American Morning
Torching cars for cash
It’s happening in Florida, California, New Jersey and Texas. More and more burned cars are turning up in tow yards these days. These are cars reported stolen from their owners, but law enforcement says it’s the owners themselves who are committing the crimes.
“Ordinary people are hiring others to torch their vehicles,” says Paula Dow, Essex County prosecutor in New Jersey.
Why? And who's doing it? Prosecutors in Newark, New Jersey have some answers.
“They're all types. But it really is Jane and John Q. Citizen that is doing it,” according to Michael Morris, asst. prosecutor in Newark.
Among the perpetrators, a convicted elementary school principal, and a businessman and a Dallas chiropractor who both plead guilty to attempted insurance fraud.
Driven, investigators say, by economic desperation to commit 'owner give ups'. That's when an owner reports their vehicle stolen, but actually stages the theft and torches the car to collect the insurance money.
John Walsh leads teens in discussion of sexting and cyberbullying
Press Release: What Every Parent Needs to Know: Cox and Harris Interactive to Present Findings from National Teen Online and Wireless Safety Survey on Sexting and Cyberbullying
ATLANTA, June 22 /PRNewswire/ - For the fourth consecutive year, teens from across the country will gather in Washington, D.C. for the Cox National Teen Summit on Internet and Wireless Safety held in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children(R) (NCMEC).
As a part of Cox's Take Charge! program developed to keep kids safer online, America's Most Wanted host and children's advocate John Walsh will guide teen participants from Cox Communications' markets across the country in a discussion of Internet and wireless safety, with a focus on ways parents, guardians and teen mentors can help children be safer online, at home and on the go. Discussion topics include sexting, cyberbullying and parental controls.
Results of a new survey conducted by Cox in conjunction with NCMEC about the behavior of young people online and a recap of the summit will be presented during a virtual media conference on BlogTalkRadio. John Walsh, Harris Interactive and select teens will be available to answer questions. On June 25, the teens will deliver the news directly to Capitol Hill in meetings with members of Congress.
Commentary: "Lone wolf" most difficult threat to fight
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/11/intv.townsend.art.jpg caption="Frances Townsend says the 'lone wolf' represents the most difficult problem for law enforcement."]
An 88-year-old Maryland man with a long history of ties to white supremacist groups is the suspect in Wednesday's fatal shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
Experts say there are an estimated 926 hate groups operating in America right now. Back in May, the Department of Homeland Security reported that hate crimes were on the rise and that some of that was likely fueled by the election of a black president.
Now the question is being raised yet again – how serious is the threat of domestic terrorism here at home? Frances Townsend, former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday.
Kiran Chetry: This suspect is an 88-year-old man. He had been in prison for a prior armed kidnapping. He tried to kidnap some members of the Federal Reserve in 1981. But then he seemed to be off the radar for decades. How do you increase the odds of being able to flag whether someone is prone to violence again in the future?
Frances Townsend: The “lone wolf” represents the single-most difficult problem for law enforcement. Of course, the FBI has joint terrorism task forces across the country; over a hundred of them. Each of those has got a domestic terrorism component to it. They infiltrate these domestic terror groups. They talk to people. They surveil them. They watch the Web sites and the rhetoric. We did see an up-tick during the primaries before the actual general election. We were worried about the up-tick in violent rhetoric of these supremacist groups.
But it's very difficult, if somebody is not sort of affiliated with one of those groups or not really active in them, to track the “lone wolf.” As you say, Kiran, this guy doesn't fit what you would imagine the supremacist would look like or be like when he walks into the museum yesterday with a rifle at 88-years-old, a former veteran himself. It's very disturbing. That's why you really have to give the security guards credit. They reacted so quickly and saved the lives of many people inside visiting that museum, especially children.
Who's responsible for Tiller's killing?
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/02/art.tiller.kake.jpg caption="Dr. George Tiller was one of the few U.S. physicians who performed late-term abortions."]
From CNN's Carol Costello and Bob Ruff
Killing doctors who perform legal abortions is rare in this country—but it happened again over the weekend.
Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions at his Wichita, Kansas clinic, was shot and killed while serving as an usher at his church Sunday morning. Tiller was the fourth abortion doctor killed.
Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper in his Buffalo Amherst, NY home in 1998.
In 1994 Dr. John Britton was murdered while sitting in a car in Pensacola, Florida.
The first killing of an abortion doctor happened in 1993, also in Pensacola. David Gunn was shot while abortion opponents protested outside his clinic.
You’ll notice that it has been more than a decade since the last such murder, and some speculate there’s a reason for that.
UC Berkeley professor Cynthia Gorney, author of “Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars”, says anti-abortion leaders realized years ago that such killings do not help their cause of eliminating all abortions in this country—and so they’ve discouraged it. The problem with high profile killings, Gorney told CNN’s Carol Costello, “is that you do stir up a great deal of conversation, and for them it’s almost all negative, because you’re going to get a huge backlash against right to life. You’re going to get a lot of people now saying, ‘see those people are all crazy.’”
Randall Terry, the outspoken founder of “Operation Rescue,” an anti-abortion pro-life group, agrees that such extreme violence puts pressure on their pro-life movement. He told reporters Monday that “President Obama, the pro-abortion groups, their friends on Capitol Hill are going to try to browbeat the pro-life movement into surrendering.”
But Terry has no qualms about verbally assaulting Dr. Tiller, even in the wake of his death. “George Tiller was a mass murderer,” says Terry, “he reaped what he sowed.”
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