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Budget Compromise Clears First Senate Hurdle; Student Suspended One Year for Hugging Teacher; Airport Guard Catches Falling Baby; Rare Beatles Songs Released; Mark O'Mara Responds to Florida Ethics Complaint; Deaf Missouri Father Hears Daughter Sing For First Time
Aired December 17, 2013 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Back to Dana Bash, our chief congressional correspondent joining now.
So, let's focus on Dems. We talked Republicans last hour, Democrats this hour. Will Democrats push to extend these unemployment insurance benefits here when Congress reconvenes next year?
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they will.
In fact, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, who sets the schedule, is already saying that the last thing that they're going to do before leaving for the year is set a vote for early next year, meaning early January, to take up this idea of extending those long- term unemployment benefits. So, yes, they will.
BALDWIN: OK.
BASH: That is one of many issues that Democrats have. Of course, on the Republican side, they have, as we talked about last hour, military pension -- the issue, which is something, and last hour, since we talked, I have heard that they are going to try to replenish or restore when they come back as well.
BALDWIN: OK.
Backing up, we talked about this last week. This thing, this -- this budget deal, passed the House last week. We had the procedural vote this morning on the Senate side, you know, Congress actually managing, it sounds like, to get a little something done, so -- so a little, you know, applause for that.
But not a whole lot else, right, big picture?
BASH: Big picture, absolutely.
You know, obviously, people like to talk about the "Do-Nothing" Congress. I have to quote our House producer, Deirdre Walsh, who called this the "Do- Something-Small" Congress.
But when you look at the actual numbers, and I can put them up on the screen, 57, that is the number of bills that left Capitol Hill, passed Congress, and went to the president's desk for his signature.
BALDWIN: Wow.
BASH: Look how small that is compared to past Congresses.
Now, we're only halfway through the 113th Congress, so they could somehow miraculously pass --
BALDWIN: Triple digits.
BASH: -- hundreds more, but it certainly doesn't look like they're on track to do that. And that really gives you a sense of where things are.
I should say, in fairness, a lot of people who are elected to Congress, particularly on the Republican side, Brooke, believe that it is -- they're using their time wisely to stop laws from being passed, laws that many people think are bad, so the number doesn't necessarily reflect the productivity for a number of Congress, particularly Republicans.
But there are big, big things left on the table. The farm bill, for example. That is something that members of both parties know has to get done.
It is critically important for farmers out there and for people who are getting benefits that help low-income Americans and so forth.
You see up there probably the most important thing that Congress has to do, that they're supposed to do, is fund the government, right? They're supposed to pass 12 spending bills to do so.
None of those, Brooke -- none of those has passed Congress and been sent to the president's desk.
And, of course, immigration reform, which did pass the Senate, but is nowhere in the House. Maybe that's something they are going to take up next year. We'll see.
BALDWIN: Looking at my next guests shaking their heads, shaking, shaking, shaking. Dana Bash, thank you so much, in Washington for us.
A hug, you heard me, a hug may end up derailing one high school senior's college plans. Surveillance video shows the embrace that got this Georgia teenager kicked out of school.
I know. Looks harmless, but the target of the teen's affection says it is actually a part of a bad pattern.
CNN's Kelly Wallace has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Surveillance footage from Duluth High School shows Sam McNair, a senior, placing his arms around a teacher.
After that seemingly innocuous act he was suspended for one year for sexual harassment, ruining his chance at a Lacrosse scholarship.
SAM MCNAIR, STUDENT: It just threw everything off. Without a high school diploma and graduating on time, I wouldn't be able to receive that scholarship.
WALLACE: Take a look. Sam approaches the teacher from behind and hugs her, but watch closely, she pushes him and he walks away.
MCNAIR: I was thinking that maybe she had a bad day or something. But usually a hug would help a person in that case. I mean, she took it the other way.
WALLACE: According to the discipline report obtained by our affiliate WGCL, the teacher claims Sam's lips and cheeks touched her neck.
She also claims she's warned him before, both things the student denies.
He does admit to hugging this teacher in the past, but says he's never received any warnings.
A representative of Duluth High School says, "This is a discipline issue," and that, "if a parent has concerns about the outcome of a panel, he or she is entitled to appeal the decision."
APRIL MCNAIR, STUDENT'S MOTHER: Just blindside us like this and say sexual harassment and the video doesn't show that.
