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Bush to Announce Supreme Court Nominee Tonight; Hurricane Emily to Make Landfall Tonight; Iraqi Insurgents Continue Deadly Attacks; Hewlett Packard Announces Layoffs

Aired July 19, 2005 - 14:00   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Seven hours to go until we found out who will be President Bush's first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Bush is set to make the announcement in a primetime address ending a nationwide guessing game.
Our national correspondent Bob Franken is at the White House and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is standing by in New York.

Bob, let's start with you.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's okay. Let's play a little a little "What's wrong with this picture?" and look at the tape of the most recent class picture of the Supreme Court and you are going to see what's wrong with it from the Bush administration's point of view, is that justices there include Sandra Day O'Connor who has announced that she is going to retire. She will leave when the new justice is confirmed.

Now we're going to find out who the justice that the president is nominating by 9:00 this evening. The president, as you pointed out, is going on at 9:00 Eastern with a primetime address, no questions and answers expected, by the way, to introduce his candidate which confirms the speculation that has been running rampant in Washington today that the announcement that had lately considered to be something that would take a little longer had been moved up to the point where now it was going to come this evening.

We do know that the president has met with several prospective nominees, and had conversations with others that he's had a relationship with for quite some time. There are several names being bandied about. It's almost counterproductive to talk about them because there's no real way of knowing if any of those people are put out there as strawmen or strawwomen, meaning they're not really the ones that are going to be selected.

But there's a debate that's been going within the administration and all of Washington about whether the president would try to appeal to what is described as his conservative base and go for somebody that the conservatives have been advocating, somebody who is described sometimes as a strict constructionist, somebody who would be activist in trying to undo some of the actions of the Supreme Court, or whether the president is going to take the advice of those who say, if you want a dignified and relatively nonpartisan process, go with somebody that is, quote, "mainstream." That's a word the president himself has used. And of course, mainstream would depend on who is describing exactly who is in the main part of that stream.

But we're going to find out all about that this evening. The president of course, will be presenting his nominee as somebody who has been consistent with his frequent descriptions. Somebody who is not a judicial activist, whatever that is. The Supreme Court, of course, is the highest court in the land, is oftentimes, oftentimes somebody -- an entity that has to undo the actions of the Congress, and stand up to accusations that it is trying to legislate rather than adjudicate.

President Bush appeared this morning with the Australian prime minister, and as you might expect, the questions had to do with everything other than the president's and the U.S.'s relationship with Australia. The president said he was not about to - not about to at that hour, answer questions about his nominee.

A couple hours later his press secretary came out and said that at the 9:00 hour, he will be ready. Kyra?

PHILLIPS: All right, Bob. You're not naming names. But I do have the gentlemen next to you in this split screen that is naming a name. Bob Franken at the White House, we'll be checking back in with you.

Jeffrey Toobin, you're standing out and saying, Edith Clement.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I am saying she's certainly under active consideration because I'm not going out there on a total limb. But certainly, look, she has come, I would say, virtually from nowhere, when the first round of candidates were talked about, when Justice O'Connor quit just a few weeks ago, Judge Clement's name really wasn't among the front runners. But more and more, she's been mentioned, and my sources that I am talking to say that she's a real live possibility. It would be a very surprising choice to many people, including me.

PHILLIPS: So, when I called you earlier, and they said I couldn't talk to you, because you were working hard on this exclusive article for the "New Yorker," you were writing about Edith?

TOOBIN: I'm not. I'm trying. A lot of people are trying to find out about Edith Clement today, I'll tell you what. But I tell you one thing, I can reveal she's known as Joy, not Edith. How about that?

PHILLIPS: Should I start calling her Joy Clement?

TOOBIN: You know, I haven't gotten that far in my reporting.

PHILLIPS: We'll work on that. Let's talk about how hard or how easy it would be, or she would be, to confirm.

TOOBIN: Well, I think she would be relatively easy to confirm because she is somewhat of a stealth candidate. She's only been on the Court of Appeals since 2001. She's not written any controversial opinions at all. She signed on to a couple of modestly controversial opinions. But she has no record that Democrats could really shoot at to say that she is outside the mainstream, to use the favorite phrase of the confirmation process. So I think she would be a relatively easy person to confirm if she performs adequately, competently and intelligently at her confirmation hearing.

PHILLIPS: Will she satisfy the conservative base?

