Editor's note: Frank Micciche is managing director of the Next Social Contract Initiative at the New America Foundation, a think tank that promotes thought from across the ideological spectrum. He has worked for Sallie Mae, former Michigan Gov. John Engler and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Frank Micciche says Detroit has to justify its bailout while Wall Street is getting more without tough scrutiny. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There was good news and bad news in the recent filings Chrysler and General Motors made with the federal officials overseeing their multibillion-dollar rescue. The good news was that, if the federal government can see its way clear to adding another $21 billion or so to the more than $17.4 billion they received in bridge loans in December -- including a cool $7 billion by the end of March to forestall their insolvency -- the companies are confident that they will be able to retool, return to profitability and repay the money provided them. The bad news: it won't happen until late in President Obama's first term, if at all, and in the meantime they will eliminate at least 50,000 jobs this year alone, close even more plants than previously announced and discontinue several of their most recognizable lines of cars. If you think keeping the automakers afloat for another few years is expensive, you won't believe how much it would cost to let them fail. In the same report, GM CEO Rick Wagoner put the price tag for the feds should his company file for bankruptcy at $100 billion. Such is the through-the-looking-glass nature of bailout economics, circa 2009. Of course, even Wagoner's worst case scenario is a pittance compared to the more than $600 billion that will eventually flow to Wall Street through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Which begs the question of why, after four months and nearly $400 billion in capital from the U.S. Treasury, we have still not seen anything remotely resembling the detailed disclosures and strategic planning required of the automakers from the banks that have received TARP funds? For that matter, shouldn't the state and local governments that stand to receive hundreds of billions of dollars under the recently enacted economic stimulus bill have to submit something, anything, that would explain how they intend to use this money, what their spending will do to speed and sustain the nation's overall recovery and what they will do to wean themselves from this emergency aid once the crisis has passed? Small nonprofits and community organizations that receive federal grants will tell you that the paperwork and scrutiny that comes with even the most modest federal award is often so exhaustive as to nullify the benefits of the grant. Not so, apparently, if your request is in the billions. Perhaps the secret to avoiding the withering glances of bean-counting bureaucrats is to ask for serious cash from Uncle Sam. How do we square the double standard in reporting required of Chrysler and GM, whose combined request is in the range of $40 billion, with the inability of even a pit bull like U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, to get answers as to exactly where and to what end the TARP money has gone? It may be that the situation on Wall Street is so complex, and the stakes so high, that lawmakers themselves have little confidence in their abilities to map a successful recovery for the industry, so they are relying on the sheer magnitude of their spending and the ingenuity of those left standing on Wall Street to work their market magic and revive the economy. The idea of a single "Car Czar" to oversee the rebuilding of the auto industry is now out the window, replaced by a task force led by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, two of the most over-extended men in the history of American government. But it's still easier for Washington to imagine that they can manage Chrysler and GM back onto the road to viability than that anything short of massive infusions of vaguely traceable capital will unfreeze the credit markets and restore financial stability. In the meantime, the automakers await word

What kind of plans were required to be given?

Answer: Detroit has to justify its bailout while Wall Street is getting more without tough scrutiny.

Answer: detailed disclosures and strategic planning

Summary:
Frank Micciche: Auto companies are planning job cuts and plant closings .
He says they were required to give detailed plans in return for bailout money .
Micciche: Wall Street firms getting much more money from federal government .
He says the bankers haven't been required to provide their restructuring plan .


Editor's note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also is host of a conservative national radio talk show. Glenn Beck has some lines McCain can use in tonight's speech to articulate his vision for change NEW YORK (CNN) -- Campaigns are ugly. Watching the way politicians act makes you long for the respect and self-control of the Sopranos. Throughout, there are legitimate attacks and outright lies. Every once in a while, I get a call on my radio show from someone telling me that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim, who admitted it in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, and has a fake birth certificate. No, no, and no. As I tell them, there are legitimate reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, no need to make them up. But the newest target is Sarah Palin. Let's take a quick look at just a fraction of what she has faced in her first few days as John McCain's choice for vice president. iReport.com: Do you think Palin is being treated unfairly? "Sarah Palin believes God told her to go to war with Iraq!" There has been some hard-core journalistic malpractice on this one. The Associated Press ran this headline about a speech she gave at her church: "Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'" In the story, they omit the first part of the sentence they're quoting along with the entire previous sentence for good measure. Here are her actual words: "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." Palin is clearly praying that we're doing the right thing in Iraq, something sensible for an introspective woman of faith concerned about the lives of our troops to do. She's not saying that she just received a text message from heaven's BlackBerry ordering her to launch missiles. Sorry to disappoint you. And for those of you who think politicians asking God for guidance is offensive, might I remind you of this famous politician's prayer: "Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." --Barack Obama "She has no experience!" It's fair to assume that Barack Obama believed he was qualified to be in the White House when he announced he was running for president. At that point, he had been a U.S. Senator for 767 days. When Sarah Palin was announced as a vice presidential candidate, she had been the governor of Alaska for 634 days. While I'm sure those extra 133 days were filled with personal discovery, I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to make the case that Obama is experienced and Palin isn't. Unless, of course, you're Matt Damon, who said a Palin presidency would be a really "scary thing" because she has been "governor of Alaska for...for less than two years!" (Damon originally expressed his presidential preference for Obama in December 2006, when he had been a senator for less than two years.) More importantly, Palin's career has been filled with executive experience. She's the only one of the four in this race who has run a business, town, and/or state (a state that gives her crucial energy experience in the middle of an energy crisis). When Obama's campaign complains that Palin would be one heartbeat away from the presidency, they should consider that their candidate would be zero heartbeats away. "But Obama is running a huge campaign -- Palin was just a small town mayor!" Believe it or not, this one was actually trotted out by Obama himself. "My understanding is, is that Gov. Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees.

What jobs did she get the experience from?

Answer: God told her to go to war with Iraq!"

Answer: has run a business, town, and/or state

Summary:
Glenn Beck: Many of the things you've heard about Sarah Palin aren't true .
Beck: She didn't say the Iraq war is a task from God .
Palin has substantial executive experience in several jobs, Beck says.
Beck: She doesn't oppose teaching contraception in sex-ed classes .


Editor's note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also is host of a conservative national radio talk show. Glenn Beck says Wall Street's troubles began with a wild craze for subprime mortages. NEW YORK (CNN) -- "Greed is good." At least, that's what Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko claimed in the movie Wall Street. But, just like Gekko, the modern-day companies that followed that motto now find themselves wondering how everything could collapse so fast. You know the names by now: Countrywide Financial, Bear Stearns, IndyMac, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG. And that's not even counting companies like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs that, while still in existence, have lost untold billions in market value and have laid off thousands of employees. Maybe greed isn't so good after all. Lehman was founded in 1844 when Henry Lehman, a German immigrant, opened a small shop in Montgomery, Alabama. His brothers joined him six years later and, by 1858 they were busy turning cotton provided by local farmers into a cash crop -- a business that didn't have anything to do with helping low-income families afford 27-bedroom McMansions. More than 150 years later, after surviving the Great Depression, Black Monday, the savings and loan crisis and the dot-com bust, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection. They had gone 14 years as a public company without ever reporting a single quarterly loss. Now they will never again post a profit. Bear Stearns' story is eerily similar. Founded in 1923. Survived every crisis. Never posted a quarterly loss until last year. Gone without a trace. So how did 235 years of rock-solid American finance disappear virtually overnight? Well, it's not as complicated as you think. If you replace all of the acronyms invented by the brainiacs on Wall Street with references to things that Main Street understands, it becomes a lot easier to see how it all happened. Here's a quick story I invented that does just that. (Note to any Wall Street executives who might be reading this: I know this simple little story isn't perfect, but let's remember that you're the ones who tried to make everything complicated and I'm the one who still has a job.) It's just before Christmas,1996, and as you watch overeager parents trample each other to buy Tickle Me Elmo dolls for their kids, you see an opportunity. "This isn't a Tickle Me Elmo bubble," you think to yourself, "this is a long-term trend. Every person in America will soon own a Tickle Me Elmo, maybe even two. It's the American dream." You approach your local banker about a loan and, naturally, he loves your idea. In fact, he loves it so much that for every $1 you have in your account, he's willing to lend you $34. Great deal, you think, as you max out your credit line and buy as many Tickle Me Elmos as you possibly can. Sales are easy at first. People are lining up to buy your dolls and the prices are going far higher than you ever thought. The only person happier than you is your banker. But the following year something unexpected happens: Kids stop asking for Tickle Me Elmos. You try to cut the price, but no buyers show up. You cut the price more, but your store remains empty. Panic sets in. You're pretty sure that this downturn is just temporary (after all, who wouldn't want a Tickle Me Elmo?) but you're quickly running out of cash. Your only option is to buy time and hope that Tickle Me Elmos start flying off your shelves again. You visit every bank in town and, using your piles of Tickle Me Elmo dolls as collateral (which, of course, you purchased with money you didn't have) you get as much new capital as possible. Soon that money is

what happened to major companies due to the fiasco?

Who says that firms still own too many toxic mortgages they can't sell?

Who collapsed due to the subprime mortgage fiasco?

Answer: lost untold billions in market value and have laid off thousands of employees.

Answer: Glenn Beck

Answer: Lehman

Answer: Wall Street's troubles began with a wild craze for subprime mortages.

