"Empathy" at Issue in Sotomayor Confirmation
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: And we're about a minute and a half to the top of the hour. Thanks for being with us on the Most News in the Morning. It's Tuesday, it's the 14th of July. I'm John Roberts.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us. Here's what's on the agenda this morning. These are the stories that we'll be breaking down for you in the next 15 minutes. One hundred thirty-one passengers and crew all safe this morning, but not before a huge scare mid-flight. A football-sized hole ripped through the fuselage of a Southwest Airline jet. They were up at above 30,000 feet when this happened. The plane made an emergency landing in West Virginia. Investigators are still saying they don't know what exactly happened, how it happened. Ahead we're going to be speaking to a former NTSB investigator to try to get some answers.</s>ROBERTS: In about 90 minutes' time, Judge Sonia Sotomayor heads back to the hot seat for day two of her confirmation hearings. And in just a moment, we're going to take you live to the hearing room where senators will finally get their chance to question the judge and her qualifications.</s>CHETRY: Also a CNN exclusive, our special investigations unit examining a Florida doctor who treats desperately ill Americans at a clinic in the Dominican Republic using stem-cell therapies. He charges tens of thousands of dollars, but some say he's preying on people who lost all other hope. Drew Griffin's going to confront him and profile one of his patients who swears he saved her life. First, though, a hole the size of a football forced the Southwest Airlines jet to make an emergency landing last night. It happened out of nowhere at 34,000 feet. But no one was hurt. The most terrifying thing, though, may be that this morning no one even knows why it happened.</s>CHETRY (voice-over): Once Southwest Flight 2294 landed safely in Charleston, West Virginia, this is what officials at the airport found. On the top of the plane near its tail fin, a hole, through the fuselage. From the inside, you can see light coming in from outside. Right now, officials have no idea what caused the damage. The plane had been airborne about 30 minutes and was climbing through 34,000 feet. And then...</s>STEVE HILL, PASSENGER: There was a loud pop, no one really knew what it was. Looking up at the ceiling, if you will, that's where we noticed one of the ceiling tiles was being sucked into, if you will, or against the fuselage.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard this very loud noise, turned around and saw a skylight.</s>CHETRY: The plane lost cabin pressure. The oxygen masks dropped. No one was hurt. Flight 2294 took off from Nashville on its way to BWI Airport in Baltimore. Instead, the plane, carrying 126 passengers and five crew members, diverted to Charleston, West Virginia. Once on the ground, a local pizzeria gave the passengers food while Southwest sent another plane to take them to Baltimore. Southwest issued a statement saying, "There is no responsible way to speculate as to a cause at this point. We have safety procedures in place and they were followed in this instance to get all passengers and crew safely on the ground. Our pilots and flight attendants did a great job getting the aircraft on the ground safely." Federal investigators will try to figure out what happened to the plane and to keep it from happening again.</s>CHETRY: Stay with us at 30 minutes past the hour. We're going to be talking more about this with Ben Berman, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board and a pilot. That's ahead here on the Most News in the Morning.</s>ROBERTS: And in less than 90 minutes, Judge Sonia Sotomayor returns to Capitol Hill, and with opening statements out of the way, now comes the tough questions from 19 senators on the Judiciary Committee. Earlier, Kiran and I spoke to two senators on that committee about their expectations if Judge Sotomayor becomes a Supreme Court justice.</s>SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R), UTAH: We don't expect President Obama to appoint a conservative judge or even a moderate judge. We expect him to appoint somebody who's pretty liberal, and she is. But the fact of the matter is, we expect that judge to be fair. We expect her to be a person who will apply the law, not make the law, and we expect her to not allow her own personal sympathy or empathy or approaches towards life to color decisions in ways that really are not just are right.</s>SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Of course, everyone's background affects them. How could we not? We don't want nine justices with icewater running through their veins. But if you look at the record, she has a record for 17 years. So, we can see if she chooses her own sympathies over the law when the law dictates going in a different direction. She never has.</s>ROBERTS: So, what's it like to face the fire of a confirmation? Brianna Keilar is live inside the hearing room for us this morning, as she was yesterday, ready to show us around from Judge Sotomayor's perspective. Good morning, Brianna. That really is an incredible vantage point we've got there.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no, it's an incredible access here. And I want to give you a sense of what it's like to sit here in this seat. What Sonia Sotomayor will see as she goes before these 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This clock right here will tell her how much time she has with each senator, 30 minutes, and it will count down, and here to Sonia Sotomayor's left, Republicans, seven Republicans of this committee. What are we going to hear from them? Well, Senator Lindsey Graham, hinting yesterday he'll push her about her views on affirmative action and abortion. And he's also going to ask her questions about the top Republican on the committee, Jeff Sessions, will ask. And that has to do with her off-the-bench comments. For instance, her "wise Latina" remark and other remarks that she's made about the Court of Appeals being a place where policy is made. And then to Sotomayor's right, the 12 Democrats on the committee. These will be her defenders today and according to one aide, their role today is going to be concentrating on Sotomayor's -- her record, her record, and her record in trying to pull attention away from how much bearing her off-the-bench remarks should have, John.