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Civilian Helicopter Shot Down in Iraq; Crowds Follow New Pope around Rome; Congress Battles over Filibusters; Miracle Man Saves Babies
Aired April 21, 2005 - 13:00 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.
CAROL LIN, CO-HOST: No way if you're gay. Texas takes steps to become the first state to bar gays and bisexuals from becoming foster parents. We're going to go in depth.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: So, will these guys be out of a job? A big plan at the New York Stock Exchange means some big changes for how Wall Street does business.
LIN: And solving a mystery of the ages. Why does some popcorn go unpopped? We're reaching down to the bottom of the bag for a kernel of truth.
PHILLIPS: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips.
LIN: And I'm Carol Lin in for Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
We begin this hour with another apparent first in the fight for Iraq. A civilian helicopter, from all indications, blasted out of the sky north of Baghdad with six American passengers, three Bulgarian crew members and two Fijian bodyguards on board. All were civilian contractors; all are dead.
We get the latest from Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Barbara, what do we know at this point?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, this helicopter was flying under contract to the Department of Defense, as you say. There is now every reason, officials say, to believe it was brought down by hostile fire when it was flying earlier today between Tikrit and Baghdad.
This was a commercial version of an MI-8 helicopter, a Soviet design. You see the aftermath here of the crash site.
Now there were all civilians on board: three Bulgarian crew members, two people from Fiji, working as security guards, and six Americans. All said to be employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA. This is a firm that does security work across Iraq.
A very difficult day, we might add, for the Blackwater firm. The company also announcing that another employee was killed in an attack near Ramadi and four of its employees also injured in that attack. But as for this helicopter indent, while it all remains under investigation, there is a great deal of concern about the possibility that this was a shoot-down, because of course, commercial aircraft in Iraq do not operate with the types of air defense protective measures that military aircraft fly with in that country.
This helicopter was doing air transport, essentially. And it had long been thought that would be a safer way to travel for civilians than being on those dangerous roads in Iraq. But again, these commercial aircraft fly without the type of air protective measures that military aircraft fly with. So a lot of concern that they now may be a new target for the insurgents -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Yes, Barbara, it's hard to say that any type of travel in Iraq right now is safe. Thank you so much, Barbara Starr from the Pentagon.
Well, tens of billions more of U.S. dollars will soon be heading to Iraq and Afghanistan but not before some more hard bargaining on Capitol Hill. Sometime today, the Senate is expected to pass an $81 billion measure that's very similar, but not identical, to a funding bill that the House passed in March.
Neither bill skimps on the needs of G.I.'s, but they differ on the foreign aid, funding for the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, even on the need for 12 U.S. aircraft carriers.
This is the fifth emergency spending package Congress will have passed post-September 11.
LIN: And right to live pictures, Kyra, out of Rome, where we are expecting any moment to see the new pope, Pope Benedict, traveling from his former quarters where he lived when he was cardinal to the Vatican where he will settle in at his apartment above St. Peter's Square.
Let's go to Jim Bittermann, who's standing by there right now -- Jim.
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol and Kyra.
We're standing here in the Piazza della Citta Leonina. This is No. 1 on the piazza, and this is former -- Cardinal Ratzinger's former apartment. He's come over here, as he did yesterday. This is the second time in two days he's come over here to, I guess, just to check out on things, and maybe perhaps get some of his books and what not.
We also understood that perhaps his brother was up at the apartment, meeting him this afternoon. He's been here for about three hours. And we're just waiting -- big crowd outside here, a huge crowd that has gathered over the space of three hours, waiting to see the pope. And we're expecting him to come out here at any moment.
There's the papal photographer, and there's the pope.
There we go, the pope now in his car. He's only going to go about 50 yards here or so. He's just -- we're just outside the Vatican walls. We're, oh, just across street, actually. This building is owned by the Vatican, but it is not in the Vatican territory. There go the cars.
And as they go, you'll see here in just a moment the big gate. This is the Puerto Santono (ph), one of the two principal gates at the Vatican where he's going to be going back into. And making around -- big crowd here.
And all afternoon long, they've been occasionally breaking into these chants in Italian of (speaking foreign language), which is sort of a football chant they've been breaking into to greet the pope, trying to get him to come out. And now he has -- Kyra and Carol.
LIN: A very exciting moment. I know a minute detail in the man's life, and yet here he is, the new pope, a man who has taken a vow of poverty, traveling in a limousine, greeted like a rock star coming out of his apartment. But clearly, Jim, so much excitement on the street. Thanks very much for bringing that to us.