Summary:
Glenn Beck: Hundreds of years of Wall Street history vanished this week .
Major companies collapsed due to the subprime mortgage fiasco, he says .
Beck: Firms still own too many toxic mortgages they can't sell .
A new government agency could form to buy up mortgages, Beck says .


Editor's note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also is host of a conservative national radio talk show. Glenn Beck says the decisions Washington makes today could have fateful consequences for the future. NEW YORK (CNN) -- Dear America: Happy 300th Birthday! It's 2076 and we've just invented the time-fax machine. (Actually, "we" didn't invent the time-fax machine, the State did -- they pretty much control everything now.) I'm faxing this back to you in 2008 because that seems to be the year we had the best chance to reverse our course and get back to the vision laid out by our founding fathers -- a vision that didn't include the government being in the insurance business. I don't have a lot of time (the State only gives us one 30-minute break per day) so let me give you some advice: Stop worrying so much about who runs the country and start worrying about who runs your towns, your states, and your Congress. I know you're all distracted by the presidential election, but for all the money and time poured into it, the truth is that you're choosing between two roads that will lead you to the same destination. Sure, one may be the Autobahn and the other a two-lane highway, but you'll end up at the same place either way. Decades of Republicans and Democrats alike have all chipped in to lead you to where you are today. Believing that one person, from either party, can change that by themselves is a big mistake. Presidents are like captains of a large ship: They can map out a course and shout out orders, but without the trust and hard work of the people who actually move the rudders, their commands mean nothing. In retrospect, the lack of trust and confidence you now have in your leaders was really the root cause of everything that's happened since. While our founding fathers designed a brilliant system of checks and balances, separation of powers and democratic elections, trust was the one thing they couldn't mandate in the Constitution. Unfortunately, it's also the foundation upon which everything else is built and once it began to erode, our whole house inevitably began to crumble. Looking back now, it's pretty obvious that our trust in government declined at about the same rate as our partisanship increased. People became so concerned about getting their party into power at any cost that the truth didn't even seem to matter anymore. That's probably one of the reasons why George Washington hated the idea of political parties so much. Here's what he said about them in his 1796 farewell speech: "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty." I know that George had a habit for using big words, so allow me to translate into 2008 English: Political parties that put their own success over that of the country's will be the death of America. If you don't believe him yet, just wait a few more years...you're about to see firsthand how right he was. After all, if power corrupts, then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties (and feared by Washington) corrupts absolutely. The best advice I can give you is to stop thinking in terms of left and right and start thinking in terms of right and wrong. Demand the best leaders possible, and then demand the best out of them. Believe me, when you see what's coming your

Why did people lose trust in government?

What did uncontrolled partisanship cause?

What does Beck say about America in 2076?

What caused people to lose trust in the government?

Answer: partisanship increased.

Answer: in your leaders

Answer: trust in government declined

Answer: we've just invented the time-fax machine.

Answer: partisanship increased.

Answer: the decisions Washington makes today could have fateful consequences for the future.

Summary:
Glenn Beck: America in 2076 could be a very scary place .
Beck imagines a country that is controlled by an all-powerful state .
People lost trust in government because of uncontrolled partisanship, he says .
Beck: Bailing out industries amounts to socializing their losses .


Editor's note: Gloria Borger is a senior political analyst for CNN, appearing regularly on CNN's "The Situation Room," "Campbell Brown," "AC360°" and "State of the Union With John King" as well as other programs during special event coverage. Gloria Borger says President Obama's plans are running into Americans' widespread mistrust of government. (CNN) -- So now comes the hard part. Now that a key Senate committee has finally moved a health care bill, President Obama can get to work to try and figure out a final version of reform. Now that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has recommended a large troop buildup in Afghanistan -- setting off an internal debate about recalibrating strategy -- the president can decide what he wants to do about the war. And now that the stock market is on the rebound -- while unemployment remains high -- Obama can figure out how to come up with a "son of stimulus" package that targets jobs. Tough decisions are part of the president's job description, after all. But here's the tricky part: how to convince the public that you -- and government -- will do the right thing, or are even capable of it. Sure, distrust of government is as old as government itself. And there's an inherent conflict in current public thinking, as scholars William Galston and Elaine Kamarck point out: While people want government to solve big problems like health care, they don't trust the government to do it. "There is nothing new about this ambivalence," they write in an essay aptly titled "Change you can believe in requires a government you can trust." They write, "But how ... the president deals with it may make the difference between success and failure." So what's a president with a big agenda to do? He could have narrowed it, but instead decided to play "all-in." Because he was so popular, and because voters were so ready for a change, there was some thought the country might buy into the notion that good leadership could actually change the ethos of bad government. Obama probably believed it, too. So when the economic stimulus package was hatched, with hardly a Republican vote, the White House remained hopeful that, in the end, its success would restore confidence in their work. And they have since toiled mightily to brag about the stimulus package as evidence that government can work. After all, if FDR could do it, why not Barack Obama? Instead, the stimulus has become a handy target. Wall Street may be doing well, both conservatives and liberals rail, but the jobs elsewhere are not coming back. And as the president now moves to ask the nation to support an overhaul of health care, voters are still asking: Why should we trust the government to do that? Consider these numbers: At the end of the Bush administration -- with an unpopular president -- just 17 percent of the American public trusted the government to "do the right thing" all or most of the time. And for all of the popularity of Barack Obama, that number now stands at a measly 23 percent. After Bill Clinton lost health care reform -- and control of the Congress -- trust in government in 1994 was at an all-time low: 21 percent. We're almost there now. Ronald Reagan understood, and used to his benefit, the antipathy toward government. He used to joke that the scariest words in the lexicon were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." He wanted to make government smaller, and his overall success with that notion prompted President Clinton to famously tell Congress "the era of big government is over." Well, it's back. The question is whether President Obama can convince us that more government is what we want -- and need. As Reagan once told us, "Trust, but verify." If only we could. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

Who is still distrustful of the government?

What does she say about the White House?

Answer: Americans'

Answer: President

Answer: remained hopeful that, in the end, its success would restore confidence in their work.

Summary:
Gloria Borger: Congressional recess provides chance for health care discussion .
She says some people more interested in shouting than serious talk .
She says Congress is grappling with a tough, complex issue .
Borger: Stop reducing complicated issues to simplistic sound bites .


Editor's note: Gloria Borger is a senior political analyst for CNN, appearing regularly on CNN's "The Situation Room," "Campbell Brown," "AC360°" and "State of the Union With John King," as well as special event coverage. Gloria Borger says we could be in for a month of venting sessions aimed at members of Congress. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Ah, the summer. Time for all those members of Congress to go home, meet with their constituents, get their input on health care reform and take back what they have learned from the voters. Not exactly. In some town hall meetings around the country, anger and fear are trumping any constructive argument -- at least so far. Recently, for instance, Sen. Arlen Specter held a town hall meeting with Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary. In attempting to answer questions, they were shouted down by folks more interested in venting than discussing. On the conservative FreedomWorks Web site, the display was headlined "Specter Gets Schooled." Above the video of the event, the site says "... this is a must watch and a must emulate at town halls across the country over the next month." Really? What about those folks who are actually interested in debating and discussing a very complex issue they're trying to digest? There are some who may actually want to figure out the best way to solve the health care problem. What ever happened to asking questions about the quality of care, the cost of insurance, the impact of any public plan on the health care system? After all, this has been a turbulent economic time for this country, and another huge shock to the system is naturally worrisome. Especially when it comes to an issue as complex as health care. But it's not just the folks at these town halls who have learned how to heckle. Their bad behavior is a derivative of the questionable quality of the political debate they listen to every day. Indeed, if there's one thing we've gotten really good at over the years, it's this: reducing complicated problems to bite-sized slogans. It seems to work, so we keep doing it. Ipso facto, Obama's reform ideas become "socialism" to his Republican critics. And the administration is not above creating a handy bogeyman of its own: the insurance companies. At least according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accuses them of "full-force carpet-bombing and shock and awe against the public option." Too bad they actually support the rest of reform, and are still running positive ads about the effort. They weren't at the table at all 16 years ago when Hillary Clinton's effort at reform failed. The world has changed since then, and the congressional plans for reforming health care have changed, too. But the invective of the debate, sad to say, has not. The effort on Capitol Hill has been serious. I hate to sound like Pollyanna, but members of Congress are actually doing some real work. Some policy differences may never get resolved because they are too ideological; others are regional, and that's tough, too. But they're working at it, for hours on end, behind closed doors. No cameras, no grandstanding. One of those working the hardest, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, was derided at a town hall recently on the matter of his own health insurance. So here's the fellow who is spending every waking hour trying to get a bipartisan measure that can pass the Senate -- and be fair to Iowans -- and he goes home and gets an earful. Maybe the discourse will become more productive as the summer progresses. And maybe not. But the health care dilemma remains, no matter how loud the discussion. As John F. Kennedy told us, "To govern is to choose." Especially when the choices are not easy. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

In what are more people interested than serious talk?

Answer: in venting

Summary:
Gloria Borger: Congressional recess provides chance for health care discussion .
She says some people more interested in shouting than serious talk .
She says Congress is grappling with a tough, complex issue .
Borger: Stop reducing complicated issues to simplistic sound bites .