It's just a little bit unfair for the punishment that he's received.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Kelly Wallace joins me now, along with HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson. Good to see you guys.
WALLACE: Thank you.
JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: And you, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Here we are, like, what was it, last week, the 6-year-old getting suspended for a smooch? And now -- granted, he's 17, but a year suspended? Why so harsh?
WALLACE: I know. And that's getting a lot of attention online, seems like an extreme punishment.
The school district says it can't really talk about the specifics of this situation, nor can it talk about a student's past discipline behavior and record.
What it says is that a hearing officer looks into this and takes that past discipline record and previous suspensions into account when determining the consequences.
Sam McNair has said that, yes, he does have a discipline record.
BALDWIN: He does?
WALLACE: He has been suspended before, but never for sexual harassment. So that's the issue here.
JACKSON: Yikes.
WALLACE: Yikes.
BALDWIN: Yeah.
JACKSON: What happened to the age of innocence, Brooke?
WALLACE: It's out. It's gone.
BALDWIN: So, Mom says she wants to appeal the decision. What if nothing comes from that? Would she have grounds to sue?
JACKSON: I think it's problematic. I think it will be. Wiser minds will prevail.
And you know what, Kelly? You said it best when you were setting it up. Innocuous, if you look at this, Brooke, it appears to be an innocuous hug.
It doesn't appear he does it for any gratification purposes, just something that was gentle, something that was sweet.
And if you look and you listen to him, he seems to be quite the gentleman.
BALDWIN: You see the teacher pushing.
JACKSON: That could easily be construed as the teacher, as he mentioned, having a bad day.
And, you know, are we a society of automatons? Are we robots? Can we not show a little bit of affection to our fellow man? Right?
So it becomes problematic, and I can only hope the school will re- evaluate and apply whatever policies they do with reason, with compassion, and with dignity.
BALDWIN: You're riled up on this one today, Joey Jackson. My goodness.
WALLACE: And with common sense, because as we've talked about before, and this is something really in the mom's favor, she says no one ever told her that there was an issue about her son hugging teachers, right?
The teacher in question here says she has warned the student in the past. He says he never got a warning. He said that he's hugged these teachers, including this teacher.
So, if there's no warning and if there's no discussion with the mom, she could say, wait a second, couldn't you have taken other steps before we got to a one-year suspension -- JACKSON: 100 percent.
WALLACE: -- to resolve this issue?
JACKSON: And maybe unwittingly, that's a legal issue, too, because something very important about the law is notice.
You have to be on notice that you're doing something improper, inappropriate, before you're scolded for it and suspended for it and lose your scholarship and your future is put in jeopardy for a hug.
BALDWIN: I can't believe we're talking about this. I really can't.
JACKSON: It's horrible.
WALLLACE: I'd like to give you a hug, but I'm just not sure I can.
BALDWIN: Commercial break, we'll see it.
JACKSON: Maybe not even then.
BALDWIN: Joey, Kelly, thank you both very much. I appreciate it.
JACKSON: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Coming up, some incredibly rare Beatles songs released on iTunes today. Why now? And, hey, I wonder what Ringo and Paul think about this.
A Beatles historian joins me live, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: A heart-stopping moment at an airport in Poland. Watch the left side of your screen carefully with me. This is a dad, puts his baby on this luggage counter, turns away for half a second.
Watch the baby with me. In a moment, baby falls -- there it goes -- off the table. Incredibly, you can't really see this, but this quick- thinking security guard dives in, catching the child inches from the floor.
This happened last month, but the video is just now being released. Apparently the officer received a bonus for his quick hands.
Fifty years ago today, the "British Invasion" changed American music really forever. Now here we are half a century later and this rare collection has been released.
It's called "The Beatles Bootleg Recordings, 1963." They went on sale today to meet a deadline that otherwise would have made bootlegging the music legal.
Here's one of the 59 tracks. You know this, "There's A Place." Like I said, 59 songs. These tracks are mostly recordings from BBC performances from 1963. You hear them talking, the studio outtake, some of the demos.
Some fans may have missed the sale. In several countries, not the U.S., but several other countries, the songs were taken down practically as quickly as they popped up on iTunes.
Joining me here, John McMillan, author of the book, newly out -- congratulations -- "Beatles Vs. Stones."
JOHN MCMILLAN, AUTHOR, "BEATLES VS. STONES": Thank you.
