Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Today we take a moment to remember Odetta. Odetta’s voice was beautiful but she was more than just a singer.  She brought the tradition of American folk music to the Civil Rights Movement.

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

Well, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for.  Try not to go too wild.  But yes, it’s true.  President-elect Obama is today announcing Bill Richardson as his nominee for Secretary of Commerce.  Which, while not an unimportant post, was not Richardson’s first choice.  Secretary of State was what Richardson really wanted.  Commerce was further down on his list, right below U.S. Ambassador to Dairy Queen.

Meanwhile, we’re still tying up loose ends from the fall elections.  You may have noticed there was a big run-off in Georgia last night.  Republican Saxby “Vote for me and Sarah Palin will show you how to kill a moose with your bare hands” Chambliss ended up holding onto his senate seat.  That means that the Democrats will not have a filibuster-proof supermajority.

I don’t know about you but I kind of like the name Saxby.  It has a nice ring to it.  I think I’m going to suggest to Anderson that he name his new iguana Saxby.  Oh, you didn’t know Anderson is big into iguanas?  Yeah, he walks around with one on his shoulder at all times:  “I’m sorry, I love your story pitch but my iguana Daisy Duke thinks it’s terrible.”

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David Kirby
AgeofAutism.com 

It looks like the CDC may have missed a memo to itself on vaccine safety.

One very contentious issue in the vaccine-autism debate has been whether a certain subset of genetically susceptible children is unequipped to handle the early and intensive US immunization schedule – including kids like Hannah Poling, who developed autism after receiving nine vaccines at once.

The theory is that some people with abnormal immune or metabolic systems might become overtaxed by the fever, inflammation and/or other stresses sometimes caused by multiple vaccines.

Many doctors and scientists scoff at the notion that someone could be injured by getting too many shots at once. They say that people of all ages, including babies, can handle multiple exposures at any given moment.

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Editor’s Note: He was a division 1 college football player with a pre-med degree… and now the highest distinction for any student: the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Myron Rolle has a difficult decision, head to the NFL or head to Oxford? Watch Don Lemon’s full report tonight on AC360°, 11p ET

Don Lemon
CNN Anchor

As interesting as you might find Myron Rolle’s personal story and accomplishments, the bottom line is will he accept the Rhodes Scholarship, or go for almost certain millionaire status in the NFL? It’s a tough choice. What would you do?

I didn’t ask him right away. I wanted to save it. I enjoyed the suspense. And frankly, I really liked playing out the scenarios in my head. If Rolle takes the money now from the NFL, he could quickly realize his dream of helping needy children. And who knows if the NFL will even be interested when he returns from Oxford University in England? A lot could change in two years. A Rhodes scholarship, however, doesn’t guarantee riches. But it is an accomplishment that only a select few can claim. Former President Bill Clinton, New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, General Wesley Clark, to name a few; have certainly made their marks on society. It’s a real moral dilemma.

I met Rolle for the first time at dinner in the player’s cafeteria in the stadium. Rolle wore a designer suit by Sean John and a Burberry necktie; which made me self-conscious about wearing blue jeans and an open collar. The rest of his teammates wore sweats and as they walked passed us mumbled, “hey Mr. President” or “hey Mr. Rhodes.” All in good fun though, it’s obvious how proud they are of him.

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Editor’s note: Hear the full story of a football player kids can truly look up to — tonight on AC360 at 11pm ET.

Kay Jones
AC360° Coordinating Editorial Producer

Professional and college athletes normally make the headlines or a feature on CNN for something negative: Michael Vick’s dog fighting charges, Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones’ numerous run- ins with the law, various college football players getting suspended for cheating, not making their grades, etc. So it is refreshing to see an amazing college athlete be featured for doing something positive.

Meet Myron Rolle, a Florida State University student athlete who is as good on the football field as he is in the classroom, and I mean that in the most positive way. Rolle graduated in 2-1/2 years, is now working on his masters degree with an eye on med school to be a neurosurgeon. He has dreams of opening a clinic in the Bahamas, where his parents are from. He also dreams of playing in the NFL.

Oh, and another dream of his? To study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Myron Rolle may just do all of the above, after being one of just 32 students to win the Rhodes Scholarship less than two weeks ago. The Rhodes Scholarship is generally a two-year expense-paid graduate study program at Oxford University in England, and it is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world.

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Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

President Bush is in the autumn of his years.  At least politically speaking.  And, if his interview with Charlie Gibson last night was any indication, the president seems to be speaking more freely.  No, I’m not talking about the part of the interview when he stood up and did his Beyonce “Single Ladies” routine.  That was just bizarre.