In the meantime, not so warm a welcome on Capitol Hill here in the United States. The fight over filibusters may be heading for a major escalation.
In a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee today OK'd a controversial Texas judge for a seat on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Priscilla Owen is one of 10 nominees who went nowhere in president Bush's first term because Senate Democrats threatened to filibuster, that is, to refuse to yield the Senate floor for up or down votes.
Now, it takes three-fifths vote or 60 members to shut filibusters down. And therein lies the frustration for the 55 Senate Republicans. They have threatened to change a rule both parties have used to great effect for generations.
We get more on the fracas and the fallout and the color from our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider.
Bill, for those people out there who are not political junkies, give the significance of this. Because this is a battle that has been going on for what, now almost five years, in the Bush administration.
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. The issue is the filibuster. And the question is, will the Republicans try to assert their authority by passing, with a majority, which they have, a change in Senate rules that would ban filibusters against judicial nominees?
The Democrats are saying this would violate the rights of a minority; the filibuster is a long-standing tradition. What it means is that a minority can hold up Senate business and prevent a vote and that you need 60 votes to cut off a filibuster.
The way this works is, it means the Senate has to govern, really, by a broader consensus than simply a naked 50-plus-one majority. It has to have a broader majority, 60 votes, in order to cut off debate.
Democrats say that protects the power of the minority. Republicans, when they were in the minority for decade after decade, they were often resort to the filibuster to stop the Democrats from asserting majority power. And it means that you have to have a broader process of deliberation in order to have more consensus.
The Senate has never operated like the House. If the rule is passed by the Republican majority, then it will look a lot more like the House of Representatives.
LIN: And here's what's interesting about this. I mean, even though this is really interesting for people who are -- who play inside political baseball, the significance of these judge's appointments really came to light in the debate over whether what should happen to Terri Schiavo, where judges could make or break or rule in favor of whether to reinsert that feeding tube. That did not happen.
The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, staked his political career on some really strong language when he took on the federal judges in that particular case.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. And even though Tom DeLay is in the House of Representatives, where this isn't an issue, there's no filibuster in the House of Representatives, only in the Senate, it's had an impact.
I think before the Terri Schiavo case, Democrats were in a little bit of a shaky ground. They were arguing to protect filibusters -- filibusters, which sounds kind of -- you know, what's that about. It sounds like a way to prevent majority rule, which is an American tradition.
And also, they were -- they are threatening to shut down the Senate if the Republicans cut off filibusters. And that's a very radical thing to do. It came back with a backlash against Republicans when they shut down the federal government 10 years ago.
But the Terri Schiavo case, I think, shifted the burden, and now the Republicans have a problem. Namely, because the courts refuse to act to intervene, and the voters out there saw Congress as overreaching by passing a law that tried to force the courts to step in and save Terri Schiavo. Republicans -- voters out there thought this was an unwarranted intrusion of government into a private family matter.
And then when Tom DeLay started attacking the courts, the Democrats now can say, "We're trying to protect the courts from a federal power assault on them."
LIN: Right. All right. So Thursday arrives, Priscilla Owens' nomination goes to the full Senate. But it seems what you have set up here is, on the one hand, Republicans might play out a -- a morality card, OK, in these nominations. But the Democrats will -- well, they have to be careful, too. Because last time the Democrat was shut down, people weren't getting their welfare checks. There were lots of issues where -- I mean, literally, people could not get government services, and that had a lot of people, taxpayers, really angry. What do you think is going to happen on Thursday then?
SCHNEIDER: Well, I'm not sure. Nobody is sure. The question is, do the Republicans -- they are 55 Republicans in the Senate, but not all of them are going to vote to cut off filibusters, because a lot of them remember when the Republicans were in the minority and they are -- they are likely to be again, one day, in the minority, they want to have that power that protects minorities.
This is an escalation of warfare. Both sides are taking big risks. The Democrats, as you just indicated, the risk of threatening to shut down the federal government. The Republicans, the risk of escalating partisan warfare by asserting brutal majority power, naked aggression in the Senate, where it's not supposed to be a tradition.
Both sides are taking a very, very big political risk here, and what it really means is they're ratcheting up the political stakes into a real showdown.
LIN: You bet. That showdown happening as early as tomorrow. Bill Schneider, thank you very much.
SCHNEIDER: OK.
LIN: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Delayed definitely, derailed potentially. Senate confirmation of U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton still on the -- President Bush's to-do list, and he's not giving up. Even some Republicans are questioning the temperament and judgment of the current undersecretary of state for arms control. Bolton's boss blames politics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Take John Bolton. He's a good man I nominated to represent our country at the United Nations. John's distinguished career and service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment. I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: After more investigation, more interviews, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote on Bolton next month.
