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CNN Live Today
Likely Sandra Day O'Connor's Last Day On Supreme Court; Abortion Case Decision Is Classic O'Connor; New Study Highlights Dangers Of Teen Drivers; New DVD Offers Driving Tips For Teens;
Aired January 18, 2006 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The high court ruled unanimously a federal appeals court went too far striking down a law requiring minors to notify their parents before receiving an abortion. The Supreme Court ordered the lower court to reconsider its decision.
A plot to kidnap British Prime Minister Tony Blair's youngest son has been reportedly been foiled. That's according to the British media. The tabloid newspaper, "The Sun," claims that people on the fringe of a group called the Fathers for Justice planned to snatch five-year-old Leo Blair and hold him for a short period.
We expect another hospital update on former President Gerald Ford condition this afternoon. He's been hospitalized with pneumonia since Saturday. In the last briefing doctors at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California said the 92-year-old former president was responding well to treatment.
Remember the couple who pleaded guilty to planting a human fingertip in a bowl of Wendy's chili? They soon will be hearing their fate. Sentencing begins in about 30 minutes from now in San Francisco. Anna Ayala could get more than nine years in prison, while Jaime Placentia could be looking at up to 13 years behind bars for the scam.
The world's biggest passenger ship is back in port in Florida after setting off on a cruise around South America. Preliminary tests indicate Queen Mary II may have hit a submerged object when it left the Port Everglades yesterday. Officials say after a motor problem is checked out, it could depart again this evening. It left New York three days ago and had stopped in Florida to pick up more passengers.
A young inexperienced driver, that is a hazard or momentary distraction can often have results that are fatal. Listen to this new study out this morning, it says accidents involving young drivers are not just a danger for the teens themselves. In fact, their passengers, other drivers and even pedestrians are at risk. The study was down by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Researchers analyzed traffic fatalities involving teen drivers from 1995 and 2004.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT DARELNET, AAA PRESIDENT & CEO: The analysis shows that young novice drivers comprise slightly more than one-third of all the fatalities. The real point here is that two-thirds of those killed are passengers, either with the teen, or with another motorist, or in fact they may be driving another vehicle or they may even be pedestrians.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: And this just in; we're looking at this traffic accident, this is in Southern California. Our affiliate, KTTV, a multi-car accident, on Highway 14, near Palmdale. A number of people hurt, as many as five people and one person trapped. That taking place in Southern California. Highway 14 trapped -- I mean, stopped and closed because of this accident. We'll bring you more information on that particular situation as it becomes available.
Let's get back to our topic of teenage drivers. Teaching teens to recognize and avoid driving dangers, is a goal behind this new DVD. It's called "Road Skillz." The program is designed to give young drivers the skills they need to drive safely. "Road Skillz" hosted by Indy Racing League champ Arie Luyendyk, Jr. and Scott Kuhne is the producer. And they are with us from Los Angeles.
Gentlemen, hello.
SCOTT KUHNE, PRODUCER, "ROAD SKILLZ": Hi, how are you.
ARIE LUYENDYK, JR., INDY CHAMPION: Hi.
KAGAN: Good to have you here with us. Arie, let's start with you. You came to talk to kids about driving, they want to talk about your fast and furious driving, not driving safely, I think?
LUYENDYK: Yes, that's true. As a race car driver, obviously, we like to drive fast. When it comes to the streets, we're very safe. And I just think, you know, that the U.S. really needs to concentrate on teaching our young drivers the proper techniques to avoid these accidents.
KAGAN: OK, Scott, what's on the DVD?
KUHNE: The DVD really has a large amount of segments on how to avoid specific accidents, from intersections to head-on collisions, to tire dipping off the road. It really shows the driver how to avoid those accidents, from the research we did with the most common accidents that teen were getting into.
KAGAN: Why focus on teens?
KUHNE: The teen drivers, like the AAA report and other things, they have the highest amount of accidents. And it's the leading cause of death for teenagers in America today, more than drugs, violence and -- combined. So it's a very, very big topic right now. That's what we wanted to focus the efforts on.
KAGAN: So, Arie, when you're driving off the track, do you drive safely? It must be hard to transit from one to the other. Is it?
