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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Teenagers and Drugs; Profile of Tom DeLay

Aired April 25, 2005 - 22:00   ET

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

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


AARON BROWN, HOST "NEWSNIGHT": Good evening again, everyone.
It is a simple but uncomfortable fact that's often left unsaid in the public conversation about young people and drug abuse: the problem with drugs is they make you feel better. If they made you feel awful the first time you tried them, eventually no one would. Word would get around. Which brings us to some new facts about teenagers and drugs: what many of them are taking, and where they are getting it, and why it may surprise you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The easiest high of all is the one you can score at home. The family medicine cabinet carries no stigma, but it is often packed with prescription drugs which can be as potentially addictive or lethal as anything bought on the street.

DR. TERRY HORTON, PHOENIX HOUSE: Prescription drug abuse is really much more similar to heroin abuse than most children or young adults realize. They don't have a fear or stigma with the narcotic painkiller that they do with heroin, but pharmacologically they're very similar.

BROWN: James Ruter and Val Maroulis are residents at Daytop, a treatment program in New Jersey. Both have been sober since last fall after being addicted since their early teens. By 14, they were using both alcohol and marijuana; by 17, prescription drugs.

VAL MAROULIS, FMR. DRUG USER: My friends had it, I mean, I tried it. I got hooked on it like normal drugs and it became an everyday thing for me.

BROWN: James did more than abuse prescription drugs. He managed to steal doctors' pads and write and fill fraudulent prescriptions.

JAMES RUTER, FMR. DRUG USER: I would actually write fake prescriptions and go down to New York, find, you know, a pharmacy, pay off the pharmacist, you know, have my different name, different address, on the pills and obtain it that way.

BROWN: The new research for the Partnership for Drug-Free America indicates how prevalent the problem of prescription drug abuse has become. Based on interviews with over 7,000 teenagers, the survey concludes that nearly one in five had used a prescription painkiller without the prescription, more than had experimented with cocaine or crack, LSD or ecstasy. RUTER: A lot of parent I know who are on medications, you know, for pain and stuff, don't understand how, you know, word spreads from other friends, you know, and then kids read a label on a bottle and, you know, find out the name of it and hear what the side effects are and what it does, and they're interested. You know, they're curious.

BROWN: Too many parents say doctors are blind to the risks their kids are taking with drugs from their own medicine chest.

HORTON: Four or five tablets left from a prescription that are sitting in there can have great value, great monetary value as well as some danger to some child who has decided to experiment.

MAROULIS: We did it so many times at like multiple people's parents. They still didn't know that we took so many pills out of their closet, and like, they were just blind the whole time.

BROWN: The turnaround for James came not because of his parent or any anti-drug message. It came in the worst way imaginable.

RUTER: It was like seven or eight Xanaxes and I was drinking, and it just scared me so much. You know what I mean? I was there when the ambulance came. And I thought to myself, it could have been me, because I was eating the same things. But I don't really drink when I'm on pills.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Another simple fact that bears repeating in the name of context: for as long as there have been teenagers, the forbidden has been a magnet for them, hard to resist and impossible to ignore. Steve Dnistrian is the executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the group that did the study we just told you about. We talked to Steve earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Let's talk about context for this for a second. Is this sort of the 21st century version of kids raiding their parents' liquor cabinet?

STEVE DNISTRIAN, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG FREE AMERICA: Well, it is. I mean, this is a whole new -- it's not just one substance that we're talking about, one medication. This is a whole new category that's emerging. And, you know, kids have grown up now with a lot of these pills around them, used legitimately by adults and parents and caregivers. So the curiosity factor is there for them.

BROWN: So they probably, probably had a beer or something, probably smoked a joint or something, and then go to the medicine cabinet and pop a Vicodin?

DNISTRIAN: Yes, there are -- these kids are pretty smart. I mean, they're sophisticated consumers. They're not just going randomly to find any pill. They're looking for certain pills because they know the effects. BROWN: Aren't they just kids in a sense?

DNISTRIAN: They're kids.

BROWN: They're experimenting.

DNISTRIAN: Yes.

BROWN: I mean, I don't know what you did when you were 18, but there were kids I knew in high school who were sensation seekers and this is well pre-marijuana, they were drinking gin or whatever.

DNISTRIAN: Well, this is just the new form of that today. They've got more flavors now.

BROWN: OK. Is it more dangerous?

DNISTRIAN: It is certainly more dangerous.

BROWN: It is more dangerous because...

DNISTRIAN: Because these are lethal -- potentially lethal -- narcotics that you're dealing with. Now, when used appropriately, they're very effective medications. But when used intentionally to get high, they can have very, very bad consequences. Kids we've seen in our study believe that these medications are safer. They're not something you have to inject in your arm.

BROWN: When we're talking about kids -- I guess I'm wanting to make a distinction here, just looking at the chart here -- not that I think it is a terrific idea for kids to be popping Vicodin, because I don't, it is just that it scares the hell out of me the idea that they're popping OxyContin which is highly addictive, extraordinarily dangerous drug -- not that Vicodin is a terrific drug, but there's a world of difference. Agree?

DNISTRIAN: Well, not necessarily.

BROWN: OK.

DNISTRIAN: It all depends on the user, the dosage, the frequency, and the motivations.

BROWN: You know what's surprising about this, just looking at the chart, is that things I would have expected on there -- Valium, Xanax -- which are in a lot of houses, don't show up at all.

DNISTRIAN: Yes, right. Well, they're not there just yet. We're measuring just a tight number of medications.

BROWN: But a kid's more likely to abuse OxyContin than he is to abuse Xanax?

DNISTRIAN: Yes, that could be. Some studies are showing that the anti-depressants are there, they are prevalent, probably at about the 10th percentile as well. So, that's there as well. What we don't know is how many of these things kids are abusing. We had a mom join us from Tempe, Arizona, last week, in Washington for a press conference. Her son, 18-year-old, Adam was his name, died of a poly- drug overdose, cocaine mixed in with some pharmaceuticals -- muscle relaxants, a muscle relaxant called Soma, the kid was abusing to get high.

And how many are abusing these? We don't know yet.

BROWN: Just, one more thing. People get e-mails all the time about how you get, just about every drug on the planet or darn near -- on the Internet. Is that where they're getting them or are they getting them from mom?

DNISTRIAN: Well, kids, if you ask them, why is the problem getting worse among their peers, they say easy access. Medicine cabinet at their home, medicine cabinet at their friend's house. Internet factors in but somewhere quite lower on the data collection.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in. Nice to meet you.

DNISTRIAN: You bet.

BROWN: Thank you.

DNISTRIAN: Sure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Steve Dnistrian of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

It is fair to say that a parent will do almost anything to protect a child from drugs or serious illness or a predator. There are tough calls to make in life. This is not one of them. But easy on personal or family level is sometimes complicated in other ways. In the case of sex offenders, there are laws now on the books in every state requiring that neighbors be notified when a sex offender moves in, meaning that men and women convicted of crimes, horrible crimes to be sure, keep paying the price long after they leave prison. In south Florida, though, legislators are on the brink of taking such tough laws a step beyond.

Here's CNN's John Zarrella.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John Fernandez walks his 8- year-old daughter Elle from South Point Elementary School. Fernandez says he has no problem at all with a new ordinance expected to be enacted soon by the Miami Beach City Commission.

JOHN FERNANDEZ, PARENT: The further the better, it's that simple.

ZARRELLA: The ordinance would more than double the distance from a school or park that a sexual offender can legally live from the current 1,000 feet, which is a state law, to 2,500.

FERNANDEZ: There are sick guys out there, and they need to be far away from schools.

ZARRELLA: According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement sex Offender registry, one sex offender lives in an apartment building within sight of the school, but legal, more than 1,000 feet away. Given the number of schools and parks on Miami Beach, under the new ordinance, the offender who lives here and all the other 32 sexual offenders registered in Miami Beach would be virtually run out of town.

Good, says Commissioner Simon Cruz.

You're basically eliminating, at 3500 or 2500 feet -- there really isn't anywhere on the beach for these people to live.

COMMISSIONER SIMON CRUZ: No, there isn't. There isn't.

ZARRELLA: And that was the intent?

CRUZ: Ah, yes, it was.

ZARRELLA: One of Commissioner Cruz's reasons for backing the ordinance is personal. Two years ago, he came to this park with his children.

CRUZ: I was here one Sunday morning, right here on this particular slide, there was a gentleman, with a backpack, sitting on the slide.

ZARRELLA: Cruz says a police officer who happened by ran the man's name in the police database and he turned out to be a registered sex offender. But banning them from a community, says one convicted offender, is the wrong approach.