BALDWIN: Nice to meet you. There's the cover of your book for you.
But let's talk specifically about these 59 songs that just sort of popped out of nowhere it seems like right on iTunes. This is really -- was it more of a copyright issue?
MCMILLAN: That's right.
So these were songs that had never been formally or officially released. Bootleggers know all about them.
BALDWIN: The Beatles nerds.
MCMILLAN: The Beatles obsessives know about these songs. They're always anxious to hear them.
They were released on iTunes in order to extend the copyright protection. They would have fall into the public domain and people would have been allowed to put out collections without the Beatles' approval of some of their unreleased music.
BALDWIN: So this extends it from, say, 50 years to 70. But let's talk about the music. Here's another one of the tracks. This is "Bad To Me." Roll it.
I think what's especially fascinating is these different tracks. It's not what you're used to hearing.
There's something maybe a little different. So for the Beatles obsessive fan, it's really a special treat.
MCMILLAN: Well, a lot of these songs, of course, were not on their regular albums. They appeared on the BBC.
Some of them are lo-fi recordings that were actually the master tapes in many cases that were never preserved. So curators had to find these songs from original broadcasts.
They were not always easy to find. They show the Beatles very early in their career.
Beatles obsessives can learn things about their creative process that they might not have otherwise known. So for the real Beatle lovers, this is a big treat.
BALDWIN: What about, though, let's say Beatle lovers aside, what about Ringo and Paul? What do you think they think about this?
MCMILLAN: Well, I would be hard pressed to answer. I know they're protective about what Beatles material gets released. So a lot of people would like them to release -- I think there's about 11 CDs worth of BBC recordings people would like to hear.
They've been putting out the songs that only they want fans to hear. They want a lot of control over what gets released. So the real Beatles fans would love to see more of this out.
BALDWIN: What does this say, though, about, to use the phrase, "Beatle Mania?"
Here we are, 50 years later after the invasion, and you and I are sitting here on national television talking about a group of songs that just, poof, popped up out of thin air.
MCMILLAN: Sure. Well, they never would have predicted this would be the case because the songs weren't carefully preserved.
When the Beatles were first getting going, they very much thought they were going to be a fad. They would exist for a few years.
So they worked incredibly hard because they thought that pretty soon another group would come along and take their place.
BALDWIN: Not so much.
MCMILLAN: There wasn't a precedence for a group like the Beatles to evolve and mature like they did and carry on.
They never would have imagined this incredible interest in their early recordings.
BALDWIN: How long do you think it lasts?
MCMILLAN: What lasts?
BALDWIN: The interest, the love.
MCMILLAN: Oh, forever.
BALDWIN: Forever. John McMillan, thank you very much.
Coming up next, George Zimmerman has a new hobby. Not only does it involve making cash, he says it helps keep him indoors.
Plus, you have probably seen it online. Zimmerman's former attorney Mark O'Mara responds to an ethics complaint made to the Florida Bar Association.
He joins me live, next here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Well, apparently George Zimmerman can now add painter to his resume. The former neighborhood watchman has apparently listed an original painting on eBay.
This is an 18-by-24-inch canvas, featuring a blue, waving American flag with the words "God, One Nation With Liberty and Justice for All."
The auction began Monday with the starting bid of 99 cents. As of today, it has 98 bids and has reached nearly a hundred thousand dollars.
Zimmerman has been in and out of the spotlight, as you know, since his July acquittal in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Meanwhile, you have probably seen the headline out there saying one of the lawyers who helped get him acquitted, Mark O'Mara, is now being hit with an ethics complaint for the way he handled the Zimmerman case.
The Florida Bar Association confirms to CNN that there is a complaint in the system with Mark O'Mara's name on it and it has to do with the Zimmerman case, but that's all they can reveal.
So, let's ask Mark O'Mara himself, who I should mention, out of transparency, is a CNN legal analyst, joins me live to respond.
Mark O'Mara, nice to have you on.
MARK O'MARA, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Brooke, how you doing?
BALDWIN: Great.
Tell me, what does this complaint allege?
O'MARA: Well, I have to blame myself.
What happened was, way back in April of 2012 after being in the case about two weeks, we found out about the legal defense fund that George had started.
And we were also trying to deal with the way the media was sort of inundating us and the office.
So, I contacted the ethics portion of the Florida bar to say, what do I do with the Web site, what do I do with the twitter account, what do I do with a legal defense fund?