LIN: The big board is going public. The New York Stock Exchange wants to change the way it does business. We've got details on LIVE FROM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHARON COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When people call you miracle man, how does that make you feel?
MOHAN REDDY, PEDIATRIC HEART SURGEON: I tell them that miracles are only done by gods.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LIN: He helps heal tiny babies and takes the cases other doctors are afraid to touch. You're going to meet him right after the break.
And get set to meet "The Daily Show's" Lewis Black. He is going to join in for a rant or two right here with Kyra Phillips.
PHILLIPS: Help us all now.
LIN: Fireworks ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEWIS BLACK, "THE DAILY SHOW": But there are reasons to smoke, mainly because of people like Mariah Morosco (ph), who is running for president of...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Take a look at these pictures. You think spring has sprung a leak? Hail, almost the size of tennis balls, pelted Great Bend, Kansas, last night. And parts of the Northern Rockies are receiving several inches of snow.
So let's get the latest weather outlook from meteorologist Orelon Sidney.
Orelon, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, one day we have, like, 70 degree temperatures in some parts of the country and then four days later you're going to have snow.
(WEATHER REPORT)
LIN: Stay safe out there, everybody.
PHILLIPS: A look across America this hour. Bittersweet victory for a grieving family in Michigan. The e-mail provider Yahoo! handed over to the parents of Justin Ellsworth the entire contents of his e- mail account. Ellsworth was a U.S. Marine killed last year in Iraq. His parents petitioned for his e-mails, his last word and thoughts. Yahoo! initially refused, citing its privacy policy.
A Bay area teenager busted for driving under the influence. She said cough syrup. The judge said zero tolerance and took her license for a year. She took an appeal all the way to the California Supreme Court, which upheld that ruling.
And what drugs are more teenagers experimenting with these days? According to a new national study, it's prescriptions. And often raided from their parents' medicine cabinet. The most popular, Vicodin. Partnership for a Drug Free America estimates more than four million teenagers have used Vicodin just to get high.
LIN: We're about to introduce you to a remarkable physician. He is a surgeon, but his specialty is the most delicate and his patients simply the most fragile. It's not hard to see why they call him the miracle man.
Here's Sharon Collins.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS (voice-over): This is the moment that Elizabeth and Raoul Villalobos have been dreading.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Give him a kiss and we'll take him.
COLLINS: The moment when they have to let their 4-month-old baby boy Andrew undergo open heart surgery to repair a hole in his heart.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You take good care of him.
COLLINS: It's a moment that is never easy for any parent, filled with emotion and doubt. The man they are trusting with their baby's fate, in the blue scrubs and plaid jacket, that man is Mohan Reddy. As many other parents call him, the miracle man.
COLLINS (on camera): When people call you miracle man how does that make you feel?
REDDY: I tell them miracles are only done by gods.
COLLINS (voice-over): But in the surgical theater, Reddy is a god. It is his hands that hold steady over baby Andrew's heart, on a heart that is no bigger than a walnut.
It's 8:40 a.m., and Andrew will be under the care of Dr. Reddy and his team for at least five hours. His family waits.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know he's a strong little boy that's fighting to be here.
COLLINS: Dr. Reddy is aware of the waiting parents, and he knows how much they have invested in him. He knows he is the only hope for many of them. And that is his motivation.
REDDY: If you look at some of the babies, you know, who have survived these operations and now, you know, look like normal kids, then it makes you think that, you know, we should never give up the fight. COLLINS: Mohan Reddy began his own life 45 years ago in India. That's where he went to medical school and met and married his wife. They moved to the U.S. in the early '90s, and here he became increasingly interested in pediatrics. And then one day he came across a baby everyone else had given up on.
REDDY: My colleagues thought that the baby would not survive the operation. I went in and I told the parents, "Look, we have not done this operation on such a small child before. If you don't do anything, the baby is not going to survive. He's definitely going to die." So then the mother agreed and I did the surgery, and the baby did very well.
COLLINS: And he's been doing them ever since. Dr. Reddy does between 250 to 300 surgeries on infants every year, working on the tiniest of babies, infants that others have given up hope on. Babies like Jerrick DeLeon.
(on camera) I'm look at this tiny baby with little bitty hands and you operated on his heart. Weren't you scared even a little bit?
REDDY: No, really, I was not scared. You always are concerned when you're doing open heart surgery in tiny babies. Anything goes wrong, you can lose the baby. The margin of error is very, very small.
