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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Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

Unlike a lot of politicians whose campaign ads and public statements suggest they don’t have an ounce of faith in the intelligence of their fellow citizens, I’ve always thought the people of this country are pretty smart. We Americans can smell a rat when one scurries through the room. We know when we’re being fed a line of horse manure. And we know what’s really happening in our lives, even when Washington says it’s not so.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has finally made official what all of us knew a long time ago: America is in a recession. To be fair, the folks in charge of making this determination do so based on a broad analysis of a lot of economic numbers. Those numbers create a strict definition of when a recession begins, when it peaks, and when it ends. So these people can not just declare one at the drop of a hat. The recession we are in now, according to the NBER, began a year ago in December, 2007.

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CNN’s Brian Todd reports on a prescription company that says it was targeted by extortionists.

Sen. Ted Stevens leaves the federal courthouse in Washington after being convicted Monday.

John McCain and Sarah Palin on Tuesday called on Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to resign, a day after the veteran Alaska lawmaker was convicted on federal corruption charges.

Other Republican senators followed suit, as did Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president.

“Stevens has broken his trust with the people and … he should now step down,” McCain said in a statement issued by his campaign Tuesday morning.

Palin said the time had come “for him to step aside.”

“Even if elected on Tuesday, Sen. Stevens should step aside to allow a special election to give Alaskans a real choice of who will serve them in Congress,” Palin said in a written statement.

Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, insists he is innocent and will continue to run for a seventh full term as he fights his conviction in court.

He was convicted Monday on seven counts of failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts and free work on his home in Alaska.

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CNN's Drew Griffin talks to man who says he witnessed New Orleans Police shoot an unarmed person.

Drew Griffin | BIO
CNN Investigative Correspondent

The press release form the New Orleans Police Department described him as an unidentified gunmen who was “confronted by a New Orleans Police officers” then “reached into his waist and turned toward the officer.” The New Orleans Police Department told us the officer on that day, Sept. 4, 2005, fired one shot killing the suspect.

I’m guessing the New Orleans Police thought we would just take their word for it. We didn’t.

It took us more than a year, but what we found out about Ronald Madison proved justice in New Orleans is only for those who wear a badge.

Ronald Madison was a 40-year old mentally disabled man who had survived Katrina flooding with his brother Lance. On a Sunday morning they swam out of their mother’s home and headed for the Danziger Bridge. You can read more about their ordeal, and Ronald’s tragic death, in the stories below.

What you need to know now, is three years after he was killed by police, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and the

U.S. Attorney’s office in New Orleans finally announced they will investigate.

Well it’s about time.

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Drew Griffin
Special Investigations Unit

I doubt that after you read this you will check off that box on your tax form ever again….then again, here’s a little tale about what’s behind that box and you can decide.

Here’s the idea: If taxpayers fund the presidential campaigns, then big money, you know, the usual “bad guys”–big corporations, unions, PACs, contractors–would have less influence. That’s why this system was set up way back in 1971.

In 1974 Congress even took the added step of allowing you to opt-in or opt-out by checking or not checking that box. It wasn’t really a donation. It was a way to tell congress you would like to “earmark” a dollar of federal money for the cause.

Well, that little “check in the box” is now worth $3 dollars on your tax return. And if you are wondering where the money is going, next week turn on CNN and look at all those balloons about to drop. Keep reading

David Fitzpatrick
Special Investigations Unit Producer

If there was any doubt at all that the sale of prescription drugs over the internet, without a doctor’s legitimate authorization, is very big business, what happened in Kansas over the last couple of days should dispel those notions in a heartbeat.

The Kansas Attorney General’s office arrested and jailed three people, a pharmacist and the co-owners of a small pharmacy in the northwestern part of the state, on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts. Hogan’s Pharmacy is in a tiny town called Lyons. And according to documents filed in court, this small storefront operation, in a town of no more than 3,000 people, handled nearly $1.9 million in wire transfers in 2007 alone.

CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin and I went to Lyons a few months ago as part of an AC 360 investigation into internet prescription abuse. We had met and interviewed a young widow only the day before. Her husband had ordered the muscle-relaxant drug Soma over the internet—time and time again. Many of the pills came from Hogan’s Pharmacy and came without any legitimate order from a physician. One day last year, she went to their bedroom and found her husband unresponsive. He had died of an overdose of Soma.

There’s a good reason why doctors limit doses of Soma. Research by the Food and Drug Administration shows that it is one of those class of drugs which can be easily abused. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, there’s now some consideration being given to classifying Soma as a “controlled substance,” putting it in the same category of dangerous drugs such as Xanax and Hydrocodone..

I was sitting in my New York City office when that widow telephoned me to express her thanks to the Kansas authorities and to CNN for the investigative work. She told me she would likely testify in any coming trials and was looking forward to doing so.

Keeping them honest, we’ll continue to investigate prescription drug sales over the Internet.

Attorney General Steve Six announced charges today against Hogan’s Pharmacy owners Jolane and Mark Poindexter for their part in an Internet pharmacy scheme. The pharmacist in charge, Rick Kloxin, was charged earlier this week.

Former Justice Department White House liaison Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, testify on Capitol Hill, March 2007.

Bud Cummins
Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, 2001-2006

For years, there have been allegations that the Department of Justice had made hiring decisions to fit a political agenda — which is illegal. Finally, this week comes confirmation from the department’s internal watchdog that several DOJ managers had done so. No surprise, really. But the story of how and why they were able to do it is remarkable.

When I made career hiring decisions as a U.S. attorney, I figured that the best way to make the president who appointed me look good was to hire the best people available. Apparently, the targets of this investigation showed favoritism to conservatives. They should have known better.

Certain to disappoint partisan opponents, there is no evidence that the practice was part of a larger conspiracy emanating from the president, Karl Rove, or the attorney general. I expect similar conclusions in the highly anticipated report on U.S. attorney firings.

The story is simple. Several political operatives worked hard on the campaign trail and then hung around long enough to be rewarded with jobs for which they were not ready. They lacked the experience, judgment and temperament for the positions they attained and the decisions that went with them. They were unsupervised by grown-ups. They screwed up.
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Baron ‘Scooter” Pikes

David Fitzpatrick
Producer, CNN Special Investigations Unit

When I felt the searing 98 degree heat and the oppressive 100 percent humidity here, it wasn’t as jarring as it might have been. In fact, it seemed familiar for a very good reason.

Just a year ago I was in the same sort of weather in a town only 40 miles from here: Jena, Louisiana, ground zero for the nation’s largest civil rights demonstrations in a generation.

Then, I was helping to produce stories about what led to the demonstrations — the jailing of a teenager named Mychal Bell.

You might recall, Bell was in a school yard fight in Jena that stemmed from three nooses, hung from a tree in front of the local school. Bell was jailed on a charge of attempted murder in the wake of that fight and five of his classmates were also charged, but not imprisoned.

A year later, I was in Winnfield where one of Mychal Bell’s first cousins, Baron ‘Scooter” Pikes, was the central figure in another case where accusations of racial injustice have been flying.

Last January, the 21-year-old Pikes was struck by a taser gun nine times in less than an hour, after he was arrested on an outstanding warrant alleging possession of crack cocaine.

He was dead on arrival at a local hospital after being hit six times while handcuffed and lying on his stomach, once in the back of a Winnfield police car and twice more on the concrete outside the police department’s headquarters.

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It grew out of 9-11 and today the ACLU says the problem is that it keeps growing. The FBI’s terror watch list, now has 400,000 people on it - with aliases, that comes to a million names. The FBI says it’s working, its making air travel safer but if your name is the same as any of the names on the list, it’s making your air travel an even bigger hassle.  Drew Griffin showed you how easy it is to get on the list and how hard it is to get off. Here’s the link to the first step to getting your name off the list.