American Morning
Building Up America: Golf helps Alabama through tough times
(CNN) – Today in our Building Up America series, a major success story in the south.
A man who made some big bets with the pension fund for 300-thousand state employees is buying up everything from TV stations to a busted airline – and building a mini empire. It's happening down in Alabama and our Tom Foreman has the story.
Mayo Clinic hailed as model for health care
(CNN) – With just two days before a crucial vote on health care reform there's still a lot of debate over how to keep health care costs down.
One of the world's top hospitals, the Mayo Clinic, is being hailed as a model for doing just that. Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta sat down with the former head of the clinic for this report.
Are bullet trains worth the billions?
(CNN) – The Obama administration is betting that bullet trains are the magic bullet to solving a lot of our problems, from unemployment to pollution.
It's investing $8 billion in stimulus money in high-speed rail lines connecting cities across the country. A lot of the cash is heading to congested California.
But will it pay off? Our Casey Wian takes us on the long commute for answers.
Fmr. U.S. general: Gay military allowed genocide
(CNN) – Explosive accusations emerged yesterday during Senate hearings on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which prevents gay and lesbian Americans from serving openly.
A former U.S. general made some inflammatory claims, saying the Dutch army wasn't able to save thousands of Muslims from being killed in Bosnia in 1995 – because gays were allowed to serve openly. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has the details.
Sandbags in place as Red River rises
(CNN) – (CNN) - The Red River kept rising to dangerous levels Friday as those in the area hoped they'd done enough to protect themselves.
Though the river is in a major flood stage, folks in Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, said they were optimistic after filling more than a million sandbags and stacking most of them.
"We're in good shape, and we have a lot of things in place in case there are any problems," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said.
Walaker said the river is expected to crest in the next day or two at a level close to 3 feet below last year's record flood level.
In 2009, the Red River set a record 40.8 feet at Fargo. As of 12:15 a.m. ET Friday, the river was at 34.61 feet, more than 16 feet above the flood stage of 18 feet.
Last week, warm weather and rain melted snow south of Fargo and Moorhead, causing the Red River to swell. Upstream, snow and ice have yet to melt, pushing water back toward the two cities.
In Fargo, more than 700,000 sandbags had been placed around the city. FULL STORY
Avlon: Partisan politics leads to health care hypocrisy
Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/13/john.avlon.art.jpg caption="CNN independent analyst John Avlon says partisanship is trumping principle and eclipsing patriotism in government."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
This week, Washington combined high stakes poker and parliamentary procedures with health care reform in the balance. And despite more than a year of heated debate, the American people remain deeply divided on the issue – the only thing they seem to agree on is that D.C. is dysfunctional. A new poll shows Congress with a 17% approval rating.
Part of the reason is an epidemic of situational ethics: politicians reversing supposedly principled stands depending upon whether or not their party is in power.
The most egregious example is support for reconciliation – a measure to ensure an up-or-down vote, bypassing the threat of a filibuster. Republicans have lately been conflating reconciliation with the closely related, controversial (and conveniently scary-sounding) “nuclear option.”
When Larry King asked Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, “what’s wrong with majority rules?” on LKL earlier this week, she replied: “Because that's not how the Senate works. The Senate works with 60 votes. And now, what the president is promoting is a nuclear option, which is 50 votes.”
But the so called “nuclear option” was invoked 5 years ago by Republicans when they accused Democrats of blocking President Bush’s judicial nominations via filibuster.
As then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist explained, “Every judicial nominee brought to the floor should get a fair up or down vote...We were prepared to use this approach. The minority attempted to demean it by calling it the nuclear option surrounding it with the threats of the closure of government stopping this body from working…The proper term for our response is the constitutional option because we would rely on the constitution's power of self-governance to restore senate traditions barring judicial filibusters.”
In other words, Republicans were for forcing up-or-down votes before they were against it. As is so often the case in politics, where you stand is a matter of where you sit.
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