JAKE GOLDENFLAME, CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER: If there's too much pressure on you like banishing you from living in the city or putting in a global positioning satellite system on you that marks you like Dracula, it is easy to say, the heck with this, if they don't want me to recover, I'm going to be a -- then you go into relapse real fast.

ZARRELLA: The ordinance will come up for a second and final reading next month. If the ordinance pure and simply a reaction to the recent murders of Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde? The commissioner Cruz says yes, but makes no apologies.

CRUZ: You know, one could say yes a kneejerk reaction, but isn't it better to be a kneejerk reaction than to sit back and say, you know, I should have done that, when it's a little too late?

ZARRELLA: Similar measures in other states have been ruled unconstitutional, so Cruz expects a challenge. But they're ready to fight it, he says, because they're fighting for the children.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami Beach. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What gives a parent comfort isn't always the deciding factor. Far from it. So just how far can a community go to restrict sex offenders is a question working its way through the courts. And so we turn to our legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Why -- let me presume for a second that you cannot say no sex offender can live in the city of Miami Beach? Is that a fair presumption.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That is a fair presumption.

BROWN: So reasonableness comes into play.

TOOBIN: Correct.

BROWN: What is reasonable here?

TOOBIN: Well, that's what gives lawyers work. I mean, these -- these -- this is really a hard area. And courts are struggling with this now. Let me tell you about one case, in Iowa. Iowa passed a law covering the whole state that created enough buffer zones so that basically it was impossible for sex offenders to live anywhere except in certain remote, rural areas. And the court there struck it down under a -- several different theories. Said it violated their right to travel. And it was also -- they said it was an ex post facto law, which meant that it was after they were punished and they had served their punishment, piling this punishment on top was unconstitutional.

BROWN: But at the same time the courts have said, in a number of places, Washington state for one, I think, Kansas for another and probably more, that after a sex offender has completed his sentence, he or she -- usually he -- can be committed to a prison under a civil commitment law on the theory that they are still dangerous?

TOOBIN: That's a very specific -- there's certain factors. Not every sex offender can be held forever. What's more difficult about the sex -- these laws is that there's no end to it. I mean, the punishment goes on forever. And courts are uncomfortable with that.

BROWN: But doesn't in the civil commitment case, the punishment go on forever? You're not give an date certain when you get out. And in fact, when you have completed your sentence?

TOOBIN: But I believe under the civil commitment laws, there is a continuing evaluation of them that they are found continued to be dangerous. Here, another argument against these laws is that these people are being punished without any individualized assessment that they are still dangerous.

BROWN: So let me come back to the question of reasonableness. Let's say 1,000 feet is reasonable, is 1,500 feet? I mean, how -- how -- how does anyone determine what is reasonable or not?

TOOBIN: Well, Iowa, just for example, Iowa had a 2,000 foot rule, that was struck down. A 1,000 foot is the new -- is the new Iowa law. And I think that may survive, because it allows some places within cities for sex offenders to live. The problem with the 2,000- foot law, wasn't with the 2,000 feet. It was the fact that that basically took up the whole state practically. And that was almost by definition unreasonable.

BROWN: Just -- just so that I'm clear on this, that because in a 2,000 foot radius there's bound to be a school or a park.

TOOBIN: A school or a park.

BROWN: Thank you.

TOOBIN: By the way, just another fact to remember about this, is that most sex offense is within the family. It's not the stranger cases. So that's just a little reality check there.

BROWN: Which is always good on a program. Thank you. We appreciate that.

Other things making news today, Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta with more on that -- Erica.

ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron.

The judge in Michael Jackson's trial ruled today, Jackson's ex- wife Debbie Rowe can testify for the prosecution. She's expected to say she was under duress when she praised Jackson in a television interview two years ago. Now, also today, Jackson dropped one of his attorney's from his defense team.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have indicted 14 reputed mobsters on murder, conspiracy and racketeering charges. Those arrested are accused of plotting at least 18 murders, some dating back 3 and half decades. Prosecutors say it is one of the most far reaching indictment of alleged mobsters in Chicago history.

In Japan, the deadliest train crash in more than four decades. A commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment building outside Osaka. At least, 73 people were killed, more than 440 injured. Excessive speed may have been a factor.

And sky high oil prices. On the agenda when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited President Bush's Texas ranch today, the Saudis say they have a long-term plan to pump more oil, but made no promise to increase production in the short term.

And that is the latest at this hour from Headline News. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thanks very much. See you in half an hour.

In a moment, a battle in Iraq like you've never seen it before. And a hero who saw it coming straight at him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was like, oh, my gosh, that's my baby carrying that gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Her baby, his gun. And the story of how the two of them saved an awful lot of lives.

Also tonight trouble or not, and there is plenty of it. A man of power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, that's the thing about DeLay is he always wins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Who is Tom DeLay and why is everyone so afraid of him?

Later, she had the strength to confront monsters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was a court reporter. And I could take their testimony and look into their faces and see how they explained these horrifying experiences that were coming up in the news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Now she battles another terror. People who tell her it never happened at all.

From New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The great horror of any war, but this war more most is how closely imagination is harnessed to death. In this the insurgents have become innovators. You can despise everything they do and grant them that, it's their only true talent, coming up with new ways of making life difficult, deadly for soldiers and civilians alike. Fortunately deadly imagination can be confronted and defeated by training and courage. One such story, an encounter earlier this month, is only now coming to light.

So from the Pentagon this evening, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In war, the outcome often hinges on the actions of a single person, like 21-year-old Lance Corporal Joshua Butler of Altoona, Pennsylvania.

MELISSA BENSON, BUTLER'S MOTHER: This is my son's room. You can tell he's proud to be a Marine. MCINTYRE: According to his mother, Butler wanted since childhood to be a Marine, like his cousin, uncle and great-grandfather before him.

BENSON: The earliest recollection that I have is him putting on my brother's Marine Corps shirt and hat, and marching up and down the hall, and saying, I'm going to be a Marine some day.

MCINTYRE: He begged his mother to sign his enlistment papers, which she did, only to be shocked when she later saw him at Camp LeJeune.

BENSON: And when he'd come walking across the parking lot with that big gun, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's my baby carrying that gun.

MCINTYRE: It was Butler's big gun that thwarted a bold attack two weeks ago on a remote Marine outpost on the Iraq/Syria border. It began when a suicide bomber tried to ram a truck past the camp's defenses. Firing from his number two guard tower, Corporal Butler forced the truck to veer to the side. The resulting explosion knocked Butler down and filled the air with white smoke.

What came next, Butler told a "Washington Post" reporter, was like something out of a movie.

STEVE FAINARU, WASHINGTON POST REPORTER: You had the smoke that was left over from the first bomb and the debris. And it hadn't yet cleared. And then here came this fire truck, just literally out of the smoke, heading straight toward the base.

MCINTYRE: The Marines had been warned insurgents were planning to use a fire truck as a weapon, but were beginning to think it was a myth.

COL. ROBERT CHASE, U.S. MARINES OP. OFFICER: In that particular case, we had heard fire trucks were in the area and could possibly be used. So when they saw it coming, it was not a surprise to them.

MCINTYRE: As it sped past a mural bidding travelers goodbye from free Iraq, the fire truck may not have been a surprise. But it was terrifying.

FAINARU: One of the Marines said that when he actually saw it coming up the road, it was like the grim reaper himself driving up this road heading for the base. And that his heart basically stopped.

MCINTYRE: Again, it was Butler's quick reaction and heavy machine gun fire that forced the fire truck to explode before it could get past the inner defenses. An inspection of the tangled wreckage revealed the fire truck was packed with propane tanks of explosives, and outfitted with a bulletproof windshield to protect the two suicide attackers inside.

Marine commanders admit it was an audacious plan. CHASE: I think the idea was that the first two vehicles would attempt to breach, the sheer weight and size and mass of the fire truck would then force its way through whatever breach was caused.

MCINTYRE: The attack had failed. But the battle continued for almost 24 hours. When the dust cleared, the Marines say some 19 insurgents were dead and the Marines had suffered no serious casualties.

Back home in Altoona, a Marine's mother is bursting with pride and worry.

BENSON: I go from being so extremely proud that I can't stand it and wanting the whole world to know what he's done, and then go into a complete panic.

MCINTYRE: And as for her son's promised safe return? That chapter of his story will have to wait until October when he's scheduled to come home.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I'm not a Tom DeLay, the House majority leader. He'll be returning from Texas with the president tomorrow on board Air Force One. That's one travel-related headline today.

