Deadly Mail Bomb; Winter Storm
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Nearly half-a-million people are without power right now, and the storm is slamming the Southeast. We're going to talk about that. Do we want to go to Dana before we go -- continue on with this weather? Dana Bash, what do you know?</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Senate has just approved raising the debt ceiling by a pretty substantial majority, supermajority, actually, to be precise, 67 votes yes. But as you were talking about earlier, this came after an hour of high drama. The backstory here is that the Republican leadership never wanted to have any kind of trauma here in the Senate, just like they didn't want to have it in the House. They preferred to have this vote go through with a simple majority with Democrats voting yes and allowing Republicans to do what was politically right for them and vote no. That didn't happen because Ted Cruz demanded that it was a 60-vote filibuster threshold. So, what happened was Republicans had to find five votes. If there are 55 Democrats, they needed to find at least five votes from Republicans to get that 60-vote threshold. What you saw for the last hour, Don, was kind of scrambling around trying to figuring out where those votes are. We don't exactly know how many Democrats, if any Democrats voted no, but what we do know the way this played out was Republicans who didn't want to vote yes, including Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, the top two Republicans. Don, they had a dramatic moment where it looked unclear whether this was going to pass or not, walked down to the front and raise their hands, aye, together, effectively taking the plunge knowing that they both have primary challenges back home and this will be very, very hard for them to explain back home. But they did it because they're Republican leaders. Then right before we got the final vote, you had other Republicans who are perhaps a bit safer and more comfortable where they are. John McCain and Jeff Flake from Arizona, John Thune as well and others coming out, our Ted Barrett report, of the Republican cloakroom, all switching their votes to yes to give this a supermajority 67-vote threshold. There are lots of reasons politically why this likely happened. The primary one is to make it look less bad for maybe just a handful of Republicans to just vote yes on this, but big picture, what you saw here is exactly what Republicans didn't want. They didn't want to force their members to vote yes on what they describe as giving the president more ability to borrow money and it is exactly what they are opposed to. But they had no choice, because Ted Cruz, who has rankled his fellow Republicans before, did it again just now.</s>LEMON: He has done it again and there will be more to follow. Our Dana Bash in Washington on Capitol Hill now following that developing story on the debt ceiling, Dana, we will get back to you when there's more information on that. We want to move on to the weather. It's the top of the hour. Want to give you your headlines. The weather is crippling parts of this country right now. Nearly half-a-million people are without power and as an ice storm is slamming the Southeast. The storm is crippling roads in Georgia and the Carolinas, grounding flights. It's bringing down trees and it's knocking power to some 420,000 people, and the numbers will keep climbing as it moves across the country and as it moves north. Already, at least five classic-related deaths are blamed on this massive storm. Emergency services are warning travel will be very difficult right now, if not impossible. You are looking at these new pictures of traffic moving very slowly in Fayetteville. That's in North Carolina, of course, and as we get reports that hundreds of cars are stranded on icy roads there. Look at the creeping traffic. And in Atlanta, though, the roads are desolate. Gosh, it really does look like "The Walking Dead." My goodness. The pictures that you're looking at rarely seen in one of the most congested cities in the U.S. This is Atlanta right now on the left, nothing. And the one on the right was Atlanta just a few weeks ago, just two weeks ago, everyone there desperate not to see the repeat of this, when a mass exodus from Atlanta caused apocalyptic scenes, people trapped on icy highways for more than 10 hours, many eventually abandoning their cars. Our Ed Lavandera is out on the roads in iced-over Atlanta. There he is on the left of your screen. And our Chad Myers, our meteorologist, standing right outside the CNN Center, which is located dead center downtown Atlanta. We are going to start with Ed, though. Ed, how are the roads looking now?</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Don. Well, we are headed east along Interstate 20 just outside of downtown Atlanta. What is really fascinating is that I can only imagine what this place, what it must have been like two weeks ago when the interstates were full with cars, roadways were full of cars, and it's really quite a difference when you take a look at the roadways now and you see that there is just a handful of people. We have pulled over to the side of the road to kind of clear up the shot there so that we can give you the best picture. In fact, I was just watching a guy slipping and siding down the interstate as we're sitting here and kind of cleaning off the windshield wipers and getting ready to try to move further along down the road. But this must have been incredibly treacherous. Much easier to drive on when you are the only car or one of the few cars on the roadway. So, it's a very good sign that there are not people out and about today, Don.</s>LEMON: Ed Lavandera.</s>LEMON: More on this breaking news coming right up, but, first, this: We are "On the Case" right now. Law enforcement say a note was attached to a mail bomb that killed a retired lawyer in Tennessee. Federal investigators swarmed a quaint neighborhood street in Lebanon, Tennessee. The mail bomb killed John Setzer and critically wounded his wife on Monday. The FBI and the ATF, the U.S. postal inspectors and local police have not revealed any motives. His friends say Setzer once practiced bankruptcy law. His wife, Marion, is at now at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.</s>KEN CALDWELL, FRIEND OF VICTIM: They were true Christians and honorable people that I would trust to the end of the earth. It doesn't make sense at all. When I have heard it said that it was targeted, I thought, well, they must have targeted the wrong person.</s>LEMON: Justice correspondent Evan Perez joins me now. So, tell us about this note, Evan.</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, we don't know what exactly the note said. We know from sources that they found this note inside the house. One of the things they are doing today is they're going through and they're cataloging all -- everything that was found in there to determine whether or not perhaps there is a label attached to the package or perhaps a package that came in a few days earlier. They want to make sure they know what exactly was attached to this package that contained this bomb today, or, rather, on Monday. The investigators are still going through the scene. One of the things that they are trying to figure out is how the package got there. Was it something that was delivered by the Postal Service by some mail carriers or was it just delivered and put in the mailbox by someone who was trying to harm this couple?</s>LEMON: And what do we know about this couple?</s>PEREZ: As the neighbors have described, these are people who nobody really thinks that anyone was trying to harm. The investigators today are also trying to figure out whether there is any disputes, perhaps any legal disputes that came from the lawyer's background. They are trying to interview people who knew them to try to see if there's any reason for anybody to target them. That's one of the big mysteries right here, is he's a retiree. He's 74 years old. So, it's really a big open question as to why this was done, Don.</s>LEMON: All right, Evan Perez, thank you very much. We appreciate it. As we get more information, we will continue to report on that. More breaking news right now to report to you out of Syria. CNN has learned that 11 percent of its chemical weapons have now been shipped out of the country. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons tells us that this shipment is more than the last, which was only 4 percent. However, Syria is still behind the eight ball. It could have removed all of the chemicals last week. The deadline set by the Geneva agreement was for February 15. What is more daring? Being the motorcyclist who risked dying while shooting this ridiculous video or posting it to a police Web site and taunting officers with the phrase catch me if you can? Police on the manhunt now to catch the person who did both. Plus, a lawsuit filed against President Obama, the person suing, Senator Rand Paul, next, why the Kentucky Republican is targeting the White House. And could President Obama really be in legal trouble?