Editor's note: Hank Sheinkopf, a CNN contributor, is a longtime political consultant who was a member of the media team for President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. Sheinkopf was a media consultant for Eliot Spitzer's campaign for New York attorney general in 1998 and has represented candidates around the country and the world. He represented Rep. Steve Israel, a Democrat whose name has been mentioned for the New York senate seat, in 2000, but hasn't had a business relationship with him since. Sheinkopf, who also represents corporate clients, does not represent any of the other politicians whose names have been mentioned for the Senate seat. For a rival view, read here. Hank Sheinkopf says Caroline Kennedy hasn't earned the nod for a Senate seat from New York. NEW YORK (CNN) -- Judging by the screaming newspaper headlines and the steamy ecstasy of the gossip columns, people from other worlds might presume that it has already come to pass: that a woman who happens to be named Caroline Kennedy was pole-vaulted above the crowd and sent with magic wand and golden slippers to the U.S. Senate from New York, in the hope of saving the Empire State and bringing goodness to all its inhabitants. After all, why shouldn't she be sent to the Senate? Her unique experience of writing a book or two, smiling well, appearing from time to time -- but not too often -- at city mayoral news conferences announcing help for those who attend New York City public schools -- and, well, just being a Kennedy -- should suffice. Her social standing alone, some might argue, would give her the advantage of all advantages. A Kennedy. Camelot. Ah! The greatness of it all? Not. The man who has to make the decision whether or not New York is to be so vaunted in representation is Gov. David Paterson, the former lieutenant governor who had the fortune of replacing morally triangulated Gov. Eliot Spitzer after Spitzer's resignation in the face of a publicly humiliating sex scandal. Paterson will have to face the voters in 2010. So will his pick to fill the seat that will be left vacant after Hillary Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state in early 2009. The governor's poll numbers suggest that voters like him. Paterson has taken a tack much unexpected by challenging all to tighten belts, cut spending, pay more fees to the state and get rid of waste after Wall Street's collapse and the subsequent free fall in tax collections from the financial services business. Paterson could have a tough time. Voters don't like losing money, they hate losing services, and all the earnest explanations about fighting the good fight together won't put better food on the table or pay the bills. He needs someone who can help him win, and he needs someone who can win. He and the senator he chooses will both face the voters together. With that in mind, is Caroline Kennedy the correct choice? On the issues of the day, Kennedy has been mighty silent. Financial cretins stealing for fun, profit and because they can? Not a word. The wars? Syllable-less. Millions of humans evaporated in Africa's inner madness? Quiet and silent. The auto bailout? Nada. The printing of a trillion soon-to-be inflated dollars that will further sap our savings? On such matters, Kennedy remains absolutely silent. What about the destruction of the economy of western New York? Does she know that there is a deeply pained world beyond the Westchester County border just a bit north of New York City that benefited little from some fairy-tale place called Camelot and less from well-orchestrated and timed public relations campaigns afforded only by the rich? Why should Caroline Kennedy be named a U.S. senator? Is it because merit no longer matters? Surely, Kennedy offers the dazzle of an unmistakable surname and the kind of celebrity appeal that seems to follow members of the New York social elite. But for the white ethnics who gave their vote to Democrats on the promise of fairness and merit, Kennedy's star quality may not suffice

Who has to worry about facing voters in 2010?

Answer: Her unique experience of writing a book or two, smiling well, appearing from time to time

Answer: Gov. David Paterson,

Answer: Kennedy

Summary:
Hank Sheinkopf: Some treating Caroline Kennedy's Senate bid as a done deal .
He says Kennedy hasn't been vocal on many of the key issues we face .
Sheinkopf: What qualifies Kennedy to be given priority for the vacant seat?
He says Gov. Paterson has to worry about facing voters in 2010 .


Editor's note: Harry Shearer is an actor, author, director, satirist, musician, radio host, playwright, fine artist and record label owner who is the voice of a variety of regular characters on "The Simpsons," most notably Mr. Burns, Smithers and insufferable neighbor Ned Flanders. Harry Shearer says the White House isn't getting actively involved in protecting New Orleans from flooding. (CNN) -- I spent much of this month in my adopted hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. Uncharacteristically for August, the streets and restaurants and galleries and music clubs were largely full and throbbing with energy. There are hubs of entrepreneurs all over town trying to invent the future. And thankfully, Mayor Ray Nagin's term is only months away from its end. Between my weeks in the Crescent City, I joined some local folks in traipsing up to the Aspen Institute to share the news of New Orleans with interested outsiders. One talked about the progress in rebuilding homes. Another discussed the reform of the public-school system, the decoupling of the schools from a centralized board, resulting in the city becoming the leader in charter-school enrollment. A third talked about the move to neighborhood medical clinics, an effort to replace the hospital beds missing in the flooding's wake. A fourth reported the good economic statistics, marred only by the continuing shortage in affordable rental housing (80,000 units were whacked by the flood). And a fifth discussed the citizen activism that is helping, along with a determined U.S. attorney (who's just sent Rep. William Jefferson and his brother Mose to jail), to clean up local politics. After all, it was New Jersey pols, not New Orleans ones, who got snagged in a scheme involving black-market kidneys. Wish we'd thought of that. All good news. And all transpiring under a shadow, one made all too evident early last week when the city experienced a collective shudder as the spinning cyclonic shape of Hurricane Bill appeared on TV screens. New Orleans, hit so hard by what so many (including President Obama in his Sunday interview with the local newspaper) still see fit to describe, mistakenly, as a natural disaster, is making remarkable progress, while the agency that so disastrously failed at building a protective system mandated by Congress -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- may be making some of the same mistakes in rebuilding that system. And the White House, for the second consecutive administration, seems not to care. Me? I'm a humorist, a comic actor, a sometime musician-filmmaker-novelist-blogger. What the hell do I know about what happened to the city I love? Since the levees collapsed, I've been reading the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, watching and listening to the local media, which, post-disaster, have rediscovered their mission to make local news more than a recitation of the previous day's murders, car crashes and celebrity misbehaviors. While the national media packed up and moved away after the initial orgasm of anger at FEMA, the local media reported something remarkable: The Corps was claiming that the flooding was due to the "overtopping" of its levees and floodwalls, while two teams of pro-bono forensic investigators were finding evidence that no overtopping had occurred. As the Corps started denigrating these investigators, they kept digging, and kept coming up with the real story, available now for all to see (though all too few have) as the ILIT report from the University of California at Berkeley and the Team Louisiana report from Louisiana State University. Their conclusions: The "hurricane protection system" built by the Corps had serious design and construction flaws, baked into the system over 40 years under administrations of both parties, that caused catastrophic failure in more than 50 locations under storm surge conditions markedly less than the system was advertised to withstand. You and I, federal taxpayers, had paid to flood New Orleans. Since the Obama administration took office, the Corps has: announced that one part of the new "system" will be built using a

Who does Harry Shearer say is ignoring the problem?

Answer: the White House isn't getting actively involved in protecting New Orleans from flooding.

Summary:
Harry Shearer: There is much good news in New Orleans, but still problems .
He notes report that Corps of Engineers levee design and construction led to breach .
Shearer says there may be flaws with the Army Corps' levee rebuilding .
He says Obama is ignoring problem, as Bush did previously .


Editor's note: Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen and Innosight Institute Executive Director of Education Michael B. Horn are the co-authors along with Curtis W. Johnson of "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns." Clay Christensen says the sudden burst of federal spending on schools holds great danger. (CNN) -- Historically the federal government has been a small investor in the nation's education system. With the recent economic stimulus bill, however, this changed virtually overnight. There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding -- nearly $100 billion -- that the federal government is throwing at the nation's schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes. The most likely result of this stimulus will be to give our schools the luxury of affording not to change. This is borrowed money that we're pumping into our schools, and it comes at a price. Charging education isn't changing it. That our schools need to change should not be surprising. Just walk into your local school and enter a classroom. Odds are high that it won't look too different from a classroom from a generation or two ago. Sure, there might be some computers in the back of the room and perhaps an interactive white board instead of a chalkboard, but chances are high that students will still be sitting at desks lined up in neat rows with a teacher at the front delivering the same lesson on the same day to all the students. This might be acceptable if society and the skills many people need to succeed in today's economy hadn't changed either, but they have. While U.S. schools stand still, the rest of the world is moving forward, and this has a price tag -- not just for individual children, but also for the nation. We urge the federal government to consider four criteria when creating new programs or grants for states and districts to help transform an outdated educational system into one fit for the 21st Century. First, don't fund technology that simply shoves computers and other technologies into existing classrooms. We've spent well over $60 billion in the last two decades doing just that, and there is now overwhelming evidence that when we do it, the current unsatisfactory system co-opts the technology to sustain itself. We should instead use technology funding to bolster new learning models and innovations, such as online-learning environments, to level the playing field and allow students from all walks of life -- from small, rural communities to budget-strapped urban schools -- to access the rich variety that is now available only to children in wealthy suburban districts. Second, don't fund new school buildings that look like the existing ones. If the architecture of new buildings is the same as that of existing schools -- designed around teachers delivering monolithic, one-size-fits-all lessons to large batches of students -- it will lock students into another century in which the physical infrastructure works against the flexibility needed for student-centric learning. Instead, invest in bandwidth as an infrastructure of change. The government has a productive history in investing in infrastructure that creates change and innovation -- from allocating land to those building the transcontinental railroad and the land-grant colleges in 1862 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding the creation of the Internet. To allow all districts to realize the power of online learning to advance us toward a student-centric system, the federal government should help deliver broadband capabilities necessary not just for today's needs, where schools already lag, but also in anticipation of tomorrow's. Third, don't fund the institutions that are least likely to change. Our research shows that institutions are good at improving what they are structured to do, but that transformative innovations that fundamentally change the trade-off between cost and quality -- disruptive innovations -- come from start-up institutions. This means that there is a high probability that spending money on existing schools of education will only result in their doing more of the same, for example. Meanwhile,

what should be used to create new forms of schooling?

