Dr. Sanjay Gupta | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Mark Halperin
Time

The title of Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue, is a little misleading. The gerund suggests that the woman who went from obscurity to the GOP ticket to the exit door of the Alaska governor's mansion in less than a year is still on a journey toward rogue-dom.

In fact, when Palin emerged from a self-imposed semi-exile on Nov. 6 to speak before 4,000 fans just outside Milwaukee at what organizers called the largest pro-life gathering in Wisconsin history, two things were abundantly clear: Palin is now a thoroughly professional rogue — and she is going to sell a ton of books. She has become her own reality show.

The line began forming at the state fairgrounds more than three hours before the main event and stretched longer than half a mile. The crowd wore buttons bearing her image and passed the time making jokes about the media while eagerly snatching up T-shirts a local talk-radio station was giving away that labeled Palin "America's Conservative Conscience." Once inside the cavernous exhibition hall, they chanted, "Sarah!" with growing fervor until their heroine appeared, flexing her distinctive charisma in a killer red dress, high heels and her trademark glasses. The event was closed to the press, and cameras were barred from the hall, not only to preserve the mystery and anticipation before her formal debut but also to protect against unflattering YouTube postings. I bought a public ticket for admittance, as did several other journalists.

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Pete Cashmore
Special to CNN

In the ongoing saga of paid content on the Web, Rupert Murdoch is once again threatening to pull his Web sites from Google's search results.

In a Sky News interview posted online this week, he said "There's not enough advertising in the world to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites, but paying."

Meanwhile, social game maker Playfish, with estimated revenues of up to $75 million from selling virtual goods in its games on Facebook and other platforms, has been acquired by Electronic Arts in a deal worth up to $400 million.

The company is not alone in turning virtual goods into gold: Playfish rival Zynga reportedly brings in over $100 million in revenue (a proportion of which, admittedly, is driven by schemes in which users receive virtual currency when signing up for questionable special offers).

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Father Henry Willenborg holding his son on a family vacation.

Eliza Browning
AC360° Associate Producer

Twenty-two-year-old Nathan Halbach is dying of brain cancer and may only have weeks to live. The priest who celebrated Nathan’s baptism is still around, but he won’t be presiding over Halbach’s funeral. That priest is Nathan’s dad.

It turns out Father Henry Willenborg really is a father, but a secret one. When his son, Nathan, was born he wasn’t ready to leave the priesthood so a confidential agreement was drawn up between him, the mother and the Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church. The Church would financially support Nathan and his mother and everyone would keep quiet.

But nobody anticipated that Nathan would become ill and would need so much medical support. His mother talks to Gary Tuchman about the arrangement made more than 20 years ago. So did the Church cover up the fact that a priest fathered a son? Don’t miss this special report tonight.

President Obama heads to Asia today, after rejecting all of the options for a new strategy in Afghanistan that were presented to him by his national-security team yesterday. He says there needs to be an exit strategy, that the U.S. troop commitment cannot be open-ended and that he wants to see revisions to the current options on the table.

We also learned of reports last night that the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, expressed deep reservations about sending troops to the region given what he referred to as corruption in the country. This comes in opposition to the recommendation from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander on the ground. So that means two top U.S. representatives in the region have conflicting points of view. What message does that send about the strategy?

The Obama Administration expects to announces rules for the 'Race to the Top' competition, wherein winners will claim a share of $4 billion in funding set aside for education under the federal stimulus. Will this be the real reform that American schoolchildren need?

A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. But lowering standards also confuses parents about how childrens' achievement compares with students in other states and countries. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Three states in particular – Maine, Oklahoma and Wyoming – lowered standards in both math and reading at the fourth and eighth grade levels. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight.

Today is Charles Manson’s 74th birthday. Ted Rowlands speaks to two people who serve as Manson’s conduits to the outside world. They even moved to Corcoran, Calif. to be near him. They share recordings of their phone calls with Manson and paint a picture of a man who’s spent nearly four decades behind bars for one of the most notorious crimes in U.S. history.