TOOBIN: Well, I have been speaking to a number of conservatives and I would describe them as satisfied, but not enthusiastic because there are many court of appeals judges out there, people like Edith Jones, not to be confused with Edith Clement, Edith Jones on the Court of Appeals in the Fight Circuit. Michael Luttig on the Fourth Circuit. John Robertson, the DC Circuit, who are known as outspoken conservatives with clear records on the issues of importance to the conservative base.

This is not Edith Clement. She may believe the same things, she may vote the same way, but those are the people that the conservative base was hoping for. So this is by no means a guaranteed success or guaranteed happiness for that base.

Well, we know First Lady Laura Bush came out and say she'd even like to see a female replace Sandra Day O'Connor. Do we know possibly if Edith, aka, Joy Clement, has a relationship with the First Lady?

TOOBIN: You know what? I don't know. I will give you a ringing, "I don't know" about that. Apparently she had some relationship with, and this is pretty stretching it, but the "New York Times" reported she is friends with President Bush's roommate at Yale, and that is how her name got in the mix initially.

I do not believe someone gets nominated to the United States Supreme Court because of such a tangential connection, but that's all I know of, a personal relationship between President Bush and Judge Clement.

PHILLIPS: That's interesting. We should have gone to Yale, Jeffrey, I think we would have been much better connected.

TOOBIN: You know what? It never hurts to go to Yale.

PHILLIPS: All right. Jeffrey Toobin working this story for us along with Bob Franken at the White House. Jeffrey, thank you so much. Once again, we want to remind you 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time is when we're expected to hear from the president of the United States who is going to make his announcement of the nominee of the individual he would like to see replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, so stay with CNN, of course, for all the latest information regarding SCOTUS.

Now, once the president names his person for the court, here is how he or she goes from nominee to the highest bench in the land. The Senate Judicial Committee will hold hearings to discuss the nominee, then vote up or down on whether to send the nominee to the full Senate for approval. Now, the House is not formally involved in the process. And if you remember the Clarence Thomas hearings back in 1991, well those Senate hearings, as you know, can last for days, even for months. And witnesses both pro and con can testify about the nominee.

Senators often ask the nominee about his or her positions on controversial topics such as abortion and affirmative action and then once the Senate approves the nominee, the swearing in ceremony takes place, usually done by the chief justice

All right, Mexico is getting ready for another destructive date with Emily. The hurricane is moving towards the country's mainland a day after battering the Yucatan Peninsula. Forecasters say that Texas will be spared a direct hit from that storm. But still, people there aren't taking any chances. CNN's Chris Lawrence is on South Padre Island with that, but first, let's go to our meteorologist, Jacqui Jeras, who is tracking the storm.

Jacqui?

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Kyra.

Well, Emily is about 200 miles away from Brownsville, Texas, but take a look at our live level two Titan Doppler radar here. You can see the outer bands already making their way across parts of the state of Texas.

We'll zoom in for you and there you can see Brownsville. Here's South Padre Island and there are scattered showers and thunderstorms pushing onshore. You should see gusty winds and some nice downpours associated with that.

A little bit inland from Corpus Christi extending up towards Victoria and even Houston almost on the fringes here of getting in on the action. We had some pretty heavy thunderstorms move through Galveston and now they are making their way up towards the city, so if you have any flights in or out of Houston, make sure you check ahead because there could be some delays here in the next hour or so.

Some intensification with Emily through the late morning and early afternoon hours. It's back up to 95 miles per hour for those maximum sustained winds, keeps at a category one status. But barely. Almost a category two. Only have to bump it up a mile an hour to get that.

Forecast track, staying right on target right now and you can see that cone of uncertainty just barely scraping the Brownsville area. Feel pretty confident that we're going to se a little bit more of a turn to the west. Right now, it's moving west-northwest. And we should see more of a westward trend as we head into the latter hours this evening and overnight for tonight.

Landfall should be overnight, and it looks like it will be in the northern parts of Mexico likely a strong category two or a weak category three. Weakening very dramatically as it makes its way inland, but we will see storm surge and also some flooding expected across much of the Rio Valley. Five to ten inches of rain can be expected in that area of the country. Right now, Kyra, it's very, very dry. So it's not going to absorb real quickly.