The other concerns a trip that Mr. DeLay took to Great Britain a few years back and whether a lobbyist now under federal investigation paid his airfare.

The first headline speaks to how far Tom DeLay has come, to how much influence he retains. The second, perhaps, to how far he may fall. What makes the man fascinating, whatever you think of him, is how easily both headlines seem to fit. Here's CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two things are true when you become late-night fodder -- you have arrived and you're in trouble.

JAY LENO, HOST, "TONIGHT SHOW": And a man in West Bend, Wisconsin, who bought a shirt at the local Goodwill store, found $2,000 stuffed inside the pocket. Amazing? The more amazing part, how did one of Tom DeLay's old shirts wind up in Wisconsin?

CROWLEY: He's a bug exterminator driven to politics by his fury over environmental rules. He once called the EPA "the Gestapo of government." After the president, he may be the most powerful man in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The majority leader of the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay of Texas!

CROWLEY: Tom DeLay came to power the old-fashioned way -- under his own steam, building a base of loyalties, collecting chips.

BOB BARR (R), FORMER GEORGIA CONGRESSMAN: He's worked for each member to get elected and to be reelected. That is something that members don't forget, or forget at their own peril.

CROWLEY: Last year, DeLay, a prodigious fund-raiser, gave more money to congressional candidates than any other lawmaker. A decade ago, he was a relative unknown in a minority party. But DeLay was setting the type for his headliner status, sending cash and care packages to the campaigns of Republican hopefuls in the class of '94.

REP. DAVID DREIER (R), CALIFORNIA: So a candidate for Congress who would be out knocking on doors, meeting with supporters, talking about issues, debating his or her opponent, would come back to the headquarters, and they would say, this guy Tom DeLay just sent home baked cookies from Texas.

CROWLEY: When the House opened for business in '95, Republicans were in charge for the first time in four decades. Many of them owed Tom DeLay. He was elected whip, the person responsible for rounding up votes. He was very good at it. Someone once called him a cross between a concierge and a Mafia don, a guy who delivered.

BILL PAXON (R), FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN: He's a kind of person who would always reach out to help, help with your political needs, your congressional needs, your personal needs.

CROWLEY: A guy who expected loyalty.

CHARLIE STENHOLM (D), FORMER TEXAS CONGRESSMAN: If anyone within his own party disagrees with him, they find an opponent waiting in the wings in the next primary, they find a threat to reduce the amount of funding available to them.

CROWLEY: They call him the Hammer, pounding money out of donors.

REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: That's $10,200.

CROWLEY: Pounding votes out of colleagues. Pounding the Democrats.

ERIK SMITH, FORMER DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL AIDE: There were countless times on the House floor when Democrats would feel like we'd finally pull one off, and we were finally going to win. And the clock on the vote would stop, and Tom DeLay would appear on the floor, and Republican members would start walking to the (INAUDIBLE) of the House to change their votes.

CROWLEY: Eight years as whip, three now as majority leader. He's a brass-knuckles conservative in relentless pursuit of his agenda.

STUART ROY, FORMER DELAY AIDE: Every morning when he wakes up, he's trying to figure out a way that the conservatives can win and that the Democrats lose. CROWLEY: In Texas, DeLay pushed the state legislature to redraw district lines to favor Republican elections. When minority Democrats fled the state to prevent a vote, he called the FAA to find out where they went.

STENHOLM: He was a bulldog. And he wasn't going to take no for an answer. And some of his tactics are being reviewed by the proper legal authorities. And I'll leave it to them whether anything was illegal or not.

CROWLEY: Drawn into a district he couldn't win, Charlie Stenholm is now a former congressman, one of the Texas Democrats who lost their congressional seat in 2004. And Tom DeLay got six more Texas Republicans in Washington to help move the agenda -- smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations. He is the go-to guy for getting legislation through Congress. Donors want to give him money. Lobbyists want to please him, or at least not make him mad. Power begets more power.

DeLay warned pro-business lobbies to stop giving money to Democratic candidates. He pushed K Street -- Washington speak for lobbyists and trade associations -- to hire Republicans. He expanded his reach.

ROY: There are certainly a lot of people in the government relations world, public relations, who are close to Tom DeLay and who are able to look out for him, be eyes and ears.

CROWLEY: Bloomberg News found more than 200 companies, coalitions and trade groups have hired former DeLay employees as lobbyists.

Never charged with violating House rules, DeLay has skirted the edge, warned by the Ethics Committee on four separate occasions. His colleagues are loyal; his critics intense. And all agree on this.

SMITH: You know, that's the thing about DeLay is, he always wins.

CROWLEY: Tom DeLay wields great power with no apology, few boundaries, and no one takes odds against him.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead tonight on "NEWSNIGHT," some are calling it the nuclear option. And it could fundamentally change the way the Senate does business. But at what cost?

Also ahead, a regular bit of business for us that costs absolutely nothing, save the rooster's allowance. "Morning Papers" wraps it up again. A break first.

Around the world, this is "NEWSNIGHT."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This weekend saw a doctor who is also a senator talking to preachers about judges. If nothing else, it says a fair amount about the state of politics today. What it is is in the end an education in filibusters and hardball and nuclear options. Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It was a multimedia event. From the Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky Sunday night, a rally was beamed nationwide to radio, TV and the Internet. It assailed activist federal judges and called for an end to filibusters against people of faith.

Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist spoke via videotape, and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, framed the argument in dramatic terms.

JAMES DOBSON, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: The future of democracy and ordered liberty actually depends on the outcome of this struggle.

JAMES STEWART, ACTOR, "MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON": Wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes all winter.

GREENFIELD: Other television sets are watching an ad that featured Jimmy Stewart's famous "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" filibuster, as well as a Republican supporter of unlimited debate.

Last year, two of the president's appeals court nominees were blocked by a filibuster. This year, both have been renominated. And Frist has said he may invoke what some have called the nuclear option, asking the Senate to rule judicial filibusters out of order.

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: Tell Senator Frist you can't do this.

GREENFIELD: Democrats say if that happens, they'll use other rules to bring all Senate business to a standstill.

(on camera): There's no question that the fight over the filibuster and over prospective judges will be as intense as any Washington has seen in years. But why? Why such intensity over nominees to the federal bench, often called the least political branch of the federal government?

Well, two reasons, really. First, because this is a dress rehearsal for the real battle yet to come. And second, because of the power that federal judges wield over some of the most fundamental aspects of public policy.

(voice-over): What's the real battle? That will happen when a vacancy opens on the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's battle with thyroid cancer suggests a vacancy could come sooner rather than later. And across the political spectrum, there is clear agreement on the consequences. Ralph Neas leads a liberal alliance in the battle over judges.

RALPH NEAS, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY: What happens over the next several years, especially on the Supreme Court, is going to determine the law of the land for the next several decades.

GREENFIELD: Michael Grieve is with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

MICHAEL GRIEVE, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: It has sunk in that justices these days sit for very, very, very long times, much more so than in earlier years. And so, every one of these decisions has sort of an aura of irreversibility, if you will.

GREENFIELD: And this, of course, is the key. For decades, the federal courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, has been in the eye of political storms. From the 1930s, when it struck down New Deal legislation to the '50s when it outlawed public school segregation, to its decisions that abortion was a constitutional right in the 1970s and '80s. And earlier this year, when federal courts refused to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, critics like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay strongly implied that Congress should impose stricter limits on what the federal courts could and could not do.

DELAY: We will look at an arrogant, out of control, unaccountable judiciary.

GREENFIELD: So the fight this spring may seem to focus on the records and personalities of the judicial nominees, or on the way the U.S. Senate should conduct its business, but it's really about a matter on which just about everyone agrees -- in this country, what the courts say has a profound, enduring impact on what kind of country we live in.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So too does the price of oil, which the president and Saudi Arabia's crown prince discussed at some length today, we're told, in Crawford, Texas. They talked about that, and then, in a convenience store, about the larger question at hand -- Funyuns or Ruffles. OK, the crown prince may be one of the most powerful men on the planet, but it's a long flight, longer still without chocolate chips or a candy bar.

Still to come on the program tonight, a small-town girl who would play a crucial role in history. More than a half-century later, her mission to make sure the world does not forget. Her story as "NEWSNIGHT" continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A couple of months back, C-SPAN booked an author to talk about her work on the Holocaust. In the interests of balance, I guess, it also booked someone to say the Holocaust didn't happen. While we have much respect for C-SPAN, to our mind this was balance run amok. I can only imagine how it hit the woman you're about to meet. She is not a Holocaust survivor as such, but she lived through the telling of the story of the Nazi killing machine as few have or ever could stand.