LUYENDYK: Not really. It's a total different focus. I actually feel more safe in my race car than I do in my street car.
KAGAN: Really?
LUYENDYK Yes. Because a race car, the people you're racing with are very, very talented drivers, and they take care of each other out there. On the road, you know the experience level isn't the same as what we go through on the racetrack.
So I just -- I just like this DVD because it really shows the young drivers techniques that they can use in everyday life to avoid these accidents.
KAGAN: I say, I'm hearkening back to my driving school days, and it was learning about how to dry defensively. Is that true for guys, too, on the DVD?
KUHNE: Absolutely.
LUYENDYK: Oh, absolutely. I mean, defensive driving is taught in this DVD. Techniques that you can get into, you know, as far as, if the car is in the slide what to do. Everyday driving tips from people that have the most experience, such as race car drivers, teaching you along the way, and I think it's a well-rounded DVD.
KAGAN: Let me ask you think, though because you appreciate more than anybody the experience that comes from being behind the wheel. You couldn't have learned to drive your Indy car from a DVD. So is this the best way? Isn't a class a better way to go?
LUYENDYK: I mean a class is also a good way to go, but I just think that this teaches you things a lot -- a lot different things that a class can't teach you. Just because this is coming from a race car driver's self-experience, and this isn't something that, you know, the everyday person knows. So I think this is a nice aspect to be, you know, have along with a driving school to teach you the proper techniques.
KAGAN: And also something that parents and kids can do together. Because when you get in the car together, if your dad's teaching you to drive, a little stressful.
LUYENDYK: Yes.
KAGAN: Quickly, Scott, where can people get the DVD?
KUHNE: The DVD is available at Roadskillz.com and that is www.roadskillz, or Amazon.com.
KAGAN: Very good. Well, good luck. An important cause, trying to keep teens the rest of us safe, as well.
LUYENDYK: Thank you.
KUHNE: Thank you.
KAGAN: Arie Luyendyk and Scot Kuhne, thank you for your help today.
KUHNE: You're welcome.
KAGAN: We are just getting the dramatic 911 tapes that were made from a call from a teenager, while she was inside of a sinking car. Happened in Hawaii. Police there say the teen's grandfather, Attorney Michael McCarthy, was backing his car out of a parking stall at the Waikiki Yacht Club on Saturday when it hit two parked vehicles and plunged into the harbor. Here is the frantic call from help from McCarthy's 15-year-old granddaughter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're at Waikiki Yacht Club.
911 OPERATOR: At the yacht club?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, and the water --
911 OPERATOR: I'm sorry what is your problem? What is happening?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm in a car and I can't open the door and the water's coming in, and we're sinking. No, I don't want to drown!
911 OPERATOR: Waikiki Yacht Club?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes!
911 OPERATOR: OK, we're sending some trucks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please hurry! Oh!
911 OPERATOR: Can you open the window? Hello? Hello?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Wow. Police say that a passerby jumped in the water and pulled that teenager to safety. Rescue crews later found her grandfather in his car. He had died.
If you are ever in a sinking car, Miami-Dade police say remember the word POGO and it could save your life.
P, pop the seat belt. Experts say most cars will float two to three minutes before they sink. That's enough to time to get out of quickly.
O is for open the window. A car's electric's system usually remains functioning 15 minutes. So try that further. And keep a sharp pointed hammer in your car, to break your window if need be.
Finally, GO is for get out. No kidding.
Coming up a career that will go down in the history books. Sandra Day O'Connor. Jeffrey Toobin joins me for a look at Justice O'Connor's legal legacy as she puts in her last days at the Supreme Court. Her amazing career ending in about 22 minutes. First a look at how you can keep up online with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and "CNN's New You" participants. Let's check in Veronica De La Cruz on the Dotcom desk.
VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN.COM: CNN's "American Morning" is highlighting three pairs of people who want to improve their lifestyles in "New You Resolution". You can logon to cnn.com for more.
Read about their struggles and successes in this buddy blog. Want to see how you shape up in the health department? Test your knowledge with this quiz. For instance, the obesity rate is the highest in which state? Alabama, Iowa or New York?
