Fire Erupts on U.S. Aircraft Carrier
LEMON: OK. We want to get now to some political news that we have been talking about here. Now, I'm just going over the information. You know the Reverend John Hagee. There's been quite a controversy about that and his comments regarding Jewish people. Well, he spoke out just moments ago, and CNN was there. Let's take a listen, and then we will talk on the other side.</s>PASTOR JOHN HAGEE, CORNERSTONE CHURCH: My disappointment has nothing to do with the fact that I parted company with Senator John McCain. This was by far the best for both of us and best for the country. It is time for the candidates and the media to turn their attention back to the pressing issues of our day and stop focusing upon what I did or did not say decades ago.</s>LEMON: All right. And we're going to talk a little bit about this later on, but just to tell you about the controversy, John McCain, of course, cut ties with him after John Hagee endorsed Senator John McCain. First, he rejected John Hagee, the pastor of a Texas mega-church with a large TV audience there. so, there was some concern about the support there. One sermon, Hagee said he -- that God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. And then John McCain there said he rejected that statement and also rejected the endorsement. We're going to follow up on this with our political folks in just a little bit, and you can bet "THE SITUATION ROOM" will be covering this in about 45 minutes, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, here on</s>CNN. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "RECOUNT") LEARY: So, when you take these ballots, then you put them through a tabulating system, what happens is the hanging chads get pushed back into the holes, and the machine read it as if the holes were never actually punched. So, then these are discarded as undervotes. But wait. Sometimes, hanging chads don't even hang. They're just dimples.</s>SPACEY: Dimples?</s>LEARY: Yes, OK, which means that the voter didn't align the ballot properly in the machine, or just didn't push hard enough to get the chad to go through to the other side.</s>SPACEY: Well, how hard is it to punch a paper ballot?</s>KEILAR: You know, that looks like a scene out of political CSI, but that's actually a clip from the new HBO movie "Recount." And, as Susan Candiotti reported before the break, it's a look back at long, bitter no-holds-barred fight in Florida over the 2000 presidential election. And it is partly based on a book called "Too Close to Call" by CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. We have asked him to join us today to talk about the movie, his book, and, of course, hanging chads. Jeffrey, good to see you.</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Hey, Brianna.</s>KEILAR: So, we saw there that was Kevin Spacey, along with Denis Leary. But Kevin Spacey is actually playing a man named Ron Klain. If you're a Washington insider, you probably know who this is, but a lot of people don't. So, who is this guy?</s>TOOBIN: He was actually the principal lawyer for Al Gore in Tallahassee during the 36 days of the recount. He had an interesting personal background with Al Gore. Al Gore had actually fired him as his chief of staff at the White House, but Klain gradually worked his way back into the campaign and was brought on sort of by accident to go down to Florida to deal with this situation, which, as you recall at the time, people thought would be over in a day or two. Of course, it stretched to more than a month. But the movie is presented sort of through Al -- through Ron Klain, that is Kevin Spacey's eyes.</s>KEILAR: And you actually state -- this is a scene where Kevin Spacey, Ron Klain, is kind of having a tense moment with his Republican counterpart. And his Republican counterpart asks him, well, how long are you going to be in Tallahassee? And he jokingly says, well, you know, until the vice president fires me again. So, it's kind of funny there. But as we said, you were a consultant on the film. You wrote this book "Too Close to Call" which obviously is based in fact. You know the facts of the case. Did they stay true to the events of real life with "Recount"?</s>TOOBIN: I was impressed by how hard HBO worked to make this as accurate possible. They didn't just rely on me. They sent the script around to many of the protagonists in the story, James Baker, Ben Ginsberg, who was one of the Republican lawyers, Ron Klain on the Democratic side, and they got feedback. Donna Brazile, our colleague here at CNN, who was Gore's campaign manager, she contributed. And they really struggled hard to make the story as accurate as possible. And, yes, it's a movie. A lot of the dialogue is invented or reconstructed. But in terms of its broad outlines, it's extremely factual, as far as I could tell. And it's also really entertaining.</s>KEILAR: We all remember Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state. She's played in "Recount" by Laura Dern, if we have got a clip of that. And she talks about in the -- Laura Dern's character, in playing Katherine Harris, basically says that her struggle parallels a biblical struggle. Did the writers take any liberties here, do you know?</s>TOOBIN: Amazingly enough, that's absolutely true. Throughout the recount period, Katherine Harris thought that she was reminiscent, to herself, of Queen Esther in the Bible, and referred to it frequently among her colleagues. And as over the top as this performance by Laura Dern sometimes seems in the movie, it's in fact accurate, because Katherine Harris was an extraordinary over- the-top character who, you know, played a very important part.</s>KEILAR: And, Jeffrey, might we see -- we heard earlier in Susan Candiotti's piece, this could happen all over again. What is the state of ballot counting now?</s>TOOBIN: Well, chads are gone, at least in Florida, that -- those kind of punch card ballots are gone. But they have been replaced by technologies that in many respects have as many problems as they did. Florida replaced the punch cards with touch-screens, like ATMs. Those had no paper trail. Those had a big problem. Now they're switching technologies again to what's called optical scan, which are, like, you know, the standardized tests with -- those are, at the moment, the most reliable technologies we have. But the fact is, we don't pay a lot of attention. We don't pay a lot of money for our voting technology, and we get what we pay for.</s>KEILAR: And last, Jeffrey, really quick, let's pop up a picture, a really infamous picture from the recount. Who is going to play this guy? Charles Rosenberg (ph), who was a judge down in Broward County. They have -- they don't focus much on Broward County, but that image is certainly indelible. And, fortunately, I wasn't -- I didn't play that guy, because...</s>KEILAR: Oh, good.</s>TOOBIN: ... who would want to look that bad?</s>KEILAR: OK. Jeffrey Toobin, thanks so much.</s>TOOBIN: OK. Have a good weekend, Brianna.</s>KEILAR: You, too.</s>LEMON: A serious fire on a U.S. aircraft carrier. One sailor suffered first-degree burns and 23 others were treated for heat stress aboard the USS George Washington. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has all the details. It sounds very serious, Barbara.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the word now coming from the Navy about this fire, a serious fire, the Navy says, on board the aircraft carrier George Washington, erupted yesterday when the ship was coming around the tip of South America into the southern Pacific Ocean. The fire is out. It lasted, however, for several hours before it could be extinguished, as you say, one sailor suffering first-degree burns, 23 suffering from heat stress. And just a few minutes ago, the Navy e-mailed to CNN some of the first pictures off the ship yesterday as the fire was under way and some of the 5,000 crew on board moved to try and fight the fire. You can see there the crew moving through the hangars, smoke-filled, fighting the fire with hoses. They tell us in several areas the heat level in the ship became extreme, in the words of the U.S. Navy. It was really, as they say, all hands to in trying to deal with this emergency. But the ship now, although it's having some communications troubles, is making its way to San Diego for a scheduled port call. A very scary thing that happened, but, as they say, everyone is fine. The people who were suffering this heat stress are being treated, and the ship is now making its way to San Diego. But, Don, it is very unusual for there to be such a serious fire on board a U.S. Navy ship -- Don.</s>LEMON: Indeed. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- thank you, Barbara.</s>KEILAR: They toil in the fields from sunup to sundown. And finally advocates say they will reap some of the benefits of doing that. The Special Investigations Unit follows up in the NEWSROOM.