The CDC is expected to release new numbers on the number of people who have died from H1N1 since April. It's the first time they're counting deaths with complications related to the virus.  It's expected to be quite a lot higher than originally estimated. Does this mean H1N1 is more lethal than we thought? Or is this just an accounting change?

And a certain Street is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week. We won't give it away but just know that Anderson will be visited by a very special guest tonight to honor this  occasion.

What else are you following today? Let us know and see you at 10 p.m. ET.

Nancy Gibbs
Time

What a surprise it must have been when Major Nidal Malik Hasan woke up from his coma to find himself not in paradise but in Brooke Army Medical Center, deep in the heart of Texas, under security so tight that there were armed guards patrolling both the intensive-care unit and checkpoints at the nearest freeway off-ramp. This was not the finalé he had scripted when he gave away all his earthly goods — his desk lamp and air mattress, his frozen broccoli and spinach, his copies of the Koran. He had told his imam he was planning to visit his parents before deploying to Afghanistan. He did not mention that his parents had been dead for nearly 10 years.

And who denied him his martyrdom? That would be Kimberly Munley, the SWAT-team markswoman nicknamed Mighty Mouse, who with her partner ran toward the sound of gunshots at the Soldier Readiness Center, where men and women about to deploy gather for vaccinations and eye exams. It's practically been a motto stitched on their sleeves — "Better to fight the terrorists there than here" — except now they were at home, and there was one of their own, a U.S. officer, jumping up, shouting "God is great" in a language he could barely speak and then opening fire.

For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant. The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can't be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic's head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood. In their first response, officials betrayed an eagerness to assume it was the first; the more we learn, the more we have cause to fear it was the second, a new battlefield where our old weapons don't work very well and our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share.

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Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute did an evaluation of the tests.

Take a look at a few sample questions from Wisconsin and Massachusetts here.

Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education

Since 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has compared each state’s standard for proficient performance in reading and mathematics by placing the state standards onto the NAEP scale.

The procedure, “mapping,” allows the level of achievement required for proficient performance in one state to be compared with the level of achievement required in another state. The mapping procedure offers an approximate way to assess the relative rigor of the states’ standards for proficient performance.

Take a look at the full report here...

Editor's Note: We heard from many of you about the war in Afghanistan and whether or not the US should send more troops to the region. Many of you wrote in to say that you think the U.S. should pull out. What do you think? Is there anything else you'd like us to know?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Don't send more troops anywhere! Get us out of Iraq immediately too. Take care of our own country now!

No one should give the killer the honor of referring to him by his rank of major. He is nothing but a mass murderer.

I believe that we should not commit anymore troops to Afghanistan. My Son has been there since July he was in an IED explosion in his Stryker in August. Several of men were killed at that time, my Son was one of the lucky ones. He was in a second IED explosion October 21 also there was causalities then again. He suffered Traumatic Brain Injury, (TBI) Low back injury possible eye damage, He was finally Medivaced to Germany, November 8th. This more the norm, we are losing far too many Soldiers. We need to get out NOW. Sending more Troops would be a travesty. This is my Son's Third deployment.

Positively get out of Afghanistan – as I wrote the white house, they are laying us away, body, mind and spirit. Besides they could have plenty to do here. And I really think the commanders are worried about their livelihood. They can be put on the borders – with commanders in charge. They could help with illegal aliens. They could help rebuild New Orleans. So much to do that is constructive. We can have a discussion on it. So much I know this is right.

Keep reading

We have breaking news on the battle over the war in Afghanistan. A former U.S. general who is now the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul is warning Pres. Obama not to commit more troops to war zone. Plus, the raw politics of Sarah Palin. She taped her appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show today. We'll have details and talk with the authors of a book about Palin that provides new insight on the former Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska governor.

Want to know what else we're covering? Read EVENING BUZZ

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