Answer: the sudden and massive amount of funding -- nearly $100 billion -- that the federal government is throwing at the nation's schools.

Answer: bolster new learning models and innovations,

Answer: instead use technology funding to bolster new learning models and innovations,

Answer: use technology funding

Summary:
Christensen, Horn: Federal spending on schools is set to jump .
They say it would be a big mistake to use money to let failing schools resist change .
Co-authors: Federal money should go to innovators challenging traditional ways .
They say technology should be used to create new forms of schooling .


Editor's note: How would you rate President Obama's first 100 days? You'll get a chance to make your opinion known at 7 p.m. ET Wednesday on the CNN National Report Card.

Supporters say President Obama is tackling an aggressive agenda, while critics say he's leaving Republicans behind.

(CNN)  -- More than two years ago, a junior senator with presidential aspirations stood on the steps of Illinois' Old State Capitol in Springfield and warned of politicians who fail to live up to expectations.

"Too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own," then-Sen. Barack Obama said as he announced his intentions to pursue the Democratic nomination.

Now, after 100 days in office, observers are asking the same of him: Has President Obama lived up to the expectations that candidate Obama created?

"What Obama has successfully done is keep his persona intact, which is a man of deep family values and a core moral center. And I think that people are learning to trust Obama that when he talks, he's not just articulate, but he's shooting straight," said presidential historian Doug Brinkley.

Obama won the White House campaigning on a message of hope and a promise of change. As he emerged a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, he pushed an ambitious agenda, vowing to overhaul health care, education and energy policy.

But as the severity of the economic meltdown took hold and Obama moved into the White House, his inspirational rhetoric was injected with a sobering dose of reality. Obama encouraged patience and cautioned that, "change doesn't happen overnight."

In his first 100 days, Obama laid the groundwork for many of his campaign promises and faced criticism that he's trying to do too much.

"Nobody will ever be able to accuse him of being an idle man during his first 100 days," Brinkley said. "He's clearly showing himself to be a progressive in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, with the moral core of Jimmy Carter."

So far Obama is showing himself to be "the same guy that we had on the campaign trail," Brinkley said.

Given the items on his agenda, Obama is living up to expectations, CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said. "The public is patient and is not expecting to see a quick turnaround in the economy," he said.

"I count 10 major items -- jobs, health care, education, energy, housing, banks, automakers, deficit reduction, taxes and the war in Afghanistan. Plus, a pledge to take up immigration reform and climate change in the near future. Any one of those things would be a significant agenda," he said.

But some Republicans say the president has failed when it comes to his pledge to reach across the aisle.

After Democrats moved ahead with a $787 billion stimulus bill that garnered no Republican support in the House and just three Republican votes in the Senate, "That's when it became clear to me that all of this post-partisan talk and working down the middle and working together was a ruse," said John Boehner, House minority leader.

Obama's approval ratings remain high -- hovering around 65 percent. Those numbers are on par with where President Reagan and President Carter stood at this point in their presidencies. But one year later, their approval ratings dropped to about 40 percent.

Obama has maintained his popularity, Republican strategist and CNN contributor Mary Matalin said, but he's lost support from Republicans and some independents "because what he is not is what he was perceived to be in the campaign -- a centrist."

Schneider said Obama's agenda -- which includes massive government spending -- represents a challenge to the Republicans' core principle of smaller government. Republicans haven't responded to Obama's outreach, and "it's causing serious political damage to their

Who claims Obama did not act like a centrist?

What was the main message of the compaign?

Answer: idle man

Answer: Mary Matalin

Answer: hope and a promise of change.

Answer: hope and a promise of change.

Answer: overhaul health care, education and energy policy.

Summary:
As a candidate, Obama campaigned on a message of hope and change .
"Nobody will ever be able to accuse him of being an idle man," historian says .
GOP strategist says Obama not acting like the centrist he was during the campaign .
Obama's agenda represents a challenge to GOP principles, analyst says .


Editor's note: How would you rate President Obama's first 100 days? You'll get a chance to make your opinion known on at 7 p.m. ET Wednesday on the CNN National Report Card. Franklin D. Roosevelt had an ambitious first 100 days, CNN's Bill Schneider says. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senior White House adviser David Axelrod has called the 100-day benchmark an "odd custom, the journalistic equivalent of the Hallmark holiday.'' But where did the notion of a president's "First 100 Days" originate? With Franklin D. Roosevelt, another president who took office at a time of dire economic crisis. Roosevelt used his first 100 days to launch the New Deal, his plan to jumpstart the economy and put people back to work. Democrats had just won huge majorities in Congress and were ready to do the president's bidding. But, should Congress fail to act, Roosevelt would ask for "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were, in fact, invaded by a foreign foe," he warned in his inaugural address.  Watch what FDR's First 100 Days were like » Congress gave Roosevelt nearly nearly everything he wanted -- 15 major bills in the first 100 days, including the Emergency Banking Relief Act, the Public Works Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Congress also approved the Beer-Wine Revenue Act that anticipated the end of Prohibition. A White House adviser remarked that members of Congress had forgotten to be Republicans or Democrats. Comedian Will Rogers joked at the time that, "Congress doesn't pass legislation any more. They just wave at the bills as they go by." Nothing since has equaled FDR's first 100 days. But as Obama nears the symbolic benchmark, he may have had the boldest 100-day agenda since FDR. Still, Congress has passed only a few major bills, including the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the public lands preservation bill and an expansion of children's health insurance. So what has changed? Presidents can no longer count on the kind of bipartisan cooperation FDR got in 1933 -- even at a time of crisis.

Who used his first 100 days to launch the New Deal?

Obama took office during economic crisis, like who?

Roosevelt quickly acted on how many major bills?

Roosevelt took office during what type of crisis?

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt,

Answer: 15

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt,

Answer: major bills

Answer: Roosevelt used his first 100 days to launch the New Deal,

Answer: economic

Answer: President

Summary:
Franklin Roosevelt used his first 100 days to launch the New Deal .
Roosevelt, like President Obama, took office during an economic crisis .
Roosevelt quickly acted on 15 major bills .
Obama has bold agenda, but little legislation to show for it .


Editor's note: Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy research foundation, and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force-Iraq and practiced law at Patton Boggs LLP and Cleary Gottlieb LLP. Earlier, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Ilya Shapiro says the Sotomayor appointment is a case of identity politics rather than a choice on the merits. (CNN) -- In picking Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama has confirmed that identity politics matter to him more than merit. While Judge Sotomayor exemplifies the American Dream, she would not have even been on the short list if she were not Hispanic. She is not one of the leading lights of the federal judiciary, and far less qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court than Judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland or Solicitor General Elena Kagan. To be sure, Sotomayor has a compelling story: a daughter of working-class Puerto Ricans raised in Bronx public housing projects, diagnosed with diabetes at 8, losing her father at 9, accolades at Princeton and Yale Law, ending up on the federal bench. Still, in over 10 years on the Second Circuit, she has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist. In picking a case to highlight during his introduction of the nominee, President Obama had to go back to her days as a trial judge and a technical ruling that ended the 1994-95 baseball strike. Moreover, Sotomayor has a mixed reputation among lawyers who have practiced before her, some questioning her abilities as a judicial craftsman, others her erratic temperament, according to a piece by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic, which itself has come in for criticism. Such anecdotal criticism is to be taken with a grain of salt -- while Justice Antonin Scalia's bench-side manner is more vinegar than honey, even his detractors recognize his brilliance -- but it does need to be investigated. So, too, do certain statements she made in presentations at Berkeley and Duke, respectively, the former arguing that a Latina necessarily sees the law differently than a white man, the latter suggesting that, at least to some degree, judges make rather than interpret law. Again, this does not mean that Sotomayor is unqualified to be a judge -- or less qualified to be a Supreme Court justice than, say, Harriet Miers. It also does not detract from the history she would make as the first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee -- if you don't count Benjamin Cardozo, a descendant of Portuguese Jews. But a Supreme Court nomination is not a lifetime achievement award, and should not be treated as an opportunity to practice affirmative action. Ironically, it is race-based employment practices of another kind that will likely get this nomination in hottest water. Sotomayor was on a panel that summarily affirmed the dismissal of claims brought by firefighters, including one Hispanic, whose promotions were denied because they would be based on a (race-neutral) exam whose results didn't yield the "right" racial mix. Curiously, the Ricci v. DeStefano appellate panel issued a cursory "unpublished" opinion that failed to grapple with the complex legal issues presented in the case. Sotomayor's colleague José Cabranes, a liberal Democrat, excoriated the panel, without expressing a view on the merits of the case. Cabranes' dissent from the Second Circuit's decision not to rehear the case caught the Supreme Court's attention and, based on the oral argument, the court will probably reverse Sotomayor's panel when it rules on the case next month. iReport.com: Sotomayor 'the new face of America' We are thus likely to have the unusual scenario of a Supreme Court decision having a direct personal effect on a nominee's confirmation process, which will not only force Sotomayor onto the defensive but cost the president significant political capital. It will also show that Obama's calls for "empathy," echoed by Sotomayor's citing

On what is the  choice of Sotomayor based?