The president seems reflective, nostalgic, even emotional – qualities that he no doubt inherited from his father, the famously mushy 41st president.  That’s of course compared to his mother, the stoic Barbara Bush, who after undergoing emergency surgery last week for a perforated ulcer spent her recuperation doing one-armed push-ups and bench-pressing orderlies.

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Editor’s Note: Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of www.TheMuslimGuy.comand contributing editor for Islamica Magazine in Washington.

Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
Founder, themuslimguy.com

The world mourns for the people of Mumbai. Ranked immediately behind New York City as the 5th largest metropolitan city in the entire world; over 19.2 million Mumbai citizens of all religions and ethnicities watched in horror as part of the city’s virtual ‘five-star’ district reeled from the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks which has (thus far) claimed the lives of 179 people and wounded at least 300 more.

As the financial capital of India and birthplace to the global phenomenon known as Bollywood, in many ways, the city formerly known as Bombay is central to the societal heartbeat of our world’s largest democracy. As people all around the world send our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the victims of these outrageous terrorist attacks; the world can again reunite to send our thoughts and prayers to anyone touched by this terrible tragedy.

Most people are unaware of the fact that there are over 1.1 billion (yes, one billion) inhabitants of India today. As the single largest democracy in the entire world, India’s ethnic and religious diversity will withstand these latest heinous terrorist attacks and strengthen its own democratic social fabric amidst the shattered glass of the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotel lobbies. The ridiculously hateful ideology of criminal terrorists who would carry out such a senseless terror campaign will not unravel the resilient social fabric which is turning India into a future millennial global powerhouse.

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Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Fifty-three years ago today, Rosa Parks greatly advanced the cause of civil rights with a single dignified act. She refused to stand.

The year was 1955 when the seamstress quietly explained to a Montgomery, Alabama bus driver, James Blake, that she would not give up her seat for a white passenger. It was the year my parents were married and I wasn’t born until nearly a decade later. But I always knew of Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement. Her story, and that of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed, was part of the context of my childhood.

Children today can only imagine that time when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus, to drink from separate water fountains, to swim in separate pools and beaches and of course to attend separate schools. Segregationists insisted that such separation could be equal. But we all now know what the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1954. That separate can never be equal.

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John Vause | BIO
CNN Beijing Correspondent

It just won’t go away.

The latest figures from China’s health ministry show that even now, more than two months after the melamine in the baby milk scandal broke, almost a thousand Chinese kids are still in hospital, and according to China’s health Ministry, almost 300 thousand were made ill and a total of six kids were killed.

It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that even these numbers, do not reflect the full extent of how many babies and infants were left sick and dying. Consider this: China is the same size geographically as the US, give or take, with four times the population, and once you leave the big cities and head west, you step back in time and about two worlds. Many in the small isolated rural areas probably had no idea their kids were drinking poison, no idea why their only precious child was screaming in pain from kidney stones. This scandal has been going on for years.

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Parents discuss the Pledge of Allegiance issue with Principal Michaela Martin at Woodbury Elementary School.

Brian MacQuarrie
The Boston Globe

The Woodbury Village Store, the only one in town, welcomes hunters and other patrons with a hand-written sign that reads, “Shirt and pants and shoes required,” in a snow-dusted North Country hamlet where many weathered homes are stooped with age.

Inside, the sleepy tableau seems frozen in time. But just up the hill, at the Woodbury Elementary School, an aggressive effort to return a daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance to its four small classrooms has pitted neighbor against neighbor, unsettled students and staff, and spawned a vitriolic burst of incendiary name-calling.

No one in this tiny community of 809 people can recall anything like it. And the rancor has settled so deeply into the psyche here that residents and school officials say the wounds might take years to heal.

“I can see the devastation of this. It’s real, and it’s palpable,” said Mark Andrews, co-superintendent of schools.  At issue is whether the Pledge of Allegiance should be recited in the classroom every day by the 53 pupils in the 94-year-old school, just as it is believed to be in most elementary school classrooms across the country.

The move has been spearheaded by a retired Marine Corps major, who quickly gathered 310 signatures on a townwide petition after the Pledge of Allegiance, which used to be recited once a week in a schoolwide assembly, disappeared entirely in the spring.

“People were pulling the clipboard out of my hand and saying, ‘That’s disgraceful,’ ” said Ted Tedesco, a veteran of the Gulf War.

Conflicting definitions and questions of patriotism, values, and ideology have polarized the town, residents said, and longtime friendships have become one of the casualties of an issue that had hardly crossed anyone’s mind until the petition surfaced.

“I’ve seen people in this town who have been friends for years that now won’t speak to each other,” said Jeff Kaiser, a nurse who lives on a 46-acre hilltop spread with his wife and two daughters, one of whom is a first-grader.

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