That was a long time ago, of course, to all of us, maybe. But not to her. Her story from CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She was a small- town girl from Illinois who would play a crucial role at an historic trial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When "Nuremberg," the trial of Nazi Germany's highest war criminals, continues.

BUCKLEY: During the doctors trial portion of the Nuremberg tribunal, Vivien Spitz -- that's her on the left -- was one of a handful of court reporters who documented the proceedings and the gruesome details of medical experiments performed on concentration camp prisoners.

At 22, Spitz, the daughter of a German immigrant, volunteered for Nuremberg and was the youngest of the court reporters.

Today, she is 80.

(on camera): What motivated you to want to see these men and look into their eyes? Why was that important to you?

VIVIEN SPITZ, NUREMBERG COURT REPORTER: I was a court reporter. And I could take their testimony and look into their faces and see how they explained these horrifying experiments that were coming out in the news.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Using shorthand, Spitz recorded verbatim the atrocities attributed to 23 doctors and administrators on trial. She saw the photos in evidence, of prisoners taken to high altitudes in pressure chambers, then denied oxygen until they died. Of phosphorus burns forced on prisoners to test skin ointments. Of limbs amputated from one victim to see if they could be reattached to another.

She heard the firsthand accounts of those who actually survived some experiments.

SPITZ: I started having tears come out of my eyes falling on my notebook on the ink.

BUCKLEY: In the end, 16 of the doctors were found guilty; seven of them executed for their crimes. It's all in the record.

SPITZ: That record, I call it the record that will never forget. BUCKLEY: But when she returned home, Vivien Spitz could not forget. For years, there was a recurring nightmare. She was a prisoner trying to protect children in the camp.

SPITZ: And I was always escaping from a concentration camp in a tunnel, under a barbed wire fence, with the Nazi guard bayonetted rifle walking back and forth. And I was trying to keep them quiet.

BUCKLEY: As the years past, the nightmares faded. Spitz had children of her own. She continued her career.

(on camera): This is you here.

SPITZ: Yes.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): She became an official reporter of debates in the House of Representatives.

SPITZ: This is my treasure.

BUCKLEY: That's her shaking hands with President Jimmy Carter.

SPITZ: And I was so stunned, I said, it's nice to have you back, Mr. President.

BUCKLEY: In the '80s, she moved to Denver and retired. Vivien Spitz had served her country, and, she thought, history, by documenting the medical experiments. But in 1987, she was confronted by Holocaust denial. Controversy erupted when a local high school teacher told students the Holocaust was a hoax.

SPITZ: That is when I became livid, and decided that I would get out my boxes, my file boxes of all of this material that I brought from Nuremberg.

BUCKLEY (on camera): These are the actual transcripts?

SPITZ: Yes.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): She took on the teacher and began speaking to any group that would listen, despite the awful memories it dredged up.

SPITZ: It was just reliving the horror, but realizing that I was duty-bound to do this. I had to do this.

BUCKLEY: And so for the past 18 years, Vivien Spitz, a Catholic, German-American from Woodstock, Illinois, has been on a mission, to tell the story of the doctors trial to as many people as she can -- 40,000 people have heard it.

SPITZ: Doctors who had taken the oath of Hippocrates to heal and cure became torturers and murderers.

BUCKLEY: She shows the horrific photographs, and this one of Adolf Hitler. The reaction of one student to Hitler's photo, reinforcing her drive to keep telling the stories.

SPITZ: I just said, this is the person responsible for all of this horror. How naive could I have been? This senior boy raised his hand and said, "who is that?"

BUCKLEY: Now, she's written a book "Doctors From Hell." Her hope that it will continue to educate long after she is gone.

SPITZ: I'm very grateful that I feel that God has let me live this long, to fulfill a mission that has found me, that I did not seek.

BUCKLEY: The court reporter who recorded history.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Denver.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, he redefined what it means to show up at the office. Life after retirement for baseball's ironman.

A break first. This is "NEWSNIGHT."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In just a moment, a look back on the amazing career of one of the greats that ever played baseball, but now, as we come up towards a quarter of the hour, Erica Hill joins us again from Atlanta with some of the other headlines of the day -- Ms. Hill.

HILL: Mr. Brown.

We start in Georgia with some tragic news, ending at this point. Autopsies will be performed tomorrow on the bodies of two Georgia toddlers. A 2-year-old girl and her 3-year-old brother disappeared from their home on Saturday. Their bodies found this afternoon in a pond near their house. No indication of foul play at this time.

In Florida, a sixth grade teacher in Brevard County is under arrest, charged with 96 counts of molesting a 13-year-old boy. Daniel Clead (ph) is being held on a quarter million dollars bail. Police believe he may have molested other children as well.

A man federal prosecutors have dubbed the most notorious Afghan drug lord is now under house arrest in New York City. Haji Bashir Noorzai is accused of running an international drug trafficking ring that shipped millions of dollars worth of heroin to United States and Europe. He is also believed to have ties to terrorists.

And steroid abuse may not be limited to professional athletes and young men. Experts who study the problem now say a growing number of teenage girls, some as young as 9, are using steroids to give themselves an edge in sports and also to achieve the toned look of models and movie stars.

Aaron, it is becoming somewhat of a new diet craze, and a scary one at that.

BROWN: It is that. Thank you, Erica. We'll see you tomorrow.

In the history of baseball, Cal Ripken Jr. ranks up there with the greatest players of what he himself called the great American game. And it is. And he'll be remembered as the man who broke what was often called Lou Gehrig's unbreakable record. His remarkable career tonight as we continue our anniversary series, "Then & Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cal Ripken Jr.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's baseball's ironman, a player's player whose work ethic and energy made him a perennial fan favorite.

CROWD: We love Cal Ripken.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cal Ripken Jr. was born into a baseball family and stayed true to the family business throughout his 20-year career with the Baltimore Orioles. Ripken was a great player, earning league MVP honors. But he is best known for the streak. Ripken played 2,632 consecutive Major League Baseball games, breaking Lou Gehrig's record. The streak ended in 1998 and Ripken retired from baseball three years later.

CAL RIPKEN JR. FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER: It's been a great run, fabulous career.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now 44, Ripken lives in Maryland with his wife Kelly and their two children. Baseball's ironman and his brother Billy have a baseball talk show on XM Satellite Radio.

RIPKEN: I really enjoy actually promoting and talking about the game and trying to push that and get a few more backstops built up around the country as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ripken also owns a minor league team, the Aberdeen Iron Birds. And he's established the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, providing baseball programs to underprivileged kids.

RIPKEN: If I am remembered, I hope it's because by living my dream, I was able to make a difference.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: All year long as CNN celebrates a quarter century of reporting the news, we're looking back on the people and the stories that helped shape our era. Morning papers help shape this program. We'll get to it in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country. Lots of good ones today. OK, so we'll go kind of quickly. "Christian Science Monitor," "If Senate shuts down, who's to blame?" is their lead. Facing Bush judicial nominees, eager interest groups have -- and the nuclear option, a divided Senate keeps raising the stakes.

Now, "The Washington Post" on that story, too. It's great the "Post" been sending the paper of late, isn't it? We should send them a thank-you note. Will you do that for me. "Filibuster rule change opposed. 60 percent in poll reject Senate GOP plan to ease confirmation of Bush's judicial nominees." I wonder if there's something behind that? I mean, are people feeling like some of that stuff has peaked?

The "Examiner of Washington." I just want the picture here. Here's the president and the Saudi Crown Prince -- they're holding hands. What is that about? OK. I don't know.

But here in "The Washington Times" it look like they're about to kiss. Look, we just want more oil. That's all we're asking for. We wanted more oil and we want it cheaper.

I didn't make these pictures up. "The Rocky Mountain News," this is a very good story. "Skier's Saga of Survival Eight days after breaking leg near Steamboat Springs, Colorado -- Steamboot Springs, man with little food, water, crawls to rescue." A made for cable story that one.

"The Chattanooga Times Free Press" down in the corner here, "Pillcam helps doctors see inside patients." I don't know if you can see it, but there's this little pill that you swallow it and it transmits the picture of your digestive track should you care to see it. Apparently some doctors do.

How we're doing on time, Will -- 30 seconds. Just exactly the right amount.

"Minneapolis Star & Tribune" or as they call it now, "The Star Tribune," up on top. "Success at Age 26. Folks who hit their stride at an early age. " Peter Jennings among them. Peter was anchoring the news at 26. Some of us were late bloomers. OK.