What is the choice of Sotomayor based on?

Answer: a daughter of working-class Puerto Ricans raised in Bronx public housing projects, diagnosed with diabetes at 8, losing

Answer: identity politics

Answer: the merits.

Summary:
Ilya Shapiro: Choice of Sotomayor is based on identity politics, not merit .
He says her life story is compelling but she should be thoroughly vetted .
Shapiro: Sotomayor may suffer from failure to deal with issues in New Haven case .
He says Republicans should educate public about differences over the law .


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering the news. Here, CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez describes spending some time with day laborers for a report that will air on 'Out in the Open' tonight at 8 ET. CNN's Rick Sanchez, pictured center, visits a street corner where many people gather to seek manual labor jobs. PALISADES PARK, New Jersey (CNN) -- For four hours Friday morning, I joined about 200 immigrants -- legal and illegal -- at a day-laborer site at the corner of East Columbia Avenue and Broad Avenue in downtown Palisades Park, New Jersey. My goal was not to find a job; rather it was to see how day laborers go about finding one themselves. Dressed in jeans, running shoes and a short-sleeve shirt, I looked like one of them. I also carried over my shoulder a bag containing a hidden camera. Day laborer sites like this one have sprung up all over the country. The laborers -- mostly immigrants, mostly men -- come to them to find jobs in construction or masonry or painting or landscaping. Some communities encourage the formation of these sites. In others, they have become lightning rods of controversy. In Palisades Park, they have become fixtures. At the site I visited, the last thing the folks there needed was more competition for jobs, but they nonetheless welcomed me into their group. They gave me pointers about how to get a good job. "Always ask how much," one man told me in Spanish as he prepped me in the art of negotiating for a days' wage. Another said it's better to be paid by the day instead of the hour. That way you're assured of a decent payment even if the work is cut short or the job is finished early. The guys I met told me they come here seven days a week. They wait and wait and wait for work. "Sometimes there's no work, sometimes there is work. Not every day," one man said. It gets worse when winter comes. "When it's cold, there's no work," another told me. A good week, they said, is one where they get offered jobs on two days for about $90 a day. That's a weekly salary of $180. It's barely enough to put food on the table, but it's better than the alternative. Life in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, they said, offers little in the way of income -- about $5 a week for manual labor. "We don't have a choice but to try to save a little bit and go back to our country," a 23-year-old Guatemalan man told me. The routine is simple: Show up early and wait for hours until a prospective employer shows up, if one shows up. As more people flock to these sites the competition for jobs gets intense. "There are a lot of people ... and I mean a lot of people at the stop here. So you no longer get a lot of work," the Guatemalan said. On Friday, I was there for 3½ hours until I finally witnessed a job offer. It came from, ironically, another immigrant. He was from the Ivory Coast, Africa, new in America himself, and delighted to provide work for fellow immigrants. He was looking for someone to help him move furniture and other belongings. These immigrants -- the African with a job and the Latinos seeking work -- negotiated the job terms in broken English, with African and Spanish accents swirling in the air. "I need two," said the African employer referring to the number of workers. "Two dollars is not enough," responded the Guatemalan. After much arm waving and false starts, they eventually figured out what the other was saying and a deal was struck. Many of the men here have a love-hate relationship with the United States. They miss their home countries but feel compelled to stay

Where did the people in Palisades Park come from?

Laborers where say two days of work at $90 per day is good?

What do the laborers work for in hopes of doing?

Amount laborers in Palisades Park make a day?

Answer: put food on the table,

Answer: New Jersey.

Answer: Palisades Park, New Jersey.

Answer: New Jersey

Answer: save a little bit and go back to our country,"

Answer: $90

Answer: $90

Summary:
Laborers in Palisades Park say two days of work at $90/day is a good week .
They hope to earn enough money to send some to family in other countries .
Some seem bitter about life in the U.S., but claim they stay for the money .


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here, CNN's Arwa Damon describes the hardships faced by Iraqi women. Her documentary airs this weekend on CNN and CNN International. Nahla's husband returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. He was killed in a bomb blast in 2007. BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The pain here is choking -- it's a dark, suffocating sorrow. "They took my husband away in front of me. I found his body in the morgue a few days later. He had multiple bullet wounds and his eyes had been gouged out," one woman tells me, forcefully twisting a tissue in her hands as if it somehow could ease her agony and erase the chilling memory. She didn't want her story told, too afraid that she would meet the same fate as the man she loved. Her husband's body bore the "signs of torture." How many times has that phrase been used? It's such a common phrase it's as if what really happened gets glossed over: skin scraped off their bodies, fingernails ripped out, horrifying screams of pain before death. How many times have we reported death tolls from one horrific bombing or another and not been able to get across that these are lives that literally were blown apart? No matter how hard we in the media try, Iraq remains a nation filled with untold tragedies, the scope of which so often is overwhelming. And no matter how hard Iraqis try to shield themselves and those they love from the horrors here, more often than not they fail. Yet they keep fighting.  See the sacrifices of Iraq's women » Nahla works at a radio station and is one of those women. She's tall, slender, elegantly dressed and has a firm handshake. I look at her and it's nearly impossible to imagine what she's been through. "This numbers game, you always think that you are exempt from the numbers," Nahla tells me, referring to the daily death toll. "You're pained by them, but you are outside of them."  Watch Nahla's struggle to live on » On April 14, 2007, her world shattered. There was an explosion on a bridge in the capital and 10 people were killed. Her husband, Mohammed, was one of them. "And with it, I am motionless," she says. "Truly, life was in color and now it is in black and white. I feel like it is a game of musical chairs we used to play with others. ... One time you are hit with the chair; another time, someone else is. Now, my son and I are out of the game completely, completely." The image of the man she loved, tall and proud, is of a doctor who moved his family back to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein because he believed his country needed him. He was a father who doted on their 6-year-old autistic son. Also etched into her memory is the image of his charred body, melted together with nine others, a twisted pile of black, scorched flesh. Yet Nahla's voice is calm as she speaks, only breaking at the very end of our conversation, when the pain, buried so deep, rises to the surface. She couldn't suppress her gut-wrenching dry sobs. I don't know how many times I have heard stories like hers after nearly five years of war here, and yet I still get chills. I can't stop being in awe -- nor can I stop looking at these women in amazement. Life in Iraq has forced people to confront horror that would leave many of us paralyzed.  Watch a divorcee forced to live amid squalor with her kids » Where do they find the strength to keep going? Some don't and choose to live out their lives as hollow shells, just waiting for this wretched existence to be over. But so

When was her husband killed?
When was one woman's husband killed?
Where is the woman from?
Who does Arwa Damon work for?
What does Arwa Damon reveal?
what did cnn reveal

Answer: 2007.

Answer: 2007.

Answer: Iraq

Answer: CNN

Answer: the hardships faced by Iraqi women.

Answer: hardships faced by Iraqi women.

Summary:
Mentally ill inmates in Miami are housed on the "forgotten floor"
Judge Steven Leifman says most are there as a result of "avoidable felonies"
While CNN tours facility, patient shouts: "I am the son of the president"
Leifman says the system is unjust and he's fighting for change .


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here, CNN's Jaime FlorCruz writes about press freedoms covering the Olympics. Journalists surf the Internet at the main Olympics press center in Beijing. BEIJING, China (CNN) -- For many overseas reporters now in Beijing, covering the Summer Games has turned into an Olympian task. We go through tedious security checkpoints to cover events and conduct interviews even as we deal with bureaucratic and linguistic barriers. But we face one particularly irritating issue: China's limits on Internet access. Despite Beijing's earlier promise to allow open reporting and unfettered access to information, Internet access remains erratic and unpredictable. "It's so counter-intuitive to find the Internet restricted, even if only selectively," one western journalist told me in Beijing. Last week, colleagues working in the Media Press Center faced a blank computer screen whenever they clicked on sites deemed sensitive to the Chinese authorities -- like Amnesty International and Falun Gong. That is attributed to China's sophisticated filter system, also known as the "Great Firewall." Why the paranoia? Pro-democracy activists, as well as advocates for Tibet independence and the spiritual group Falun Gong, have Web sites carrying information and views that the Chinese authorities deem "subversive." These sites reinforce Beijing's worst fears about cyberspace. China has groomed "Internet police" to patrol its networks and is constantly upgrading software to filter sites. Under Chinese law, using the Internet to "harm national interests," "spread rumors" or "leak state secrets" is punishable by stiff prison terms. Journalists and politicians alike cried "foul" but other critics turned their criticism on the International Olympic Committee (IOC.) When Beijing submitted its Olympic bid seven years ago, the Chinese promised: "There will be no restrictions on journalists in reporting on the Olympic Games." The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which monitors human rights and rule of law issues in China, has compiled documents that show that International Olympic Committee agreements with the Chinese government, from the start, were based on abiding by China's domestic laws. Those laws, the commission says, give authorities a lot of "wiggle room" to define actions that might "endanger state security" or "disrupt social order." Chinese regulations, for example, include a "service guide" for the foreign media. That guide notes the regulations apply to "the coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games and the preparation as well as political, economic, social and cultural matters of China by foreign journalists, in conformity with Chinese laws and regulations." China's "Provisions on the Technical Measures for the Protection of the Security of the Internet," which went into effect in 2006, note the regulations are aimed at "promoting the sound and orderly development of the Internet and safeguarding the state security, social order and public interests."  Learn more how China monitors the Internet » Last week, foreign journalists discovered Internet access to Web sites such as Amnesty International or sites with Tibet in the address were still restricted. After a media uproar, China seems to have relented. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said: "If there are some needs to adjust on the Chinese side, we will do that."  Amnesty International's site, for example, has been accessible since August 1. However, the site of Falun Gong remains taboo. Andrew Lih, a new media expert based in Beijing, says that "unblocked sites are still subject to the sophisticated keyword blocking system of the GFW (the Great Firewall of China.)" China has also tightened its grip on other media sources. The English version of Time Out, the monthly listings and entertainment guide, has been told to close. Freelance journalists are finding it hard to renew Chinese visas and accreditation for smaller, niche publications have become virtually impossible. Even a writer from Saveur, a food magazine, was denied a visa. Last Tuesday, relations between