In this gallery, experts offer tips on how to make lasting diet and exercise changes. You can eat the foods you like in moderation, and as you begin exercising, start documenting the ups and the downs, making categories for fitness, nutrition and weight-loss. Try to learn patterns, but don't tackle too many things at once.
Begin slowly and build up to new challenges. You can start burning a few calories by logging on to cnn.com/newyou, right now. For the dotcom desk, I'm Veronica De La Cruz.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Supreme Court won't be hearing arguments again until late February and that means, in all likelihood, today is the last for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She shattered the court's glass ceiling and brought a down-to-earth style to the bench with exclamations of, "My goodness!" National Correspondent Bruce Morton takes a look at her life and career.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE MORTON, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She was born in Texas, raised on an Arizona ranch, 25 miles from the nearest town. She has the toughness ranch life can breed.
MARCI HAMILTON, FORMER O'CONNOR CLERK: Her early life was very hard. Her parents died. Her grandmother died. She was shuttled back and forth between the ranch and relatives in Texas to go to school, and she just became very self-sufficient.
MORTON: She went to Stanford Law School in the same class as William Rehnquist. He was first in the class, she third. But no law firm would hire her, so she eventually started her own with her husband.
And late became a powerful state lawmaker, then judge in Arizona. Ronald Reagan nominated her to be the first woman on the Supreme Court in 1981.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: She is truly a person for all seasons, possessing those unique quality is of temperament fairness, intellectual capacity and devotion to the public good.
MORTON: Did the fact that she was woman, matter? She talked with Judy Woodruff in 2003.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: We all bring with us to the court, or to any task we undertake, our own lifetime of experiences and background. My perceptions might be different than some of my colleagues, but at the end of the day, we ought to all be able to agree on some sensible solution to the problem.
JAMES FORMAN, FORMER O'CONNOR CLERK: I don't think there's any decision that you can say, she reached of this result because she's woman.
MORTON: One thing she does do because she was woman, open a class of yoga and calisthenics, for women, not just court employees, in the Supreme Court building.
O'CONNOR: I went to the YWCA and asked if they could find me an instructor who would be willing to come up here and start a class. So we did.
MORTON: She has been tough, survived a 1988 bout with breast cancer with a dose of dry Western whit.
O'CONNOR: The worst was my public visibility, frankly. There was constant media coverage. How does she look? When is she going to step down, and give the president another vacancy on the court? You know. She looks pale me. I don't give her six months.
(LAUGHTER)
MORTON: She's been tough. She's the calmest person on the stage when the curtain crashes down at her July 4th ceremony in Philadelphia.
She had a reputation for being the swing vote, the deciding vote in lots of cases.
O'CONNOR: I think that's something the media has devised as means of writing about the court, and I don't think that has a lot of validity.
MORTON: Some criticized her as a fence sitter waiting to see which way the wind would blow.
HAMILTON: Those would be the people who have never met her. Anybody who's met her knows that she makes up her own mind and she's not at all concerned about where anybody else is on the spectrum.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now for a brief moment of silence.
MORTON: Legacy? She voted against a moment of silence in schools as encouraging religion, but for a city-sponsored nativity scene, which she thought did not endorse religion. She held that states could place no undue burden on the right to an abortion. And as the first woman on the court, she made a statement.
O'CONNOR: Let me tell you one reason why I think it's important, and that is for the public, generally, to see and respect the fact that in positions of power and authority, that women are well represented. That it is not an all-male governance, as it once was.
MORTON: She saw to that, she did indeed. Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: She also was grand marshal of the Rose Parade this year, in Pasadena.
Now today's news, the court issued an abortion ruling this morning, in what is likely O'Connor's final day. She was often, as Bruce Morton was noticing, the swing vote. But on this issue, it was a unanimous decision.
So she wrote from the unanimous bench, the lower court was wrong to strike down a New Hampshire abortion restriction and this case, parental notification. However, the justices seemed to have skirted the major constitutional issue, rather than getting rid of the case on a technical ground.
Let's talk about this with our Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, in New York this morning.