</s>ROBERTS: Brianna Keilar for us this morning with an inside look at what's ahead. As we said, just a little less than 90 minutes from now. Brianna, thanks so much.</s>CHETRY: And Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic nominee for the high court, but she's not the first outspoken nominee. CNN's Jim Acosta joins us now. And Jim, hasn't much of the Republican criticism focused on what she said, as Brianna said, as well, outside of the courtroom?</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna said it best, off the bench. And we know the words well. "Wise Latina woman." Republicans have seized on those words from Sonia Sotomayor to question whether she would use race to play favorites on the high court. Now she'll have a chance to answer that charge. And as history shows, Sotomayor is hardly the first Supreme Court hopeful who was once outspoken on the subject of race.</s>ACOSTA (voice-over): A Puerto Rican who also grew up in a Bronx housing project, Congressman Jose Serrano is scheduled to testify on behalf of Sonia Sotomayor this week. He, like many Latinos, sees Sotomayor as a Thurgood Marshall for Hispanics.</s>REP. JOSE SERRANO (D), NEW YORK: Throughout the neighborhood, people actually are using her more than anyone else as an example of what can happen if you apply yourself and work hard.</s>ACOSTA: Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the committee holding Sotomayor's confirmation hearing, reminded his colleagues that Marshall, a civil rights attorney who fought segregation, also had to answer pointed questions on race.</s>SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), CHAIRMAN, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: He was asked questions designed to embarrass him. Questions such as, are you prejudiced against the white people of the South? I hope that's a time of our past.</s>ACOSTA: It was a pre-emptive strike aimed at Republican Jeff Sessions, who went on to challenge Sotomayor on her remark about being a wise Latina woman. Sessions argues Sotomayor could bring prejudice to the high court.</s>SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: I will not vote for and no senator should vote for an individual nominated by any president who is not fully committed to fairness and impartiality toward every person who appears before them.</s>ACOSTA: In truth, Sotomayor was nowhere near as outspoken as Marshall.</s>THURGOOD MARSHALL, FORMER ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT: I do not think that President Eisenhower has done anywhere near what he could've done.</s>ACOSTA: More than half century ago, Marshall sat down with a cigarette-smoking Mike Wallace on the TV program "Night Beat" for a no-holds-barred interview on civil rights.</s>MARSHALL: As far as you're concerned, it's been a plague on both of your houses, both of your parties as far as an attitude toward race relations. I think that in Congress today, the only bipartisan action is against civil rights and Negroes' rights.</s>ACOSTA: In those days, that was radical.</s>JEFF TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Thurgood Marshall challenged the American justice system for decades before he went on the Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor worked very much within that system and did not challenge it nearly as much.</s>ACOSTA: After weeks of silence, Sotomayor tried to turn down the heat.</s>JUDGE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: In the past month, many senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. Simple: fidelity to the law.</s>ACOSTA: Now, while she did mention her Puerto Rican heritage in her opening remarks, Sotomayor did not directly address her "wise Latina woman" comment. Those fireworks, as we know, Kiran, are still to come probably very early into this hearing process today.</s>CHETRY: All right. And we'll be watching. It gets under way in about an hour and a half.</s>ACOSTA: Yes, we will.</s>CHETRY: All right, Jim Acosta for us. Thanks so much. And stay with us here on AMERICAN MORNING. In 10 minutes, CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin will be joining us. We're going to ask him what he expects from today's confirmation hearing and also how Judge Sotomayor should handle the questioning today.</s>ROBERTS: Jeff got quoted yesterday at the hearings.</s>CHETRY: Yes, well, I mean, he wrote the wonderful book, "The Nine," all about the Supreme Court.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. It's interesting. So, he has firsthand perspective on all of this. New this morning. A group of black and Hispanic kids were asked to leave a private swim club outside of Philadelphia. They said that they will not go back to the facility. Attorneys for the largely minority day care center says they will sue the swim club in a few days. The Valley Swim Club insists the kids were turned away because of overcrowded conditions and not their race.</s>CHETRY: Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff is a far cry from his Manhattan cell. According to a government Web site, he's been transferred to a medium-security prison in Atlanta. It's still not known if that's where he'll serve out his 150-year term in this Atlanta prison, ironically, once housed Charles Ponzi. That's the namesake of the scheme that Madoff perfected.</s>ROBERTS: And it's a classic case of good news/bad news when it comes to your safety on the road. A government study has found the number of Americans driving drunk is down, down significantly from 7.5 percent in 1973 to just 2.2 percent in 2007. But the survey found 16 percent of people randomly pulled over while driving on weekend nights tested positive, not for alcohol, but for drugs. Nine minutes now after the hour.