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: All right. Jacqui Jeras, thank you so much. Now I'm being told Chris Lawrence is getting smacked with quite a bit of rain right now. One county official, I guess, in South Texas is even saying that everyone is praying for Hurricane Emily's expected turn. Chris, do we have contact with you? Can you hear us okay and give us the latest update?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I hear you just fine, Kyra. Yeah, the weather has turned in the last hour or so. Literally, just a couple hours ago, there were all kinds of people out here on the beach walking around, moms and their kids, watching the waves come in. It was very scenic just a few hours ago. In the last hour, it has really darkened. You can't even see the sun in the sky anymore and you can see the waves are starting much, much farther out.

They have even started to push on the beach at some point. Occasionally, we get a wave that will come up to the shore. Still not that bad yet. It has started raining in the last couple of minutes. We noticed here, people are starting to board up right here. And we took a drive up and down the coast. Literally almost every other building has been boarded up. And we were talking to a lot of people who were packing up their things, getting out.

A lot of people really didn't take this storm all that seriously, I think, up until this morning. A lot of people said, we're not going to get the eye, so maybe we'll ride it out. I think this morning a lot of people said, better to be safe than sorry. Packing up, moving further inland.

I spoke with one family from Ohio. They said, we don't have a choice. We're here from Ohio, we're on vacation. So we're just going to stay in a hotel, ride it out a couple days and hope for the best.

DAN QUANDT, S. PADRE ISLAND OFFICIAL (video clip): We did ask all of the recreational vehicles to be off the island by midnight last night. We were at pretty close to 100 percent occupancy of recreational vehicles and now they are bare, those parks. So they've heeded that warning. And basically, they're lighter. They're not tethered down the way other things are. They would have a greater chance of having some risk in high winds.

LAWRENCE: So far, that was the only mandatory evacuation. The RV parks had to get out of here and off the island. But for everyone else it is strictly voluntary. Ken, I wonder if you can whip around just for a second.

You can see they're starting to bring out the water pumps and things like that. They've been boarding up since the morning. Everybody starting to do last minute preparation. Because really, at this point, you can tell the weather has taken a turn for the worse. There's probably four or five more hours before things get so bad that you really have to say I've done all I can. Now it's time to get inside.

Kyra? PHILLIPS: All right. Chris Lawrence. We'll continue to check in with you. Thank you so much and you can track the hurricane online as well. Just go to cnn.com/hurricane. You are going to find the most up to date information on where it is, how strong it is and where it might strike next. Plus, you can share whatever experience you may have had by sending your pictures and stories to cnn.com. And remember, stay tuned to CNN, your hurricane headquarters for all the latest information.

And we're just getting word now, we have been following the terror investigation in London, and now we're being told that Egypt has cleared the biochemist Magdy el-Nashar to any links of the July 7th attack on the London subway. Also cleared the biochemist of any connections to al Qaeda.

This is according to an Egyptian Interior Ministry spokesperson. So what we can tell you, of course, the four bombers that were named, that were identified, that are dead, that remains solid, but this biochemist, that was brought up, Magdy El-Nashar, of course, that is still living has now been cleared of any links to the attacks that took place, the terror attacks in London.

All right. Straight ahead, a lot more news for you, including Muslim leaders meeting with Britain's prime minister to face the challenge of Islamic extremism. We're going to have details on that straight ahead. Also, later on LIVE FROM, do thieves love your car as much as you do? Find out if your car is still on the most wanted list. Just ahead on LIVE FROM.

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PHILLIPS: This morning a brazen attack in Iraq. The target? Civilians headed for their jobs at a U.S. military base just north of Baghdad. Gunmen in two cars opened fire on a minibus packed with workers. It swerved out of control, crashing into another car. Thirteen people were killed.

Security forces have arrested three people in connection with that attack.

Condemnation from the highest levels of the Iraqi government after a Sunni member of the committee in charge of drafting Iraq's constitution is killed. He and two others were ambushed outside a restaurant in Baghdad. That attack came just hours after it was announced that the first draft of Iraq's new constitution would be ready by the end of the month or in early August, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

The fight for Iraq has been especially bloody for Iraq's citizenship. A group that's been counting the casualties conclude that nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the war began just two years ago. Eight-two percent of them were men, nine percent women. One in 10 of those killed have been under the age of 18. Most of them have died in Baghdad.

Iraqi police officers have been the most often targeted. That report comes from the Iraq Body Count, a London based group made up of academics, human rights activists and antiwar activists.