"The Chicago Sun-Times," "A hit on the mob." Good story. We'll tell you more about that coming up. Retreating is the weather in Chicago tomorrow if you're wondering. And I was.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired April 25, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST "NEWSNIGHT": Good evening again, everyone.
It is a simple but uncomfortable fact that's often left unsaid in the public conversation about young people and drug abuse: the problem with drugs is they make you feel better. If they made you feel awful the first time you tried them, eventually no one would. Word would get around. Which brings us to some new facts about teenagers and drugs: what many of them are taking, and where they are getting it, and why it may surprise you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The easiest high of all is the one you can score at home. The family medicine cabinet carries no stigma, but it is often packed with prescription drugs which can be as potentially addictive or lethal as anything bought on the street.

DR. TERRY HORTON, PHOENIX HOUSE: Prescription drug abuse is really much more similar to heroin abuse than most children or young adults realize. They don't have a fear or stigma with the narcotic painkiller that they do with heroin, but pharmacologically they're very similar.

BROWN: James Ruter and Val Maroulis are residents at Daytop, a treatment program in New Jersey. Both have been sober since last fall after being addicted since their early teens. By 14, they were using both alcohol and marijuana; by 17, prescription drugs.

VAL MAROULIS, FMR. DRUG USER: My friends had it, I mean, I tried it. I got hooked on it like normal drugs and it became an everyday thing for me.

BROWN: James did more than abuse prescription drugs. He managed to steal doctors' pads and write and fill fraudulent prescriptions.

JAMES RUTER, FMR. DRUG USER: I would actually write fake prescriptions and go down to New York, find, you know, a pharmacy, pay off the pharmacist, you know, have my different name, different address, on the pills and obtain it that way.

BROWN: The new research for the Partnership for Drug-Free America indicates how prevalent the problem of prescription drug abuse has become. Based on interviews with over 7,000 teenagers, the survey concludes that nearly one in five had used a prescription painkiller without the prescription, more than had experimented with cocaine or crack, LSD or ecstasy. RUTER: A lot of parent I know who are on medications, you know, for pain and stuff, don't understand how, you know, word spreads from other friends, you know, and then kids read a label on a bottle and, you know, find out the name of it and hear what the side effects are and what it does, and they're interested. You know, they're curious.

BROWN: Too many parents say doctors are blind to the risks their kids are taking with drugs from their own medicine chest.

HORTON: Four or five tablets left from a prescription that are sitting in there can have great value, great monetary value as well as some danger to some child who has decided to experiment.

MAROULIS: We did it so many times at like multiple people's parents. They still didn't know that we took so many pills out of their closet, and like, they were just blind the whole time.

BROWN: The turnaround for James came not because of his parent or any anti-drug message. It came in the worst way imaginable.

RUTER: It was like seven or eight Xanaxes and I was drinking, and it just scared me so much. You know what I mean? I was there when the ambulance came. And I thought to myself, it could have been me, because I was eating the same things. But I don't really drink when I'm on pills.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Another simple fact that bears repeating in the name of context: for as long as there have been teenagers, the forbidden has been a magnet for them, hard to resist and impossible to ignore. Steve Dnistrian is the executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the group that did the study we just told you about. We talked to Steve earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Let's talk about context for this for a second. Is this sort of the 21st century version of kids raiding their parents' liquor cabinet?

STEVE DNISTRIAN, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG FREE AMERICA: Well, it is. I mean, this is a whole new -- it's not just one substance that we're talking about, one medication. This is a whole new category that's emerging. And, you know, kids have grown up now with a lot of these pills around them, used legitimately by adults and parents and caregivers. So the curiosity factor is there for them.

BROWN: So they probably, probably had a beer or something, probably smoked a joint or something, and then go to the medicine cabinet and pop a Vicodin?

DNISTRIAN: Yes, there are -- these kids are pretty smart. I mean, they're sophisticated consumers. They're not just going randomly to find any pill. They're looking for certain pills because they know the effects. BROWN: Aren't they just kids in a sense?

DNISTRIAN: They're kids.

BROWN: They're experimenting.

DNISTRIAN: Yes.

BROWN: I mean, I don't know what you did when you were 18, but there were kids I knew in high school who were sensation seekers and this is well pre-marijuana, they were drinking gin or whatever.

DNISTRIAN: Well, this is just the new form of that today. They've got more flavors now.

BROWN: OK. Is it more dangerous?

DNISTRIAN: It is certainly more dangerous.

BROWN: It is more dangerous because...

DNISTRIAN: Because these are lethal -- potentially lethal -- narcotics that you're dealing with. Now, when used appropriately, they're very effective medications. But when used intentionally to get high, they can have very, very bad consequences. Kids we've seen in our study believe that these medications are safer. They're not something you have to inject in your arm.

BROWN: When we're talking about kids -- I guess I'm wanting to make a distinction here, just looking at the chart here -- not that I think it is a terrific idea for kids to be popping Vicodin, because I don't, it is just that it scares the hell out of me the idea that they're popping OxyContin which is highly addictive, extraordinarily dangerous drug -- not that Vicodin is a terrific drug, but there's a world of difference. Agree?

DNISTRIAN: Well, not necessarily.

BROWN: OK.

DNISTRIAN: It all depends on the user, the dosage, the frequency, and the motivations.

BROWN: You know what's surprising about this, just looking at the chart, is that things I would have expected on there -- Valium, Xanax -- which are in a lot of houses, don't show up at all.

DNISTRIAN: Yes, right. Well, they're not there just yet. We're measuring just a tight number of medications.

BROWN: But a kid's more likely to abuse OxyContin than he is to abuse Xanax?

DNISTRIAN: Yes, that could be. Some studies are showing that the anti-depressants are there, they are prevalent, probably at about the 10th percentile as well. So, that's there as well. What we don't know is how many of these things kids are abusing. We had a mom join us from Tempe, Arizona, last week, in Washington for a press conference. Her son, 18-year-old, Adam was his name, died of a poly- drug overdose, cocaine mixed in with some pharmaceuticals -- muscle relaxants, a muscle relaxant called Soma, the kid was abusing to get high.

And how many are abusing these? We don't know yet.

BROWN: Just, one more thing. People get e-mails all the time about how you get, just about every drug on the planet or darn near -- on the Internet. Is that where they're getting them or are they getting them from mom?

DNISTRIAN: Well, kids, if you ask them, why is the problem getting worse among their peers, they say easy access. Medicine cabinet at their home, medicine cabinet at their friend's house. Internet factors in but somewhere quite lower on the data collection.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in. Nice to meet you.

DNISTRIAN: You bet.

BROWN: Thank you.

DNISTRIAN: Sure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Steve Dnistrian of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

It is fair to say that a parent will do almost anything to protect a child from drugs or serious illness or a predator. There are tough calls to make in life. This is not one of them. But easy on personal or family level is sometimes complicated in other ways. In the case of sex offenders, there are laws now on the books in every state requiring that neighbors be notified when a sex offender moves in, meaning that men and women convicted of crimes, horrible crimes to be sure, keep paying the price long after they leave prison. In south Florida, though, legislators are on the brink of taking such tough laws a step beyond.

Here's CNN's John Zarrella.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John Fernandez walks his 8- year-old daughter Elle from South Point Elementary School. Fernandez says he has no problem at all with a new ordinance expected to be enacted soon by the Miami Beach City Commission.

JOHN FERNANDEZ, PARENT: The further the better, it's that simple.

ZARRELLA: The ordinance would more than double the distance from a school or park that a sexual offender can legally live from the current 1,000 feet, which is a state law, to 2,500.

FERNANDEZ: There are sick guys out there, and they need to be far away from schools.

ZARRELLA: According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement sex Offender registry, one sex offender lives in an apartment building within sight of the school, but legal, more than 1,000 feet away. Given the number of schools and parks on Miami Beach, under the new ordinance, the offender who lives here and all the other 32 sexual offenders registered in Miami Beach would be virtually run out of town.

Good, says Commissioner Simon Cruz.

You're basically eliminating, at 3500 or 2500 feet -- there really isn't anywhere on the beach for these people to live.

COMMISSIONER SIMON CRUZ: No, there isn't. There isn't.

ZARRELLA: And that was the intent?

CRUZ: Ah, yes, it was.

ZARRELLA: One of Commissioner Cruz's reasons for backing the ordinance is personal. Two years ago, he came to this park with his children.

CRUZ: I was here one Sunday morning, right here on this particular slide, there was a gentleman, with a backpack, sitting on the slide.

ZARRELLA: Cruz says a police officer who happened by ran the man's name in the police database and he turned out to be a registered sex offender. But banning them from a community, says one convicted offender, is the wrong approach.