COLLINS (voice-over): And so are the hearts. Baby Jerrick's heart was the size a grape. He was born at a little more than a pound, four months early, with a life threatening heart condition.
(on camera) So without this surgery, Jerrick would have died.
REDDY: Probably he would not have made it.
COLLINS (voice-over): But Jerrick did and made headlines across the country as the smallest infant ever to receive this surgery, defying all the odds.
(on camera) Are there ever cases that you just go, "I can't do this"?
REDDY: No. Particularly sometimes you can say, yes, maybe we shouldn't do it. You think you're basically in a hopeless situation, but you do the best you can and the babies just fly.
COLLINS (voice-over): And at 10:36 a.m. baby Katelyn Prior (ph) is ready to fly. She is leaving Lucille Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, just eight days after Dr. Reddy performed open heart surgery to repair a large hole and a valve that was too small.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Such a relief to know she's healthy and she's going to live a long, healthy life. If there wasn't a Dr. Reddy, we don't know how long she would have been here without him.
COLLINS: And it's not just his surgical skills. Parents like Stephanie and Kevin Eldridge (ph) talk about his remarkable dedication.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He did surgery all through the night. She came out about 5 in the morning. And he sat in a chair outside her room, with his eyes shut, sitting right there, for the first 24 hours afterwards to make sure that she was doing well.
COLLINS: Their daughter Taylor (ph) was only hours old when she was rushed into surgery with Dr. Reddy. Taylor (ph) still shows her scar, four years after that surgery.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He takes your baby as if it was his own. You can see it in his eyes. He takes that child, and that child is going to be OK. Because that's his heart and his life on the line, too. You feel it. You can see it.
COLLINS (on camera): Here's a man who loves children, saves babies but doesn't have any children. Why?
REDDY: I have plenty to take care of. Raising children is not an easy task. But I think I have a talent I can help a lot of children with.
COLLINS (voice-over): And that is what Andrew's parents are hoping for. It is 12:50 p.m. Andrew's parents are still waiting.
(on camera) What's going through your head right now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What if Andrew doesn't make it? What if, you know, he can't tolerate the surgery?
COLLINS (voice-over): Dr. Reddy doesn't like being called a miracle man, but that's just what Andrew's parents are hoping for as they see him walking down the hall. A miracle.
REDDY: Everything went very well; no problem.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you very much.
COLLINS: Tears of relief, as Elizabeth gets the words she has waited to hear all day. As they walk into the recovery room, Andrew's parents are overwhelmed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, babito (ph).
COLLINS: He's so small, so helpless.
(on camera) How do you feel about Dr. Reddy now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do I feel? He's the best. To put my son's life in his hands, at first was very hard. But now, to me, it's awesome. It's a miracle.
COLLINS (voice-over): And while Elizabeth is reunited with her child, outside Andrew's window, another reunion is happening. Taylor (ph) and her friend Gabriel, also a former Reddy heart patient, are seeing the man that saved their lives. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Reddy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big smiles!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What did Dr. Reddy do for you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fixed my heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS (voice-over): Next on LIVE FROM...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not believe that homosexuals or bisexuals should be raising our children.
PHILLIPS: A Texas lawmaker pushes to keep gays from becoming foster parents. We'll debate it.
Later on LIVE FROM, thousands of people waiting for an organ transplant. We'll follow four people through a new program that's saving lives.
Tomorrow, Zacarias Moussaoui the only person in the U.S. charged with the September 11 attacks, expected to plead guilty. The inside story on how he was caught on LIVE FROM.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Some big changes for a century's old financial institution could be on the way. The New York Stock Exchange is going public. Susan Lisovicz joins us live from the hot spot with more.
Susan, does this mean we'll be able to buy stock in the New York Stock Exchange?
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. We don't know the ticker symbol yet. NYSE we think might be a good option. But four letters are usually associated with NASDAQ. And that's its arch rival.
But yes, it is a big change, Carol. The 212-year-old symbol of American capitalism has agreed to buy an electronic trading firm, Archipelago. That will help the NYSE handle more trades electrically and better compete with rivals like the NASDAQ, which is completely electronic.
It's also prompting talk here that it could lead to the end of one of the most enduring symbols of capitalism, the frenetic trading floor itself, where traders call out buy and sell orders. But there are no official plans just yet to do so. There are strong feelings on both sides. Defenders of the system say their human judgment is critical to an orderly market. Critics say the system can be too slow and it leaves too much room for error or even mischief.
Over the past three years, several firms on the floor of the exchange have paid millions of dollar for trading violations and just late week, we reported that 15 traders were indicted on improper trading charges -- Carol.