What did China promise journalists when it bid for the Olympics?

Answer: Beijing.

Answer: abiding by China's domestic laws.

Answer: allow open reporting and unfettered access to information,

Answer: Internet access

Answer: Beijing,

Summary:
Mentally ill inmates in Miami are housed on the "forgotten floor"
Judge Steven Leifman says most are there as a result of "avoidable felonies"
While CNN tours facility, patient shouts: "I am the son of the president"
Leifman says the system is unjust and he's fighting for change .


Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here, Soledad O'Brien takes users inside a jail where many of the inmates are mentally ill.

An inmate housed on the "forgotten floor," where many mentally ill inmates are housed in Miami before trial.

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The ninth floor of the Miami-Dade pretrial detention facility is dubbed the "forgotten floor." Here, inmates with the most severe mental illnesses are incarcerated until they're ready to appear in court.

Most often, they face drug charges or charges of assaulting an officer --charges that Judge Steven Leifman says are usually "avoidable felonies." He says the arrests often result from confrontations with police. Mentally ill people often won't do what they're told when police arrive on the scene -- confrontation seems to exacerbate their illness and they become more paranoid, delusional, and less likely to follow directions, according to Leifman.

So, they end up on the ninth floor severely mentally disturbed, but not getting any real help because they're in jail.

We toured the jail with Leifman. He is well known in Miami as an advocate for justice and the mentally ill. Even though we were not exactly welcomed with open arms by the guards, we were given permission to shoot videotape and tour the floor.  Go inside the 'forgotten floor' »

At first, it's hard to determine where the people are. The prisoners are wearing sleeveless robes. Imagine cutting holes for arms and feet in a heavy wool sleeping bag -- that's kind of what they look like. They're designed to keep the mentally ill patients from injuring themselves. That's also why they have no shoes, laces or mattresses.

Leifman says about one-third of all people in Miami-Dade county jails are mentally ill. So, he says, the sheer volume is overwhelming the system, and the result is what we see on the ninth floor.

Of course, it is a jail, so it's not supposed to be warm and comforting, but the lights glare, the cells are tiny and it's loud. We see two, sometimes three men -- sometimes in the robes, sometimes naked, lying or sitting in their cells.

"I am the son of the president. You need to get me out of here!" one man shouts at me.

He is absolutely serious, convinced that help is on the way -- if only he could reach the White House.

Leifman tells me that these prisoner-patients will often circulate through the system, occasionally stabilizing in a mental hospital, only to return to jail to face their charges. It's brutally unjust, in his mind, and he has become a strong advocate for changing things in Miami.

Over a meal later, we talk about how things got this way for mental patients.

Leifman says 200 years ago people were considered "lunatics" and they were locked up in jails even if they had no charges against them. They were just considered unfit to be in society.

Over the years, he says, there was some public outcry, and the mentally ill were moved out of jails and into hospitals. But Leifman says many of these mental hospitals were so horrible they were shut down.

Where did the patients go? Nowhere. The streets. They became, in many cases, the homeless, he says. They never got treatment.

Leifman says in 1955 there were more than half a million people in state mental hospitals, and today that number has been reduced 90 percent, and 40,000 to 50,000 people are in mental hospitals.

The judge says he's working to change this. Starting in 2008, many inmates who would otherwise have been brought to the "forgotten floor"  will instead be sent to a new mental health facility -- the first step on a journey toward long-term treatment, not just punishment.

Leifman says it's not the complete answer, but it's a start. Leifman says the

Which news organization toured the facility?

What is Judge Leifman fighting for in Miami?

Is there a special area where mentally ill prisoners are kept in Miami?

Are the inmates behind bars for serious crimes?

In what city are mentally ill inmates housed on the "forgotten floor"?

What does the patient shout during the CNN tour?

Which judge stated that most are there as a result of "avoidable felonies"?

What did a patient shout during the CNN tour of the facility?

Answer: CNN

Answer: justice and the mentally ill.

Answer: Miami-Dade pretrial detention facility

Answer: The ninth floor of the Miami-Dade pretrial detention facility

Answer: never got treatment.

Answer: face drug charges or charges of assaulting an officer

Answer: Judge Steven Leifman

Answer: Miami-Dade county jails

Answer: says about one-third of all people in Miami-Dade county jails are mentally ill.

Answer: The ninth

Answer: Steven Leifman

Answer: Soledad O'Brien

Answer: Miami

Answer: "I am the son of the president. You need to get me out of here!"

Answer: inmates with the most severe mental illnesses

Answer: Steven Leifman

Answer: "I am the son of the president. You need to get me out of here!"

Answer: mentally ill inmates

Summary:
Mentally ill inmates in Miami are housed on the "forgotten floor"
Judge Steven Leifman says most are there as a result of "avoidable felonies"
While CNN tours facility, patient shouts: "I am the son of the president"
Leifman says the system is unjust and he's fighting for change .


Editor's note: Ivan Watson is CNN's correspondent based in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bamiyan Valley is a visually and archaeologically stunning part of Afghanistan. The region hopes to build its tourism industry. (CNN) -- Thursday is "Chinese night" at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province. Hungry guests sip cans of Coke and nonalcoholic beer and pick at a buffet that includes General Tsao's chicken, egg drop soup and slices of sweet green melon grown in nearby fields. When a vegetarian diner arrives, the hotel's Japanese owner, Hiromi Yasui, runs back to the kitchen to whip up a dish of spinach, garlic and steamed rice. "This is the most clean kitchen in Bamiyan," she boasts in heavily accented English, as she directs her staff of Afghan assistants in fluent Dari. Yasui proudly points to an electric dishwasher, perhaps the only one of its kind in this battle-scarred Afghan province. The Hotel Silk Road has been open for less than two years. The green concrete walls of this compound jar somewhat with the brown, mud brick architecture of Bamiyan Valley. But the hotel is probably the largest foreign private investment in Bamiyan's fledgling tourism industry since the overthrow of the Taliban eight years ago.  See photos of the Bamiyan Province » Aid workers say tourism is one of the greatest economic hopes for reviving this isolated, yet visually -- and archaeologically -- stunning part of Afghanistan, a region that has seen little infrastructure development over the last eight years, even though Bamiyan is one of the safest parts of the country.  Tour the Bamiyan Valley's caves » "The natural resources and cultural resources here are probably the single best place for economic development to happen, around revitalizing the tourism industry here," says Bob Thelen, the representative for the Aga Khan Development Network in Bamiyan. The nonprofit organization has been working with the government of New Zealand to distribute $1.2 million over a three-year period to develop eco-tourism as an industry in Bamiyan. Bamiyan first attracted widespread international attention in 2001, when Taliban militants spent weeks blowing up two giant statues of Buddha. For more than 1,500 years, these colossal figures -- one was 53 meters (174 feet) high, the other 35 meters (115 feet) -- stood like sentries overlooking this alpine valley. Today, the massive caves where the Buddhas once stood are huge, empty pockets carved into cliffs that dominate the countryside. Despite the loss of these archaeological treasures, the cave network of monasteries that honeycomb the cliffs, as well as Bamiyan's breathtaking mountains and alpine lakes, continue to attract a trickle of both Afghan and foreign tourists. Hotel Silk Road owner Yasui spotted Bamiyan's potential when she first traveled here as a photojournalist in 1996. "Before the war, this was a touristic place," she says. "More than 7,000 cars a day visited here." In the '60s and '70s, Afghanistan was a Central Asian stop on the Hippie Trail, a destination favored by hash-smoking Western visitors driving Volkswagen vans. But the Soviet invasion of 1979 plunged the country into a decades-long spiral of conflict. Bamiyan became the site of horrific massacres during the civil war of the 1990s and the subsequent rise of the Taliban. The Taliban's overthrow in 2001 seemed to open the door to new opportunity. In 2002, with the help of her Afghan husband and a Japanese investor who fronted hundreds of thousands of dollars, Yasui purchased a plot of land next to a bend in the river that runs through the valley. The couple then spent the next five years building their hotel. "I like Afghanistan, I like Bamiyan," Yasui explains. "[But in the past,] I didn't want to stay more than three days, because there was no shower, no place to sleep." Yasui's hotel opened in 2007. Rooms cost $100 a night, pricing them far out of the range of most Afghans. Guests must remove their shoes at the entrance and wear slippers, in accordance with Yasui's strict

Where is the safest parts of Afghanistan?