Jeff, good morning.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Oh, what a great piece that was by Bruce Morton. It's just fun to watch Sandra Day O'Connor through the years. She has been such a larger-than-life character for so long. And it's been great to watch her as a journalist.
KAGAN: So incredible. Let's start with news of the day, this 9- 0 decision sending it back to the lower court in New Hampshire. This court, then, dodges dealing with the major issue, doesn't it?
TOOBIN: Sandra O'Connor leaves with a classic O'Connor opinion, which is, let's not decide anything we don't have to decide. The federal court of appeals in Boston said the whole law was unconstitutional because it went too far in restricting minor's right to an abortion.
What the court unanimously said through Justice O'Connor was, wait a second. Maybe there's a way to look at this law that some part of it is constitutional. So go back, look at it again. We're not telling what you to decide, but decide the issue more narrowly. It's really a classic O'Connor approach to an issue.
KAGAN: So, it might ultimately end up at the Supreme Court.
TOOBIN: Very likely.
KAGAN: But most likely a different court. And everyone is assuming here since the court takes as month-long recess, by the time they come back, looks like Sam Alito's nomination will go through the U.S. Senate?
TOOBIN: Having covered the hearings last week and followed it closely, I don't think there's any doubt, barring some sensational disclosure, that he will be in O'Connor's seat come late February.
KAGAN: We've talked about, and Bruce Morton's piece talked about, the vote and being the swing vote. What about her particular style, as she was listening to cases argued before the Supreme Court?
TOOBIN: She has such a distinctive style. She almost always asks the first question in oral arguments. She and her clerks always got together and said, what's good question? She would ask a question, and you always knew were you in trouble, with Justice O'Connor when she use one of her great nursery school teacher exclamation, like, "Well, goodness, gracious!" Or, "my goodness!"
Al Gore could have written off the presidency when in the oral argument of Bush v. Gore Sandra Day O'Connor said to David Boise (ph), "My goodness, couldn't these people just vote? The directions were clear enough." And she turned out to be the fifth vote for President Bush in that decision, and, you know, "my goodness" told it all.
KAGAN: My goodness. Her legacy, to you, Jeff? So much more than being the first woman?
TOOBIN: Absolutely. I had the privilege of walking around the Supreme Court with her once, and she -- there are courtyards inside the Supreme Court that you can't see from the outside and there are these beautifully sculpted lampposts. At the bottom of the lampposts there are turtles, sculpted turtles, holding them up.
She said, you know, look at the turtles. We're a lot like turtles. Don't move very quickly around here, we don't lurch from side to side, we just are steady and slow. That's the kind of court I wanted to serve on. And I think that's right. She was a classic moderate, the center of the court, and as person and as justice, she'll be missed a lot.
KAGAN: My goodness. That wraps it up.
TOOBIN: My goodness, that's -- right you are.
KAGAN: Jeff, thank you.
TOOBIN: All right. See you, Daryn.
KAGAN: Topping our "Daily Dose" of medical news, a troubling report on a deadly drug. "USA Today" reports that methamphetamine cases account for more emergency room visits as county owned hospitals than any other drug. That information is from a new survey conducted by county governments. And 47 percent of the hospitals in that survey said meth is the top elicit drug involved in visits to the ET; 16 percent said marijuana, and 15 percent cocaine. A new study reinforces the benefits of using aspirin to fend off heart attacks or strokes. But the benefits apparently vary by gender. Researchers say that taking aspirin on a regular basis reduces the risk of heart attacks in men. For women, lowers their risk of having a stroke. The study's author says that previous studies looked only at aspirin's benefits for men.
To get your "Daily Dose" of health news online, logon to our Web site and you'll find the latest medical news, a health library, and information on diet and fitness. The address, cnn.com/health.
We're back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Market's looking a little cranky this morning. Let's check in with Susan Lisovicz.
(MARKET REPORT)
(WEATHER FORECAST)
KAGAN: I'm Daryn Kagan. International News is up next. Stay tuned for "Your World Today." Jim Clancy and Zain Verjee will be back with the latest. And I'll be back with the latest headlines from the U.S. in about 20 minutes. See you then.
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