Based upon that, they opened up a file and we had communications back and forth. They had no guidelines and I was sort of making up my guidelines along the way and, as it turns out, sort of the model for how to handle these cases in the future.
But that's really the grievance or non-grievance. It was just the bar's opportunity to give me some advice on how to handle Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and the legal defense fund.
BALDWIN: Back when George Zimmerman was trying to -- this legal defense fund, trying to raise money on his own behalf for his defense, I just have to ask, was this something, was this your suggestion to try to do this?
Did you advise him in any way to do this?
O'MARA: When he got to me, he had already started a legal defense fund, a Web site saying I'm George Zimmerman, can you please help me out, I'm in hiding and I need money.
The first week I got involved in the case, I realized it's never been done in Florida and, as far as I knew, throughout the country. I told him to stop, that we couldn't do it that way because you're asking for donations. There has to be a procedure put in place.
That's when I contacted the bar, contacted a local state agency to try and do it the right way, so I didn't come up with the idea, but I took George's idea and tried to make it as appropriate and legal as we could.
BALDWIN: So with the complaint now, where does this stand? Are you in the clear?
O'MARA: Yes, I'm going to be exonerated. It's not a complaint like somebody complained about what I was doing.
I was really frustrated because the reporter who reported it had no information at all. They just contacted the Florida bar and said, is there a complaint out there, and of course, all the Florida bar can do is say yes or no.
I as the respondent, or the one doing it, I can explain it which is what I'm trying to do now, which is just to say it had nothing to do with acting inappropriately or improperly.
It was just how do we handle a legal defense fund, how do we handle a Twitter account, because it was so new that I was trying to do a Web site on George's behalf in a way that kept me out of trouble, which is what we did.
BALDWIN: So now that we have you on the record explaining your role in this, I have also read that you actually suggest that other high- profile cases should look at your case, this case, as an example. How do you mean?
O'MARA: Well, the Florida bar even sent me an article written by a professor who specializes in ethics out of New York University.
The way we did this, and it sounds like I'm patting myself on the back, but it was exactly the right way.
We didn't use it for advertising or to really forward a position of my client's guilt or innocence.
We just did it in a way that got information out to the public in an appropriate, rational and reasonable way, and this is now going to happen more and more often.
Every two or three months, there's going to be a case similar to Zimmerman or Casey Anthony or something that's going to get national spotlight, and if a criminal defense lawyer doesn't know how to handle this, they are going to get himself or herself in a lot of trouble, so use the benefit of the hundreds of hours of work that we did to do it the right way.
We're there in case we can help answer questions for people.
BALDWIN: Mark O'Mara, thank you very much.
O'MARA: Thanks, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Coming up next, the story you have to hear to believe, this father listens to his daughter sing for the very first time after this life-changing device helps him hear.
You can't miss this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Now this, this is just fantastic. This is what I want to leave you with today.
A Missouri father who has been deaf since birth is hearing the world around him for the very first time.
But there is one sound that has forever changed his life, the voice of his daughter singing.
Their story from Anne Allred of CNN affiliate KSDK.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNE ALLRED, KSDK REPORTER: Ashley Stehle was preparing for the Villa Duchesne show choir Christmas concert and hoping for a Christmas miracle.
ASHLEY STEHLE, DAUGHTER: I knew he was getting the hearing aid, but I didn't know if it was going to work.
ALLRED: The new technology, only out for 12 months, and requires Ashley to wear a special microphone.
A. STEHLE: This is the microphone that will go to this receiver. This receiver will go up to his hearing aid.
ALLRED: The night had come --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Christmas is a time of miracles.
ALLRED: And Ashley had a special surprise --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The father of Ashley --
ALLRED: -- her first solo.
A. STEHLE: We decided not put it in the program. It was going to be a complete surprise.
The snow's coming down --
ALLRED: The song she chose? "Daddy Please Come Home for Christmas."
A. STEHLE: -- lots of people around, Daddy, please come home --
ALLRED: And when she finished, an embrace after the moment that changed their lives.
A. STEHLE: He was closing his eyes. He was listening to my voice.
ALLRED: A voice he had never heard before.
KEN STEHLE, FATHER: It was amazing. I got goose bumps all over me. I'm very proud of my daughter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Goosebumps.
I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you back here on CNN, 11:30 Eastern tonight, "IN CASE YOU MISSED IT."
Now, "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.