Well, to many people in Iraq, it may seem as if there is no safe place. Suicide attacks seem to have nearly everyone on edge. CNN's Aneesh Raman takes a look at the attacks and what's being done to try and protect the people.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Alaa Abbass is a walking target, manning this checkpoint, every car, every person is a potential killer. Such is life in a world of suicide bombings

ALAA ABBASS, IRAQI POLICE OFFICER (through translator): Our job is 100 percent dangerous. You can see, searching vehicles and checking IDs, yes, it is 100 percent dangerous.

RAMAN: His estimation is no exaggeration. In the past week alone, suicide attacks have killed over 170 Iraqis. The worst incident, on Saturda in the town of Musayyib, where 90 people died after a suicide bomber detonated himself next to a fuel truck.

For the forces on the ground, it is easily the most formidable insurgent tactic.

BG DONALD ALSTON, U.S. MILITARY SPOKESMAN: The suicide bombing absolutely picks precisely the time and precisely place to cause the effect that they're going to cause. It's very difficult when the suicide bomber is -- when the attack is imminent, in order to deflect that.

RAMAN (on camera): And perhaps the most powerful effect is the fear they spread. A few weeks ago, this Baghdad restaurant was hit. Twenty-three people were killed after a man entered inside and detonated himself. For Iraqi civilians who bear the brunt of the casualties, it seems these days there is nowhere completely safe.

(voice-over): So in Iraq, the question is how to prevent the bombings. Military officials say borders must be sealed so those willing to die can't enter the country so easily.

And better intelligence is need to catch the bombers at a point when they can still be stopped. Both wholly dependent on the still fledgling Iraqi forces. But ...

LAITH KUBBA, SPOKESMAN, IRAQI P.M.: The police aren't equipped to deal with the insurgency yet.

RAMAN: Therein is the difficult reality for those like Alaa.

ABASS (through translator): Day after day, we control the situation, but we all know it will take time to really control everything.

RAMAN: Suicide bombers are the worst of insurgent attacks in every way, but eradicating them soon in Iraqi seems impossible. All those on the front line at any time can do is try to minimize the casualties. Aneesh Raman, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: And closer to the United States, we're still keeping an eye on Hurricane Emily, getting stronger as it heads towards Southern Texas. Stay with CNN on the latest on the storm.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Susan Lisovicz at the New York Stock Exchange. A tip for students who have yet to declare their major. One technology guru says he's in short supply of good workers. I'll explain right after this break.

(COMMERICAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, if you drive an Acura Integra, you might want to keep an extra close eye on it. A new report from an insurance industry tracker lists the 1999 Integra Coupe as the most stolen car of last year. And other model year Integras weren't far behind. Also topping the list, 2002, BMW M Roadster and experts say that fast cars dominate the list thanks to an upsurge in street racing.

And even if your car isn't much to look at, well, thieves may still want it for parts. So watch over your car.

We're finally getting the details on a long-rumored corporate makeover that will effect thousands of workers. Susan Lisovicz joins me live from the New York Stock Exchange with more on that. Susan?

LISOVICZ: Hi, Kyra. Well, you know for weeks, now we have been hearing rumors of job cuts in the works from the new management team at Hewlett Packard. Now it's official. The computer maker plans to cut more than 14,000 positions in the next year and a half, or about 10 percent of its workforce.

The move, part, of a restructuring plan designed to save the company $2 billion a year. HP's new CEO, Mark Hurd, the driving force behind the cutbacks. He took over, you may recall, after Carly Fiorina was ousted by the board in March.

HP shares had rallied on the early news of layoffs, but they're slightly slower today. As for the overall market, well, you can see, they're holding on to their gains. The Dow Industrials off their highs but up 60 points. The NASDAQ up better than one percent. Kyra?

PHILLIPS: All right. So what's the deal with going to see Bill Gates if you're a laid off tech worker.

PHILLIPS: Well, you can see him ability getting a job if you're strong in the computer sciences. And this is something that he has preached about for a long time. And in a speech in a research summit on the Microsoft campus, the world's richest man complained there is a desperate shortage of techies. The problem is American kids just aren't interested in computer sciences even though they use computers more than ever.

At the same time, Gates says talented computer engineers are plentiful in places like China and India and they're young, too. The company's youngest engineer was just nine when she passed her exam. Gates says the U.S. shortage is a paradox because of the big number of openings and the high salaries in the field here. And that's the latest from Wall Street.

Still ahead, a hot summer day, and a great day to play hooky. If you are, you're definitely not alone. I'll tell you how many of your coworkers are skipping out, too.

That's later this hour. CNN's LIVE FROM will be right back.

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