this is a political fight that certainly the White House welcomes, and you could argue that they are picking. It is obviously within President Obama's rights to choose his judicial nominees, but we're hearing in response to this congressional Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley accusing President Obama of court packing.

Why is he saying that? Well, if you kind of break down the numbers on this circuit of D.C. Court of Appeals, at this point right now, you have eight serving, and there are 11 total spots. So there are these three vacancies. Right now it's split 4-4 Democratic and Republican appointees. The White House will argue, yes, but when you look at the additional six senior judges -- five of the six are Republican appointed. They do have a bit of a lighter work load, I will say, so you could definitely argue that with these three picks this would tip in the favor of Democrats, the court would. Sort of a fight here as certainly President Obama and the White House trying to get away from these controversies that are just sucking up so much of the oxygen here in Washington. They would much rather be talking about this and how Republicans are obstructionists.

That's what the President is trying to say here, Carol, something that resonates with many Americans. And this is where he's trying to shift things away from these controversies.

COSTELLO: All right. Brianna Keilar reporting live from the White House this morning.

Coming up in the NEWSROOM, science fiction comes to life. Experts think they could actually bring a woolly mammoth back to life one day. Seriously, though the real question is, should they? I'll break down the de-extinction debate next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: No doubt you've seen Universal Pictures "Jurassic Park," right?

Ah, the popular film where scientists cloned dinosaurs and, well, chaos ensues. The thing is that could soon become reality -- sort of. A well-preserved woolly mammoth was recently found containing liquid blood. Now, one South Korean company hopes that blood could help it clone the extinct species.

Here's a question we could soon be left with -- not can we bring the symbol of the earth age back to life, but should we? Should we do this? Beth Shapiro is an associate professor at the University of California Santa Cruz. Welcome.

BETH SHAPIRO, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ: Hello.

COSTELLO: I can't wait to have this conversation. It's so fascinating. You are actually working to bring back another extinct species, the passenger pigeon. A lot of people are probably horrified at that because you're messing with nature. So why do you want to do this?

SHAPIRO: I wouldn't go so far to say that I am working to bring back the passenger pigeon. I think there are a huge number of technical hurdles that we'll need to overcome before we can really bring something back to life. What we're doing in my lab and with the Long Now Foundation and a lot of other different colleagues and individuals is to try to take care of some of those first steps. How can we sequence the genome of an extinct species and assemble that genome and learn how to use that to figure out what made that species different from a very closely-related species that's still alive today. COSTELLO: But still, I think a lot of people would object that you're doing this kind of work at all because, again, you're messing with nature and you should leave the world as nature intended because some species were meant to become extinct.

SHAPIRO: Well, what does that mean? How can you say that a species was meant to become extinct if, for example, our species is responsible for having driven it to extinction?

COSTELLO: What about the woolly mammoth? Let's use that as an example. I don't think humankind had anything to do with the woolly mammoth's extinction from the earth.

SHAPIRO: That's a difficult argument to make. I mean surely the mammoth and other big mega fauna that were alive during the last ice age about 20,000 years ago were affected by climate change that was going on. But mammoths survived for a very long time prior to the last ice age and through other interglacial periods when it was just as warm as it is today. They managed to survive many of these transitional periods, going from a cold period to a hot period or from a hot period to a cold period. It's only this most recent transition in which it went extinct.

And I would argue and I think many others would that one of the major differences between these different transition periods and the most recent one was the presence of our species. While we may not have initiated the decline of the mammoth, I would be pressed to say that we didn't have anything to do with their extinction. I would argue in fact --

COSTELLO: But here's the thing. There are many, many animals who have gone extinct. Who makes the decision of which animals to bring back and how do we do that and how do we justify it?

SHAPIRO: That's an excellent question. And I think that's why it's very important that we start having this discussion today. As a scientist I'm conflicted about whether we should or should not bring an extinct species back to life. But it's hard to stop science and to start progress -- stop progress in particular when there's something that's this cool and captivating of people's imagination as the opportunity to bring something back to life.

So if this is going to happen -- and I wouldn't say that it's just around the corner -- but if it is going to happen we need to know, we need to talk about who is responsible for making these decisions. Where should they go? Who gets to come back? What sorts of laws and statutes do we need to develop in order to deal with this?

COSTELLO: I could go on talking -- there are big, big questions. I wish we could go on, but I'm running out of time in my show. Beth, thank you so much for a fascinating conversation. Beth Shapiro with the University of California Santa Cruz.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: Before we go, let's check our top stories.

Major Nadal Hassan, the man accused of killing 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, has asked for a three-month delay to prepare a new defense. Yesterday the judge ruled he can represent himself at the court- martial with the assistance of military lawyers. Jury selection for the trial set to begin tomorrow.

Geologists now investigating this sinkhole that opened up last night near Winter Park, Florida -- you can see the hole behind the pool. Two homes have been affected, the hole measures 40 by 50 feet and is 30 feet deep.

The activist group Anonymous is on the verge of launching its very own news site. Over the past few months, the group raised about $54,000 on the fund raising site, Indigogo. Anonymous says they'll aggregate news from external news sources including Twitter.

That will do it for me today. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

"CNN NEWSROOM" continues after a break.

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