Where is the safest part of Afghanistan?

What is one of the safest parts of Afghanistan?

What have been destroyed by Taliban there ?

Answer: Bamiyan

Answer: two giant statues of Buddha.

Answer: Bamiyan

Answer: Bamiyan

Answer: Bamiyan.

Answer: Afghanistan's Bamiyan province.

Answer: eight years ago.

Answer: the cave network of monasteries that honeycomb the cliffs, as well as Bamiyan's breathtaking mountains and alpine lakes,

Answer: Bamiyan

Answer: is one of the safest parts of the country.

Answer: two giant statues of Buddha.

Summary:
Bamiyan is one of the safest parts of Afghanistan .
Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, hotels have opened in the region .
Colossal Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban once towered over the valley .
Stunning terrain and a cave network of monasteries draw tourists .


Editor's note: Jack Cafferty is the author of a new book, "Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream." He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 to 7 p.m. ET. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog. CNN's Jack Cafferty says "the pain won't go away" until Bush administration's misdeeds are addressed. (CNN) -- It doesn't go away by itself. Watergate "went away" when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace and left town never to be heard from in an official capacity again. The Bush presidency is thankfully over...but the damage he and Dick Cheney did continues to press on the nerve of the American people like an impacted wisdom tooth. And until the questions surrounding arguably the most arrogant and perhaps most corrupt administration in our history are addressed, the pain won't go away. From Nancy ("Impeachment is off the table") Pelosi to President Barack ("I want to look forward, not backward") Obama, the country is being poorly served by their Democratic government. And on this subject President Obama is dead wrong. George W. Bush and his accomplices damaged this country like it's never been damaged before. And it's not just the phony war in Iraq or the torture memos that justified waterboarding. It's millions of missing emails and the constant use of executive privilege and signing statements. It's the secretive meetings with Enron and other energy executives and the wholesale firing of federal prosecutors. It's trying to get the president's personal attorney seated on the Supreme Court and that despicable Alberto Gonzales sitting in front of congressional investigators whining, "I don't remember, I don't know, I...etc." It's the domestic eavesdropping in violation of the FISA Court, the rendition prisons, and the lying. It's looking the other way while the City of New Orleans drowned and its people were left to fend for themselves. It's the violations of the Geneva Conventions, the soiling of our international reputation and the shredding of the U.S. Constitution. It's the handing over of $700 billion to the Wall Street fat cats last fall, no questions asked. Where is that money? What was it used for? It's the no-bid contracts to firms like Halliburton and Blackwater and the shoddy construction and lack of oversight of reconstruction in Iraq that cost American taxpayers untold billions. If the Republicans were serious about restoring their reputation, they would join the call for a special prosecutor to be appointed so that at long last justice can be done. It's too late for George W. Bush to resign the presidency. But it's not too late to put the people responsible for this national disgrace in prison. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jack Cafferty.

Which administration left a trail of misdeeds?

Who should be investigated by a special prosecutor?

Who says the Bush administration has left behind a trail of misdeeds?

Answer: Bush

Answer: George W. Bush

Answer: Bush administration's misdeeds

Answer: "the pain won't go away"

Answer: author of a new book, "Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business

Answer: CNN's Jack Cafferty

Summary:
Jack Cafferty: Bush administration left behind a trail of misdeeds .
Cafferty: Obama is wrong to say he only wants to look forward, not back .
Cafferty: Damage will last until Bush-Cheney deeds are addressed .
Cafferty: A special prosecutor should be named to investigate .


Editor's note: Jack D. Hidary co-founded a technology company, Earth Web/Dice, and a financial research company, Vista Research. He works currently in the fields of clean energy technology and policy and is chairman of SmartTransportation.org which successfully pushed for the use of hybrid cars as taxis in New York City. Jack Hidary says the Cash for Clunkers program promotes fuel economy and safety while boosting the economy. NEW YORK (CNN) -- Our country is facing a daunting economic challenge this year and we must take steps to pull ourselves out of this ditch. One such program that has hit the ground running is Cash for Clunkers. It's helping consumers move beyond these hard times and has reignited a whole industry. Cash for Clunkers is now working in more than 10 countries around the world. In Germany, consumers have junked more than 1.2 million guzzlers in the last five months and significantly boosted the economy there. So we know that Clunkers programs get the job done. How many other government programs can you say that about? The Senate has joined the House in passing an additional $2 billion for Cash for Clunkers, allowing the program to move forward. This will bring additional buyers to the showroom. One key feature of the Clunkers program is that it is not just $3 billion of new money into the economy. It is injecting $21 billion -- since consumers must bring the rest of the money to pay for the new car. That is a lot of stimulus for the dollar. Cash for Clunkers is saving jobs up and down the auto supply chain: from dealers to assembly workers and parts markers. Dealerships alone lost 50,000 jobs in the last 18 months and would continue to shed jobs without this program. If you look at the new cars consumers are buying with the program, 45 percent are from Detroit's Big Three automakers. That is a lot of new sales for Ford, GM and Chrysler. Cash for Clunkers also helps autoworkers across the country. Let's remember that lots of the Toyotas and Hondas sold in the program are made by American workers right here in this country. They are in states such as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. This program helps all American autoworkers, not just those up North. Some people ask why we should help the auto industry and not other industries in this same way. Cash for Clunkers actually helps all of us -- even those of us who do not participate in the program or work in the auto industry. First, the auto industry has so many connected jobs in real estate, finance, manufacturing and other industries, that is hard to separate it out. Second, one of the biggest drags on our economy is our trade imbalance. We import about $700 billion more than we export. That hurts our capital flows, credit and other key indicators. Guess what amounts to 50 percent of that trade imbalance? Oil. We use 21 million barrels of oil every day in the United States and import 62 percent of that -- mainly from countries that really don't like us. We use that oil mainly for transportation -- cars, SUVs, and other vehicles. Unless we scrap guzzlers at a faster rate, we will never reduce our oil consumption. Cash for Clunkers is a step in the right direction. It educates the consumer on how much they are paying for having a low-MPG car and encourages them to get into a more efficient vehicle. A family can save $750-$1,000 a year by jumping just 10 mpg in efficiency. Those savings will increase as gas prices go back up. Gas has already shot up from $1.50 a gallon to $2.60. Do you want to be stuck with a 10 mile-per-gallon guzzler when gas jumps back to $4 a gallon? Third, Cash for Clunkers saves lives. When you bring in a clunker that has no airbags, anti-lock brakes or other modern safety features and get a new car that does, you are protecting your family. Forty thousand people die every year on American highways and many more get serious injuries. You can reduce

What can lead to more safety and save cash?

Which program is boosting economy and auto industry?

What did Jack Hidary say about the Cash for Clunkers program ?

What does the  Cash for Clunkers program save?

What is the reason as to why Cash for Clunkers is saving jobs?

What will decrease dependence on foreign oil?

Answer: fuel economy

Answer: Cash for Clunkers

Answer: promotes fuel economy and safety while boosting the economy.

Answer: Cash for Clunkers

Answer: fuel economy and safety while boosting

Answer: jobs up and down the auto supply chain: from dealers to assembly workers and parts markers.

Answer: It's helping consumers move beyond these hard times and has reignited a whole industry.

Answer: Cash for Clunkers

Summary:
Jack Hidary: Cash for Clunkers program boosting economy and auto industry .
He says getting clunkers off the road will help decrease dependence on foreign oil .
He says switching to a more efficient car can improve safety and save cash .
Hidary: Cash for Clunkers is saving jobs up and down the auto supply chain .