JAKE GOLDENFLAME, CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER: If there's too much pressure on you like banishing you from living in the city or putting in a global positioning satellite system on you that marks you like Dracula, it is easy to say, the heck with this, if they don't want me to recover, I'm going to be a -- then you go into relapse real fast.

ZARRELLA: The ordinance will come up for a second and final reading next month. If the ordinance pure and simply a reaction to the recent murders of Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde? The commissioner Cruz says yes, but makes no apologies.

CRUZ: You know, one could say yes a kneejerk reaction, but isn't it better to be a kneejerk reaction than to sit back and say, you know, I should have done that, when it's a little too late?

ZARRELLA: Similar measures in other states have been ruled unconstitutional, so Cruz expects a challenge. But they're ready to fight it, he says, because they're fighting for the children.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami Beach. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What gives a parent comfort isn't always the deciding factor. Far from it. So just how far can a community go to restrict sex offenders is a question working its way through the courts. And so we turn to our legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Why -- let me presume for a second that you cannot say no sex offender can live in the city of Miami Beach? Is that a fair presumption.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That is a fair presumption.

BROWN: So reasonableness comes into play.

TOOBIN: Correct.

BROWN: What is reasonable here?

TOOBIN: Well, that's what gives lawyers work. I mean, these -- these -- this is really a hard area. And courts are struggling with this now. Let me tell you about one case, in Iowa. Iowa passed a law covering the whole state that created enough buffer zones so that basically it was impossible for sex offenders to live anywhere except in certain remote, rural areas. And the court there struck it down under a -- several different theories. Said it violated their right to travel. And it was also -- they said it was an ex post facto law, which meant that it was after they were punished and they had served their punishment, piling this punishment on top was unconstitutional.

BROWN: But at the same time the courts have said, in a number of places, Washington state for one, I think, Kansas for another and probably more, that after a sex offender has completed his sentence, he or she -- usually he -- can be committed to a prison under a civil commitment law on the theory that they are still dangerous?

TOOBIN: That's a very specific -- there's certain factors. Not every sex offender can be held forever. What's more difficult about the sex -- these laws is that there's no end to it. I mean, the punishment goes on forever. And courts are uncomfortable with that.

BROWN: But doesn't in the civil commitment case, the punishment go on forever? You're not give an date certain when you get out. And in fact, when you have completed your sentence?

TOOBIN: But I believe under the civil commitment laws, there is a continuing evaluation of them that they are found continued to be dangerous. Here, another argument against these laws is that these people are being punished without any individualized assessment that they are still dangerous.

BROWN: So let me come back to the question of reasonableness. Let's say 1,000 feet is reasonable, is 1,500 feet? I mean, how -- how -- how does anyone determine what is reasonable or not?

TOOBIN: Well, Iowa, just for example, Iowa had a 2,000 foot rule, that was struck down. A 1,000 foot is the new -- is the new Iowa law. And I think that may survive, because it allows some places within cities for sex offenders to live. The problem with the 2,000- foot law, wasn't with the 2,000 feet. It was the fact that that basically took up the whole state practically. And that was almost by definition unreasonable.

BROWN: Just -- just so that I'm clear on this, that because in a 2,000 foot radius there's bound to be a school or a park.

TOOBIN: A school or a park.

BROWN: Thank you.

TOOBIN: By the way, just another fact to remember about this, is that most sex offense is within the family. It's not the stranger cases. So that's just a little reality check there.

BROWN: Which is always good on a program. Thank you. We appreciate that.

Other things making news today, Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta with more on that -- Erica.

ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron.

The judge in Michael Jackson's trial ruled today, Jackson's ex- wife Debbie Rowe can testify for the prosecution. She's expected to say she was under duress when she praised Jackson in a television interview two years ago. Now, also today, Jackson dropped one of his attorney's from his defense team.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have indicted 14 reputed mobsters on murder, conspiracy and racketeering charges. Those arrested are accused of plotting at least 18 murders, some dating back 3 and half decades. Prosecutors say it is one of the most far reaching indictment of alleged mobsters in Chicago history.

In Japan, the deadliest train crash in more than four decades. A commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment building outside Osaka. At least, 73 people were killed, more than 440 injured. Excessive speed may have been a factor.

And sky high oil prices. On the agenda when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited President Bush's Texas ranch today, the Saudis say they have a long-term plan to pump more oil, but made no promise to increase production in the short term.

And that is the latest at this hour from Headline News. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Erica, thanks very much. See you in half an hour.

In a moment, a battle in Iraq like you've never seen it before. And a hero who saw it coming straight at him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was like, oh, my gosh, that's my baby carrying that gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Her baby, his gun. And the story of how the two of them saved an awful lot of lives.

Also tonight trouble or not, and there is plenty of it. A man of power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, that's the thing about DeLay is he always wins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Who is Tom DeLay and why is everyone so afraid of him?

Later, she had the strength to confront monsters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was a court reporter. And I could take their testimony and look into their faces and see how they explained these horrifying experiences that were coming up in the news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Now she battles another terror. People who tell her it never happened at all.

From New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The great horror of any war, but this war more most is how closely imagination is harnessed to death. In this the insurgents have become innovators. You can despise everything they do and grant them that, it's their only true talent, coming up with new ways of making life difficult, deadly for soldiers and civilians alike. Fortunately deadly imagination can be confronted and defeated by training and courage. One such story, an encounter earlier this month, is only now coming to light.

So from the Pentagon this evening, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In war, the outcome often hinges on the actions of a single person, like 21-year-old Lance Corporal Joshua Butler of Altoona, Pennsylvania.

MELISSA BENSON, BUTLER'S MOTHER: This is my son's room. You can tell he's proud to be a Marine. MCINTYRE: According to his mother, Butler wanted since childhood to be a Marine, like his cousin, uncle and great-grandfather before him.

BENSON: The earliest recollection that I have is him putting on my brother's Marine Corps shirt and hat, and marching up and down the hall, and saying, I'm going to be a Marine some day.

MCINTYRE: He begged his mother to sign his enlistment papers, which she did, only to be shocked when she later saw him at Camp LeJeune.

BENSON: And when he'd come walking across the parking lot with that big gun, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's my baby carrying that gun.

MCINTYRE: It was Butler's big gun that thwarted a bold attack two weeks ago on a remote Marine outpost on the Iraq/Syria border. It began when a suicide bomber tried to ram a truck past the camp's defenses. Firing from his number two guard tower, Corporal Butler forced the truck to veer to the side. The resulting explosion knocked Butler down and filled the air with white smoke.

What came next, Butler told a "Washington Post" reporter, was like something out of a movie.

STEVE FAINARU, WASHINGTON POST REPORTER: You had the smoke that was left over from the first bomb and the debris. And it hadn't yet cleared. And then here came this fire truck, just literally out of the smoke, heading straight toward the base.

MCINTYRE: The Marines had been warned insurgents were planning to use a fire truck as a weapon, but were beginning to think it was a myth.

COL. ROBERT CHASE, U.S. MARINES OP. OFFICER: In that particular case, we had heard fire trucks were in the area and could possibly be used. So when they saw it coming, it was not a surprise to them.

MCINTYRE: As it sped past a mural bidding travelers goodbye from free Iraq, the fire truck may not have been a surprise. But it was terrifying.

FAINARU: One of the Marines said that when he actually saw it coming up the road, it was like the grim reaper himself driving up this road heading for the base. And that his heart basically stopped.

MCINTYRE: Again, it was Butler's quick reaction and heavy machine gun fire that forced the fire truck to explode before it could get past the inner defenses. An inspection of the tangled wreckage revealed the fire truck was packed with propane tanks of explosives, and outfitted with a bulletproof windshield to protect the two suicide attackers inside.

Marine commanders admit it was an audacious plan. CHASE: I think the idea was that the first two vehicles would attempt to breach, the sheer weight and size and mass of the fire truck would then force its way through whatever breach was caused.

MCINTYRE: The attack had failed. But the battle continued for almost 24 hours. When the dust cleared, the Marines say some 19 insurgents were dead and the Marines had suffered no serious casualties.

Back home in Altoona, a Marine's mother is bursting with pride and worry.

BENSON: I go from being so extremely proud that I can't stand it and wanting the whole world to know what he's done, and then go into a complete panic.

MCINTYRE: And as for her son's promised safe return? That chapter of his story will have to wait until October when he's scheduled to come home.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I'm not a Tom DeLay, the House majority leader. He'll be returning from Texas with the president tomorrow on board Air Force One. That's one travel-related headline today.

The other concerns a trip that Mr. DeLay took to Great Britain a few years back and whether a lobbyist now under federal investigation paid his airfare.