LIN: Susan, if I buy stock in a company, I'm hoping ...
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Aired April 21, 2005 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CO-HOST: No way if you're gay. Texas takes steps to become the first state to bar gays and bisexuals from becoming foster parents. We're going to go in depth.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: So, will these guys be out of a job? A big plan at the New York Stock Exchange means some big changes for how Wall Street does business.
LIN: And solving a mystery of the ages. Why does some popcorn go unpopped? We're reaching down to the bottom of the bag for a kernel of truth.
PHILLIPS: From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips.
LIN: And I'm Carol Lin in for Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
We begin this hour with another apparent first in the fight for Iraq. A civilian helicopter, from all indications, blasted out of the sky north of Baghdad with six American passengers, three Bulgarian crew members and two Fijian bodyguards on board. All were civilian contractors; all are dead.
We get the latest from Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Barbara, what do we know at this point?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, this helicopter was flying under contract to the Department of Defense, as you say. There is now every reason, officials say, to believe it was brought down by hostile fire when it was flying earlier today between Tikrit and Baghdad.
This was a commercial version of an MI-8 helicopter, a Soviet design. You see the aftermath here of the crash site.
Now there were all civilians on board: three Bulgarian crew members, two people from Fiji, working as security guards, and six Americans. All said to be employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA. This is a firm that does security work across Iraq.
A very difficult day, we might add, for the Blackwater firm. The company also announcing that another employee was killed in an attack near Ramadi and four of its employees also injured in that attack. But as for this helicopter indent, while it all remains under investigation, there is a great deal of concern about the possibility that this was a shoot-down, because of course, commercial aircraft in Iraq do not operate with the types of air defense protective measures that military aircraft fly with in that country.
This helicopter was doing air transport, essentially. And it had long been thought that would be a safer way to travel for civilians than being on those dangerous roads in Iraq. But again, these commercial aircraft fly without the type of air protective measures that military aircraft fly with. So a lot of concern that they now may be a new target for the insurgents -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Yes, Barbara, it's hard to say that any type of travel in Iraq right now is safe. Thank you so much, Barbara Starr from the Pentagon.
Well, tens of billions more of U.S. dollars will soon be heading to Iraq and Afghanistan but not before some more hard bargaining on Capitol Hill. Sometime today, the Senate is expected to pass an $81 billion measure that's very similar, but not identical, to a funding bill that the House passed in March.
Neither bill skimps on the needs of G.I.'s, but they differ on the foreign aid, funding for the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, even on the need for 12 U.S. aircraft carriers.
This is the fifth emergency spending package Congress will have passed post-September 11.
LIN: And right to live pictures, Kyra, out of Rome, where we are expecting any moment to see the new pope, Pope Benedict, traveling from his former quarters where he lived when he was cardinal to the Vatican where he will settle in at his apartment above St. Peter's Square.
Let's go to Jim Bittermann, who's standing by there right now -- Jim.
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol and Kyra.
We're standing here in the Piazza della Citta Leonina. This is No. 1 on the piazza, and this is former -- Cardinal Ratzinger's former apartment. He's come over here, as he did yesterday. This is the second time in two days he's come over here to, I guess, just to check out on things, and maybe perhaps get some of his books and what not.
We also understood that perhaps his brother was up at the apartment, meeting him this afternoon. He's been here for about three hours. And we're just waiting -- big crowd outside here, a huge crowd that has gathered over the space of three hours, waiting to see the pope. And we're expecting him to come out here at any moment.
There's the papal photographer, and there's the pope.
There we go, the pope now in his car. He's only going to go about 50 yards here or so. He's just -- we're just outside the Vatican walls. We're, oh, just across street, actually. This building is owned by the Vatican, but it is not in the Vatican territory. There go the cars.
And as they go, you'll see here in just a moment the big gate. This is the Puerto Santono (ph), one of the two principal gates at the Vatican where he's going to be going back into. And making around -- big crowd here.
And all afternoon long, they've been occasionally breaking into these chants in Italian of (speaking foreign language), which is sort of a football chant they've been breaking into to greet the pope, trying to get him to come out. And now he has -- Kyra and Carol.
LIN: A very exciting moment. I know a minute detail in the man's life, and yet here he is, the new pope, a man who has taken a vow of poverty, traveling in a limousine, greeted like a rock star coming out of his apartment. But clearly, Jim, so much excitement on the street. Thanks very much for bringing that to us.
In the meantime, not so warm a welcome on Capitol Hill here in the United States. The fight over filibusters may be heading for a major escalation.