Editor's note: Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh are attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and co-authors of "Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond". Jaffer is counsel to the plaintiffs in ACLU v. Department of Defense, a lawsuit that has forced the release of more than 100,000 pages of government documents concerning the abuse of prisoners. Singh is lead counsel in the suit seeking disclosure of photographs of U.S. personnel abusing prisoners at overseas locations. Jameel Jaffer says the courts have ruled that refusal to disclose the abuse photos was unlawful. (CNN) -- Last week President Obama announced that he would suppress prisoner abuse photographs that he earlier said he would release. Given the president's stated commitment to government transparency, this reversal was both surprising and profoundly disappointing. The ACLU has sought release of these photos for almost six years. In October 2003, we filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records -- including photographs -- relating to the abuse of prisoners in U.S. detention facilities overseas. In 2005, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Bush administration's refusal to disclose the photographs was unlawful, and in 2008 a federal appeals court unanimously affirmed that decision. The Bush administration continued to suppress the photos, and now President Obama has vowed to do the same. The photos are a critical part of the historical record. The government has acknowledged that they depict prisoner abuse at locations other than Abu Ghraib, and it's clear that the photos would provide irrefutable evidence that abuse was widespread and systemic. The photos would also shed light on the connection between the abuse and the decisions of high-level Bush administration officials. As the district court recognized, the photos are "the best evidence of what happened." In explaining his change of heart, President Obama said that the release of the photos "would not add any additional benefit" to the ongoing public debate about the abuse of prisoners. But the ongoing public debate is rife with false claims, and the photos would expose the truth. The Bush administration told the public that abuse was aberrational and isolated, and many media organizations adopted this fraudulent narrative as their own. But even President Obama, in explaining his reversal, perpetuated the myth that the abuse of prisoners "was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals." President Obama's statement was meant to explain why the photos would not inform the public debate, but it only underscored why the release of the photographs is so important. Many Americans still believe that abuse took place in spite of policy rather than because of it. The truth is that senior officials authorized the use of barbaric interrogation methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes, and even abuse that was not expressly authorized was traceable to a climate in which abuse was tolerated and often encouraged. The photos would help tell this story. President Obama's other rationale for suppressing the photographs is that they would "inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger," an argument that was repeatedly rejected by the courts when made by the Bush administration. Nobody, of course, wants to see anyone get hurt by the release of this or any other information. But the fundamental problem with the government's argument is that it lacks a limiting principle. Any photograph of prisoner abuse, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, or U.S. military operations in Iraq could be used to "inflame anti-American opinion"; indeed, the same is true of any news article that discusses (for example) torture, Guantanamo, or the CIA's secret prisons. iReport.com: Did Obama make the right decision on photos? To give the government the power to suppress information because it might anger an unidentified set of people in an unspecified part of the world and ultimately endanger an ill-defined group of U.S. personnel would be to invest it with a virtually unlimited censorial power. And by investing it with such power, we would effectively be affording the greatest protection from disclosure to records that depict the worst kinds of government misconduct. President Obama has inherited a legacy

What did they say the courts could not withhold?

The lawyers claimed that courts have ruled what?

What did the lawers say the photos would show?

Answer: provide irrefutable evidence that abuse was widespread and systemic.

Answer: abuse photographs

Answer: sought release of these photos

Answer: refusal to disclose the abuse photos was unlawful.

Answer: personnel abusing prisoners at overseas locations.

Answer: have ruled that refusal to disclose the abuse photos was unlawful.

Answer: prisoner abuse

Summary:
ACLU lawyers: We filed Freedom of Information request for abuse records .
They say courts have ruled that government can't withhold the photos .
Lawyers: Release of photos would show extent of prisoner abuse .
They say government shouldn't stop release because of possible negative reaction .


Editor's note: James Alan Fox is Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice and professor of law, policy and society at Northeastern University in Boston. Fox has written 16 books, including "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder" and is writing a book on school violence and security. James Alan Fox says perpetrators of mass shootings usually do not suddenly go berserk. (CNN) -- Massacre/suicide has become an all too familiar sight on the electronic pages of this and other news sites. But Tuesday's rampage in Samson, Alabama -- with a body count reaching to the double digits -- forces us to struggle mightily in search of plausible explanations and effective solutions. What could have prompted 28-year-old Michael McLendon to shoot to death his mother, grandmother, uncle, cousin and six others -- some of whom appear just to have been in the worst place at the worst time -- before turning the gun on himself? Mayor Clay King summarized the collective bewilderment in Samson in the immediate aftermath of the bloodshed. "I don't think anybody has any idea of what the motive is," he said. In just over a few moments of horror, this rural community of a couple thousand residents that hadn't had a single homicide in well over a decade, based on FBI crime reports, now had a multitude of questions about the will to kill. "Apparently something just snapped," speculated Wynnton Melton, mayor of Geneva, Alabama, the community just outside Samson where McLendon ended his own life after a police chase. Because McLendon chose suicide, the complete truth to his motivation may never be known. But from what can be learned from countless similar episodes in America and abroad, the crime may not be so unfathomable after all Contrary to the widely held belief of "snap judgment," perpetrators of mass murder -- and family annihilation in particular -- generally do not suddenly go berserk. If he was like most others who have walked in his shoes, McLendon would have contemplated his actions for some period of time, surely more than the few moments it took to load his assault rifle. With a list of enemies and a large arsenal, his planning would probably have reflected calm deliberation and cool determination. In decades of research in collaboration with my Northeastern University colleague Jack Levin, certain common characteristics of mass killers emerge time and time again. First, the perpetrators tend to have experienced a long history of frustration and failure, resulting in a diminished ability to cope with life's disappointments. Second, they typically externalize blame, frequently complaining that others didn't give them a decent chance. Without this, their destructiveness would instead be directed inward. In addition, these killers generally lack emotional support from friends or family. They are loners as well as losers. Lacking this support system and reality check, they come to perceive some precipitating event as being absolutely catastrophic. This most often involves some kind of major disappointment: the loss of a job, the breakup of a relationship or financial ruin, surely a major issue in today's economy. Finally, they need access to a weapon powerful and rapid enough to satisfy their intense need for revenge. Without much hope for a brighter tomorrow, these assailants often decide that life is not worth living; rather than just taking their own life in quiet solitude, they are eager for payback. It becomes their all-consuming mission to avenge, with a death penalty, against those who caused them to suffer -- in reality or perhaps only in their paranoid interpretation of events. Experiencing disappointment and failure so profound as to extinguish their desire to survive, most mass killers deliberately and methodically execute those closest to them, those they hold responsible for their troubles. There is little surprise, therefore, that mass murder overwhelmingly involves family members or co-workers, not total strangers. Although there certainly are many well-known episodes of random slaughter of complete strangers, these are more the exception than the rule. In the wake of extraordinary shooting sprees like the Alabama tragedy, calls for tighter gun control typically surface as a possible policy response

who raise questions about motive?
Who says they blame others?
What did the evidence say?
Where did the shootings happened?

Answer: FBI

Answer: the perpetrators

Answer: society

Answer: Samson, Alabama

Summary:
James Alan Fox: Alabama and Germany shootings raise questions about motive .
Evidence in many cases shows killers don't suddenly go berserk, he says .
Fox says mass killers react after losses and lack social support system .
He says they blame others, rather than themselves, for their failures .


Editor's note: Jane Velez-Mitchell is host of the HLN show, "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell," a topical event-driven show with a wide range of viewpoints.  Velez-Mitchell is the author of "Secrets Can Be Murder: What America's Most Sensational Crimes Tell Us About Ourselves." Jane Velez-Mitchell says tougher penalties are needed to keep sex offenders from committing more crimes. NEW YORK (CNN) -- Early last month, beautiful 25-year-old Laura Garza went missing. Her family holds out hope she is still alive. An aspiring dancer from Texas, Garza moved to New York City to pursue her career. On December 2nd, she went to the posh Manhattan nightclub Marquee to blow off some steam with her friend. Security video shows Garza leaving the club with convicted sex offender Michael Mele, according to the New York Police Department. NYPD officials confirmed that Mele then drove Garza about an hour away toward his apartment. Garza was reported missing the next day. New York state police searched Mele's apartment and court documents indicate officers observed apparent bite marks on Mele's hand and scratches on his back and shoulder. According to court records and state police, large pieces of carpet were missing from his apartment and days later, carpet pieces that seemed to match Mele's were found on the side of a nearby road. Search parties have been combing roads, woods, and swampland, and police divers searched for clues in a nearby lake, but the search has gone cold in recent weeks. Mele is in jail for violating probation and is a suspect, but he has not been charged in Garza's disappearance, according to state police. Laura Garza is still missing more than a month later. Her family has joined search efforts in New York and prays they will find her alive, but police are treating the case as a homicide. The worst part about this tragic story? It may have been preventable. Laura Garza had no idea she was leaving that club with a sex offender. After all, most of them look pretty normal. Few fit the Hollywood stereotype of the creepy guy wearing a trench coat and driving a white van. Laura Garza may have been unaware who she was with that night, but the legal system certainly knew him. Michael Mele previously pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual assault, including one count of masturbating in front of two women. And he was violating probation. And he had an outstanding warrant for allegedly exposing himself to a woman in a mall parking lot. Mele hasn't been convicted of anything in this case or charged in Garza's disappearance, but even if he is innocent, the larger question of how the criminal justice system deals with sex offenders remains a vital issue. In a sane world, Mele is not a free man on that night, able to allegedly target Laura Garza. But we don't live in a sane world. We live in a world where sexual assault is business as usual. Where's the outrage? The Garza case is a microcosm of a societal problem. As a nation, we must realize there is no such thing as a "minor" sexual offense -- because sex offenders often start small and graduate to more serious crimes. According to a 2003 Department of Justice study, 78 percent of imprisoned sex offenders had prior arrests and 28 percent had prior arrests for sex crimes. According to the same study, one quarter of men serving time for rape and 19 percent of those serving time for sexual assault had been on probation or parole at the time of the offense that landed them in prison. The formula is simple. Sex offenders start off by nabbing the easy prey -- committing the so-called "minor" sexual offenses like flashing random women, or the crimes Michael Mele committed. Then, after getting away with it or receiving a slap on the wrist, they become hungrier and develop into full-fledged predators. And it's only when they sink their teeth into their prey that the legal system finally brings down the hammer. But it

What did Jane Velez-Mitchell say about sex offenders?

Answer: from committing more crimes.

Answer: host of the HLN show, "Issues with

Summary:
Jane Velez-Mitchell: Sex offenders are often let out on the street too soon .
Victims pay the price for inadequate punishment and rehabilitation, she says .
Velez-Mitchell says we must treat all sex offenses as serious crimes .