The first headline speaks to how far Tom DeLay has come, to how much influence he retains. The second, perhaps, to how far he may fall. What makes the man fascinating, whatever you think of him, is how easily both headlines seem to fit. Here's CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two things are true when you become late-night fodder -- you have arrived and you're in trouble.

JAY LENO, HOST, "TONIGHT SHOW": And a man in West Bend, Wisconsin, who bought a shirt at the local Goodwill store, found $2,000 stuffed inside the pocket. Amazing? The more amazing part, how did one of Tom DeLay's old shirts wind up in Wisconsin?

CROWLEY: He's a bug exterminator driven to politics by his fury over environmental rules. He once called the EPA "the Gestapo of government." After the president, he may be the most powerful man in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The majority leader of the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay of Texas!

CROWLEY: Tom DeLay came to power the old-fashioned way -- under his own steam, building a base of loyalties, collecting chips.

BOB BARR (R), FORMER GEORGIA CONGRESSMAN: He's worked for each member to get elected and to be reelected. That is something that members don't forget, or forget at their own peril.

CROWLEY: Last year, DeLay, a prodigious fund-raiser, gave more money to congressional candidates than any other lawmaker. A decade ago, he was a relative unknown in a minority party. But DeLay was setting the type for his headliner status, sending cash and care packages to the campaigns of Republican hopefuls in the class of '94.

REP. DAVID DREIER (R), CALIFORNIA: So a candidate for Congress who would be out knocking on doors, meeting with supporters, talking about issues, debating his or her opponent, would come back to the headquarters, and they would say, this guy Tom DeLay just sent home baked cookies from Texas.

CROWLEY: When the House opened for business in '95, Republicans were in charge for the first time in four decades. Many of them owed Tom DeLay. He was elected whip, the person responsible for rounding up votes. He was very good at it. Someone once called him a cross between a concierge and a Mafia don, a guy who delivered.

BILL PAXON (R), FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN: He's a kind of person who would always reach out to help, help with your political needs, your congressional needs, your personal needs.

CROWLEY: A guy who expected loyalty.

CHARLIE STENHOLM (D), FORMER TEXAS CONGRESSMAN: If anyone within his own party disagrees with him, they find an opponent waiting in the wings in the next primary, they find a threat to reduce the amount of funding available to them.

CROWLEY: They call him the Hammer, pounding money out of donors.

REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: That's $10,200.

CROWLEY: Pounding votes out of colleagues. Pounding the Democrats.

ERIK SMITH, FORMER DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL AIDE: There were countless times on the House floor when Democrats would feel like we'd finally pull one off, and we were finally going to win. And the clock on the vote would stop, and Tom DeLay would appear on the floor, and Republican members would start walking to the (INAUDIBLE) of the House to change their votes.

CROWLEY: Eight years as whip, three now as majority leader. He's a brass-knuckles conservative in relentless pursuit of his agenda.

STUART ROY, FORMER DELAY AIDE: Every morning when he wakes up, he's trying to figure out a way that the conservatives can win and that the Democrats lose. CROWLEY: In Texas, DeLay pushed the state legislature to redraw district lines to favor Republican elections. When minority Democrats fled the state to prevent a vote, he called the FAA to find out where they went.

STENHOLM: He was a bulldog. And he wasn't going to take no for an answer. And some of his tactics are being reviewed by the proper legal authorities. And I'll leave it to them whether anything was illegal or not.

CROWLEY: Drawn into a district he couldn't win, Charlie Stenholm is now a former congressman, one of the Texas Democrats who lost their congressional seat in 2004. And Tom DeLay got six more Texas Republicans in Washington to help move the agenda -- smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations. He is the go-to guy for getting legislation through Congress. Donors want to give him money. Lobbyists want to please him, or at least not make him mad. Power begets more power.

DeLay warned pro-business lobbies to stop giving money to Democratic candidates. He pushed K Street -- Washington speak for lobbyists and trade associations -- to hire Republicans. He expanded his reach.

ROY: There are certainly a lot of people in the government relations world, public relations, who are close to Tom DeLay and who are able to look out for him, be eyes and ears.

CROWLEY: Bloomberg News found more than 200 companies, coalitions and trade groups have hired former DeLay employees as lobbyists.

Never charged with violating House rules, DeLay has skirted the edge, warned by the Ethics Committee on four separate occasions. His colleagues are loyal; his critics intense. And all agree on this.

SMITH: You know, that's the thing about DeLay is, he always wins.

CROWLEY: Tom DeLay wields great power with no apology, few boundaries, and no one takes odds against him.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead tonight on "NEWSNIGHT," some are calling it the nuclear option. And it could fundamentally change the way the Senate does business. But at what cost?

Also ahead, a regular bit of business for us that costs absolutely nothing, save the rooster's allowance. "Morning Papers" wraps it up again. A break first.

Around the world, this is "NEWSNIGHT."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This weekend saw a doctor who is also a senator talking to preachers about judges. If nothing else, it says a fair amount about the state of politics today. What it is is in the end an education in filibusters and hardball and nuclear options. Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It was a multimedia event. From the Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky Sunday night, a rally was beamed nationwide to radio, TV and the Internet. It assailed activist federal judges and called for an end to filibusters against people of faith.

Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist spoke via videotape, and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, framed the argument in dramatic terms.

JAMES DOBSON, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: The future of democracy and ordered liberty actually depends on the outcome of this struggle.

JAMES STEWART, ACTOR, "MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON": Wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes all winter.

GREENFIELD: Other television sets are watching an ad that featured Jimmy Stewart's famous "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" filibuster, as well as a Republican supporter of unlimited debate.

Last year, two of the president's appeals court nominees were blocked by a filibuster. This year, both have been renominated. And Frist has said he may invoke what some have called the nuclear option, asking the Senate to rule judicial filibusters out of order.

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: Tell Senator Frist you can't do this.

GREENFIELD: Democrats say if that happens, they'll use other rules to bring all Senate business to a standstill.

(on camera): There's no question that the fight over the filibuster and over prospective judges will be as intense as any Washington has seen in years. But why? Why such intensity over nominees to the federal bench, often called the least political branch of the federal government?

Well, two reasons, really. First, because this is a dress rehearsal for the real battle yet to come. And second, because of the power that federal judges wield over some of the most fundamental aspects of public policy.

(voice-over): What's the real battle? That will happen when a vacancy opens on the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's battle with thyroid cancer suggests a vacancy could come sooner rather than later. And across the political spectrum, there is clear agreement on the consequences. Ralph Neas leads a liberal alliance in the battle over judges.

RALPH NEAS, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY: What happens over the next several years, especially on the Supreme Court, is going to determine the law of the land for the next several decades.

GREENFIELD: Michael Grieve is with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

MICHAEL GRIEVE, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: It has sunk in that justices these days sit for very, very, very long times, much more so than in earlier years. And so, every one of these decisions has sort of an aura of irreversibility, if you will.

GREENFIELD: And this, of course, is the key. For decades, the federal courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, has been in the eye of political storms. From the 1930s, when it struck down New Deal legislation to the '50s when it outlawed public school segregation, to its decisions that abortion was a constitutional right in the 1970s and '80s. And earlier this year, when federal courts refused to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, critics like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay strongly implied that Congress should impose stricter limits on what the federal courts could and could not do.

DELAY: We will look at an arrogant, out of control, unaccountable judiciary.

GREENFIELD: So the fight this spring may seem to focus on the records and personalities of the judicial nominees, or on the way the U.S. Senate should conduct its business, but it's really about a matter on which just about everyone agrees -- in this country, what the courts say has a profound, enduring impact on what kind of country we live in.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So too does the price of oil, which the president and Saudi Arabia's crown prince discussed at some length today, we're told, in Crawford, Texas. They talked about that, and then, in a convenience store, about the larger question at hand -- Funyuns or Ruffles. OK, the crown prince may be one of the most powerful men on the planet, but it's a long flight, longer still without chocolate chips or a candy bar.

Still to come on the program tonight, a small-town girl who would play a crucial role in history. More than a half-century later, her mission to make sure the world does not forget. Her story as "NEWSNIGHT" continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A couple of months back, C-SPAN booked an author to talk about her work on the Holocaust. In the interests of balance, I guess, it also booked someone to say the Holocaust didn't happen. While we have much respect for C-SPAN, to our mind this was balance run amok. I can only imagine how it hit the woman you're about to meet. She is not a Holocaust survivor as such, but she lived through the telling of the story of the Nazi killing machine as few have or ever could stand.