In a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee today OK'd a controversial Texas judge for a seat on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Priscilla Owen is one of 10 nominees who went nowhere in president Bush's first term because Senate Democrats threatened to filibuster, that is, to refuse to yield the Senate floor for up or down votes.
Now, it takes three-fifths vote or 60 members to shut filibusters down. And therein lies the frustration for the 55 Senate Republicans. They have threatened to change a rule both parties have used to great effect for generations.
We get more on the fracas and the fallout and the color from our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider.
Bill, for those people out there who are not political junkies, give the significance of this. Because this is a battle that has been going on for what, now almost five years, in the Bush administration.
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. The issue is the filibuster. And the question is, will the Republicans try to assert their authority by passing, with a majority, which they have, a change in Senate rules that would ban filibusters against judicial nominees?
The Democrats are saying this would violate the rights of a minority; the filibuster is a long-standing tradition. What it means is that a minority can hold up Senate business and prevent a vote and that you need 60 votes to cut off a filibuster.
The way this works is, it means the Senate has to govern, really, by a broader consensus than simply a naked 50-plus-one majority. It has to have a broader majority, 60 votes, in order to cut off debate.
Democrats say that protects the power of the minority. Republicans, when they were in the minority for decade after decade, they were often resort to the filibuster to stop the Democrats from asserting majority power. And it means that you have to have a broader process of deliberation in order to have more consensus.
The Senate has never operated like the House. If the rule is passed by the Republican majority, then it will look a lot more like the House of Representatives.
LIN: And here's what's interesting about this. I mean, even though this is really interesting for people who are -- who play inside political baseball, the significance of these judge's appointments really came to light in the debate over whether what should happen to Terri Schiavo, where judges could make or break or rule in favor of whether to reinsert that feeding tube. That did not happen.
The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, staked his political career on some really strong language when he took on the federal judges in that particular case.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. And even though Tom DeLay is in the House of Representatives, where this isn't an issue, there's no filibuster in the House of Representatives, only in the Senate, it's had an impact.
I think before the Terri Schiavo case, Democrats were in a little bit of a shaky ground. They were arguing to protect filibusters -- filibusters, which sounds kind of -- you know, what's that about. It sounds like a way to prevent majority rule, which is an American tradition.
And also, they were -- they are threatening to shut down the Senate if the Republicans cut off filibusters. And that's a very radical thing to do. It came back with a backlash against Republicans when they shut down the federal government 10 years ago.
But the Terri Schiavo case, I think, shifted the burden, and now the Republicans have a problem. Namely, because the courts refuse to act to intervene, and the voters out there saw Congress as overreaching by passing a law that tried to force the courts to step in and save Terri Schiavo. Republicans -- voters out there thought this was an unwarranted intrusion of government into a private family matter.
And then when Tom DeLay started attacking the courts, the Democrats now can say, "We're trying to protect the courts from a federal power assault on them."
LIN: Right. All right. So Thursday arrives, Priscilla Owens' nomination goes to the full Senate. But it seems what you have set up here is, on the one hand, Republicans might play out a -- a morality card, OK, in these nominations. But the Democrats will -- well, they have to be careful, too. Because last time the Democrat was shut down, people weren't getting their welfare checks. There were lots of issues where -- I mean, literally, people could not get government services, and that had a lot of people, taxpayers, really angry. What do you think is going to happen on Thursday then?
SCHNEIDER: Well, I'm not sure. Nobody is sure. The question is, do the Republicans -- they are 55 Republicans in the Senate, but not all of them are going to vote to cut off filibusters, because a lot of them remember when the Republicans were in the minority and they are -- they are likely to be again, one day, in the minority, they want to have that power that protects minorities.
This is an escalation of warfare. Both sides are taking big risks. The Democrats, as you just indicated, the risk of threatening to shut down the federal government. The Republicans, the risk of escalating partisan warfare by asserting brutal majority power, naked aggression in the Senate, where it's not supposed to be a tradition.
Both sides are taking a very, very big political risk here, and what it really means is they're ratcheting up the political stakes into a real showdown.
LIN: You bet. That showdown happening as early as tomorrow. Bill Schneider, thank you very much.
SCHNEIDER: OK.
LIN: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Delayed definitely, derailed potentially. Senate confirmation of U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton still on the -- President Bush's to-do list, and he's not giving up. Even some Republicans are questioning the temperament and judgment of the current undersecretary of state for arms control. Bolton's boss blames politics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Take John Bolton. He's a good man I nominated to represent our country at the United Nations. John's distinguished career and service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment. I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: After more investigation, more interviews, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote on Bolton next month.
LIN: The big board is going public. The New York Stock Exchange wants to change the way it does business. We've got details on LIVE FROM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHARON COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When people call you miracle man, how does that make you feel?
MOHAN REDDY, PEDIATRIC HEART SURGEON: I tell them that miracles are only done by gods.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LIN: He helps heal tiny babies and takes the cases other doctors are afraid to touch. You're going to meet him right after the break.
And get set to meet "The Daily Show's" Lewis Black. He is going to join in for a rant or two right here with Kyra Phillips.
PHILLIPS: Help us all now.
LIN: Fireworks ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEWIS BLACK, "THE DAILY SHOW": But there are reasons to smoke, mainly because of people like Mariah Morosco (ph), who is running for president of...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Take a look at these pictures. You think spring has sprung a leak? Hail, almost the size of tennis balls, pelted Great Bend, Kansas, last night. And parts of the Northern Rockies are receiving several inches of snow.
So let's get the latest weather outlook from meteorologist Orelon Sidney.
Orelon, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, one day we have, like, 70 degree temperatures in some parts of the country and then four days later you're going to have snow.
(WEATHER REPORT)
LIN: Stay safe out there, everybody.
PHILLIPS: A look across America this hour. Bittersweet victory for a grieving family in Michigan. The e-mail provider Yahoo! handed over to the parents of Justin Ellsworth the entire contents of his e- mail account. Ellsworth was a U.S. Marine killed last year in Iraq. His parents petitioned for his e-mails, his last word and thoughts. Yahoo! initially refused, citing its privacy policy.
A Bay area teenager busted for driving under the influence. She said cough syrup. The judge said zero tolerance and took her license for a year. She took an appeal all the way to the California Supreme Court, which upheld that ruling.
And what drugs are more teenagers experimenting with these days? According to a new national study, it's prescriptions. And often raided from their parents' medicine cabinet. The most popular, Vicodin. Partnership for a Drug Free America estimates more than four million teenagers have used Vicodin just to get high.
LIN: We're about to introduce you to a remarkable physician. He is a surgeon, but his specialty is the most delicate and his patients simply the most fragile. It's not hard to see why they call him the miracle man.
Here's Sharon Collins.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS (voice-over): This is the moment that Elizabeth and Raoul Villalobos have been dreading.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Give him a kiss and we'll take him.
COLLINS: The moment when they have to let their 4-month-old baby boy Andrew undergo open heart surgery to repair a hole in his heart.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You take good care of him.
COLLINS: It's a moment that is never easy for any parent, filled with emotion and doubt. The man they are trusting with their baby's fate, in the blue scrubs and plaid jacket, that man is Mohan Reddy. As many other parents call him, the miracle man.
COLLINS (on camera): When people call you miracle man how does that make you feel?
REDDY: I tell them miracles are only done by gods.
COLLINS (voice-over): But in the surgical theater, Reddy is a god. It is his hands that hold steady over baby Andrew's heart, on a heart that is no bigger than a walnut.
It's 8:40 a.m., and Andrew will be under the care of Dr. Reddy and his team for at least five hours. His family waits.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know he's a strong little boy that's fighting to be here.
COLLINS: Dr. Reddy is aware of the waiting parents, and he knows how much they have invested in him. He knows he is the only hope for many of them. And that is his motivation.
REDDY: If you look at some of the babies, you know, who have survived these operations and now, you know, look like normal kids, then it makes you think that, you know, we should never give up the fight. COLLINS: Mohan Reddy began his own life 45 years ago in India. That's where he went to medical school and met and married his wife. They moved to the U.S. in the early '90s, and here he became increasingly interested in pediatrics. And then one day he came across a baby everyone else had given up on.
REDDY: My colleagues thought that the baby would not survive the operation. I went in and I told the parents, "Look, we have not done this operation on such a small child before. If you don't do anything, the baby is not going to survive. He's definitely going to die." So then the mother agreed and I did the surgery, and the baby did very well.
COLLINS: And he's been doing them ever since. Dr. Reddy does between 250 to 300 surgeries on infants every year, working on the tiniest of babies, infants that others have given up hope on. Babies like Jerrick DeLeon.
(on camera) I'm look at this tiny baby with little bitty hands and you operated on his heart. Weren't you scared even a little bit?
REDDY: No, really, I was not scared. You always are concerned when you're doing open heart surgery in tiny babies. Anything goes wrong, you can lose the baby. The margin of error is very, very small.
COLLINS (voice-over): And so are the hearts. Baby Jerrick's heart was the size a grape. He was born at a little more than a pound, four months early, with a life threatening heart condition.