That was a long time ago, of course, to all of us, maybe. But not to her. Her story from CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She was a small- town girl from Illinois who would play a crucial role at an historic trial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When "Nuremberg," the trial of Nazi Germany's highest war criminals, continues.

BUCKLEY: During the doctors trial portion of the Nuremberg tribunal, Vivien Spitz -- that's her on the left -- was one of a handful of court reporters who documented the proceedings and the gruesome details of medical experiments performed on concentration camp prisoners.

At 22, Spitz, the daughter of a German immigrant, volunteered for Nuremberg and was the youngest of the court reporters.

Today, she is 80.

(on camera): What motivated you to want to see these men and look into their eyes? Why was that important to you?

VIVIEN SPITZ, NUREMBERG COURT REPORTER: I was a court reporter. And I could take their testimony and look into their faces and see how they explained these horrifying experiments that were coming out in the news.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Using shorthand, Spitz recorded verbatim the atrocities attributed to 23 doctors and administrators on trial. She saw the photos in evidence, of prisoners taken to high altitudes in pressure chambers, then denied oxygen until they died. Of phosphorus burns forced on prisoners to test skin ointments. Of limbs amputated from one victim to see if they could be reattached to another.

She heard the firsthand accounts of those who actually survived some experiments.

SPITZ: I started having tears come out of my eyes falling on my notebook on the ink.

BUCKLEY: In the end, 16 of the doctors were found guilty; seven of them executed for their crimes. It's all in the record.

SPITZ: That record, I call it the record that will never forget. BUCKLEY: But when she returned home, Vivien Spitz could not forget. For years, there was a recurring nightmare. She was a prisoner trying to protect children in the camp.

SPITZ: And I was always escaping from a concentration camp in a tunnel, under a barbed wire fence, with the Nazi guard bayonetted rifle walking back and forth. And I was trying to keep them quiet.

BUCKLEY: As the years past, the nightmares faded. Spitz had children of her own. She continued her career.

(on camera): This is you here.

SPITZ: Yes.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): She became an official reporter of debates in the House of Representatives.

SPITZ: This is my treasure.

BUCKLEY: That's her shaking hands with President Jimmy Carter.

SPITZ: And I was so stunned, I said, it's nice to have you back, Mr. President.

BUCKLEY: In the '80s, she moved to Denver and retired. Vivien Spitz had served her country, and, she thought, history, by documenting the medical experiments. But in 1987, she was confronted by Holocaust denial. Controversy erupted when a local high school teacher told students the Holocaust was a hoax.

SPITZ: That is when I became livid, and decided that I would get out my boxes, my file boxes of all of this material that I brought from Nuremberg.

BUCKLEY (on camera): These are the actual transcripts?

SPITZ: Yes.

BUCKLEY (voice-over): She took on the teacher and began speaking to any group that would listen, despite the awful memories it dredged up.

SPITZ: It was just reliving the horror, but realizing that I was duty-bound to do this. I had to do this.

BUCKLEY: And so for the past 18 years, Vivien Spitz, a Catholic, German-American from Woodstock, Illinois, has been on a mission, to tell the story of the doctors trial to as many people as she can -- 40,000 people have heard it.

SPITZ: Doctors who had taken the oath of Hippocrates to heal and cure became torturers and murderers.

BUCKLEY: She shows the horrific photographs, and this one of Adolf Hitler. The reaction of one student to Hitler's photo, reinforcing her drive to keep telling the stories.

SPITZ: I just said, this is the person responsible for all of this horror. How naive could I have been? This senior boy raised his hand and said, "who is that?"

BUCKLEY: Now, she's written a book "Doctors From Hell." Her hope that it will continue to educate long after she is gone.

SPITZ: I'm very grateful that I feel that God has let me live this long, to fulfill a mission that has found me, that I did not seek.

BUCKLEY: The court reporter who recorded history.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Denver.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, he redefined what it means to show up at the office. Life after retirement for baseball's ironman.

A break first. This is "NEWSNIGHT."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In just a moment, a look back on the amazing career of one of the greats that ever played baseball, but now, as we come up towards a quarter of the hour, Erica Hill joins us again from Atlanta with some of the other headlines of the day -- Ms. Hill.

HILL: Mr. Brown.

We start in Georgia with some tragic news, ending at this point. Autopsies will be performed tomorrow on the bodies of two Georgia toddlers. A 2-year-old girl and her 3-year-old brother disappeared from their home on Saturday. Their bodies found this afternoon in a pond near their house. No indication of foul play at this time.

In Florida, a sixth grade teacher in Brevard County is under arrest, charged with 96 counts of molesting a 13-year-old boy. Daniel Clead (ph) is being held on a quarter million dollars bail. Police believe he may have molested other children as well.

A man federal prosecutors have dubbed the most notorious Afghan drug lord is now under house arrest in New York City. Haji Bashir Noorzai is accused of running an international drug trafficking ring that shipped millions of dollars worth of heroin to United States and Europe. He is also believed to have ties to terrorists.

And steroid abuse may not be limited to professional athletes and young men. Experts who study the problem now say a growing number of teenage girls, some as young as 9, are using steroids to give themselves an edge in sports and also to achieve the toned look of models and movie stars.

Aaron, it is becoming somewhat of a new diet craze, and a scary one at that.

BROWN: It is that. Thank you, Erica. We'll see you tomorrow.

In the history of baseball, Cal Ripken Jr. ranks up there with the greatest players of what he himself called the great American game. And it is. And he'll be remembered as the man who broke what was often called Lou Gehrig's unbreakable record. His remarkable career tonight as we continue our anniversary series, "Then & Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cal Ripken Jr.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's baseball's ironman, a player's player whose work ethic and energy made him a perennial fan favorite.

CROWD: We love Cal Ripken.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cal Ripken Jr. was born into a baseball family and stayed true to the family business throughout his 20-year career with the Baltimore Orioles. Ripken was a great player, earning league MVP honors. But he is best known for the streak. Ripken played 2,632 consecutive Major League Baseball games, breaking Lou Gehrig's record. The streak ended in 1998 and Ripken retired from baseball three years later.

CAL RIPKEN JR. FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER: It's been a great run, fabulous career.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now 44, Ripken lives in Maryland with his wife Kelly and their two children. Baseball's ironman and his brother Billy have a baseball talk show on XM Satellite Radio.

RIPKEN: I really enjoy actually promoting and talking about the game and trying to push that and get a few more backstops built up around the country as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ripken also owns a minor league team, the Aberdeen Iron Birds. And he's established the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, providing baseball programs to underprivileged kids.

RIPKEN: If I am remembered, I hope it's because by living my dream, I was able to make a difference.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: All year long as CNN celebrates a quarter century of reporting the news, we're looking back on the people and the stories that helped shape our era. Morning papers help shape this program. We'll get to it in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country. Lots of good ones today. OK, so we'll go kind of quickly. "Christian Science Monitor," "If Senate shuts down, who's to blame?" is their lead. Facing Bush judicial nominees, eager interest groups have -- and the nuclear option, a divided Senate keeps raising the stakes.

Now, "The Washington Post" on that story, too. It's great the "Post" been sending the paper of late, isn't it? We should send them a thank-you note. Will you do that for me. "Filibuster rule change opposed. 60 percent in poll reject Senate GOP plan to ease confirmation of Bush's judicial nominees." I wonder if there's something behind that? I mean, are people feeling like some of that stuff has peaked?

The "Examiner of Washington." I just want the picture here. Here's the president and the Saudi Crown Prince -- they're holding hands. What is that about? OK. I don't know.

But here in "The Washington Times" it look like they're about to kiss. Look, we just want more oil. That's all we're asking for. We wanted more oil and we want it cheaper.

I didn't make these pictures up. "The Rocky Mountain News," this is a very good story. "Skier's Saga of Survival Eight days after breaking leg near Steamboat Springs, Colorado -- Steamboot Springs, man with little food, water, crawls to rescue." A made for cable story that one.

"The Chattanooga Times Free Press" down in the corner here, "Pillcam helps doctors see inside patients." I don't know if you can see it, but there's this little pill that you swallow it and it transmits the picture of your digestive track should you care to see it. Apparently some doctors do.

How we're doing on time, Will -- 30 seconds. Just exactly the right amount.

"Minneapolis Star & Tribune" or as they call it now, "The Star Tribune," up on top. "Success at Age 26. Folks who hit their stride at an early age. " Peter Jennings among them. Peter was anchoring the news at 26. Some of us were late bloomers. OK.

"The Chicago Sun-Times," "A hit on the mob." Good story. We'll tell you more about that coming up. Retreating is the weather in Chicago tomorrow if you're wondering. And I was.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us.

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