(on camera) So without this surgery, Jerrick would have died.
REDDY: Probably he would not have made it.
COLLINS (voice-over): But Jerrick did and made headlines across the country as the smallest infant ever to receive this surgery, defying all the odds.
(on camera) Are there ever cases that you just go, "I can't do this"?
REDDY: No. Particularly sometimes you can say, yes, maybe we shouldn't do it. You think you're basically in a hopeless situation, but you do the best you can and the babies just fly.
COLLINS (voice-over): And at 10:36 a.m. baby Katelyn Prior (ph) is ready to fly. She is leaving Lucille Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, just eight days after Dr. Reddy performed open heart surgery to repair a large hole and a valve that was too small.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Such a relief to know she's healthy and she's going to live a long, healthy life. If there wasn't a Dr. Reddy, we don't know how long she would have been here without him.
COLLINS: And it's not just his surgical skills. Parents like Stephanie and Kevin Eldridge (ph) talk about his remarkable dedication.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He did surgery all through the night. She came out about 5 in the morning. And he sat in a chair outside her room, with his eyes shut, sitting right there, for the first 24 hours afterwards to make sure that she was doing well.
COLLINS: Their daughter Taylor (ph) was only hours old when she was rushed into surgery with Dr. Reddy. Taylor (ph) still shows her scar, four years after that surgery.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He takes your baby as if it was his own. You can see it in his eyes. He takes that child, and that child is going to be OK. Because that's his heart and his life on the line, too. You feel it. You can see it.
COLLINS (on camera): Here's a man who loves children, saves babies but doesn't have any children. Why?
REDDY: I have plenty to take care of. Raising children is not an easy task. But I think I have a talent I can help a lot of children with.
COLLINS (voice-over): And that is what Andrew's parents are hoping for. It is 12:50 p.m. Andrew's parents are still waiting.
(on camera) What's going through your head right now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What if Andrew doesn't make it? What if, you know, he can't tolerate the surgery?
COLLINS (voice-over): Dr. Reddy doesn't like being called a miracle man, but that's just what Andrew's parents are hoping for as they see him walking down the hall. A miracle.
REDDY: Everything went very well; no problem.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you very much.
COLLINS: Tears of relief, as Elizabeth gets the words she has waited to hear all day. As they walk into the recovery room, Andrew's parents are overwhelmed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, babito (ph).
COLLINS: He's so small, so helpless.
(on camera) How do you feel about Dr. Reddy now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do I feel? He's the best. To put my son's life in his hands, at first was very hard. But now, to me, it's awesome. It's a miracle.
COLLINS (voice-over): And while Elizabeth is reunited with her child, outside Andrew's window, another reunion is happening. Taylor (ph) and her friend Gabriel, also a former Reddy heart patient, are seeing the man that saved their lives. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Reddy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big smiles!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What did Dr. Reddy do for you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fixed my heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS (voice-over): Next on LIVE FROM...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not believe that homosexuals or bisexuals should be raising our children.
PHILLIPS: A Texas lawmaker pushes to keep gays from becoming foster parents. We'll debate it.
Later on LIVE FROM, thousands of people waiting for an organ transplant. We'll follow four people through a new program that's saving lives.
Tomorrow, Zacarias Moussaoui the only person in the U.S. charged with the September 11 attacks, expected to plead guilty. The inside story on how he was caught on LIVE FROM.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Some big changes for a century's old financial institution could be on the way. The New York Stock Exchange is going public. Susan Lisovicz joins us live from the hot spot with more.
Susan, does this mean we'll be able to buy stock in the New York Stock Exchange?
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. We don't know the ticker symbol yet. NYSE we think might be a good option. But four letters are usually associated with NASDAQ. And that's its arch rival.
But yes, it is a big change, Carol. The 212-year-old symbol of American capitalism has agreed to buy an electronic trading firm, Archipelago. That will help the NYSE handle more trades electrically and better compete with rivals like the NASDAQ, which is completely electronic.
It's also prompting talk here that it could lead to the end of one of the most enduring symbols of capitalism, the frenetic trading floor itself, where traders call out buy and sell orders. But there are no official plans just yet to do so. There are strong feelings on both sides. Defenders of the system say their human judgment is critical to an orderly market. Critics say the system can be too slow and it leaves too much room for error or even mischief.
Over the past three years, several firms on the floor of the exchange have paid millions of dollar for trading violations and just late week, we reported that 15 traders were indicted on improper trading charges -- Carol.
LIN: Susan, if I buy stock in a company, I'm hoping ...
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