Beat 360° 3/2/10
Ready for today's Beat 360°? Everyday we post a picture you provide the caption and our staff will join in too. Tune in tonight at 10pm to see if you are our favorite! Here is the 'Beat 360°' pic:
U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) takes an elevator as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol for a vote March 2, 2010 in Washington, DC. Bunning has been under criticism on his blockage of legislations to extend benefits and health insurance subsidies for unemployed, and may force up to 200,000 people to lose benefits this week.
Have fun with it. We're looking forward to your captions! Make sure to include your name, city, state (or country) so we can post your comment.
Beat 360° Winners:
Staff:
Mike Roselli
"Going down?”
Viewer:
Mike Waggoner, Boulder, CO
"I will be out of work after the next election, so I am cutting my own unemployment benefits."
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O'Brien: In Chile, looters are leaving the biggest aftershocks
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/americas/03/01/chile.earthquake.obrien/story.chile.looters.one.cnn.jpg caption="A soldier guards a looted mall on a main street in Concepcion, Chile, on Monday." width=300 height=169]
Soledad O'Brien and Rose Arce
CNN
The drive into Concepcion couldn't have been more dramatic. We turned the corner through a dense morning fog onto a main street and a small crowd moved into the streets against traffic. It's just two days after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake toppled walls and collapsed buildings, but people are looting.
Young men ducked beneath gates and smashed windows, yanking out boxes holding appliances and grabbing cell phones and clothes. Grown women slid between window bars and ran down streets with bags full of booty.
A large green military truck with a hose bore down on the crowd using pressurized water to deter the crowd, but soldiers patrolling with big guns did nothing to stop looters on the streets. The looting was so out of control at La Flor clothing store that a fire broke out, and clouds of black smoke filled the sky. The firefighters couldn't even fight the fire because they were too busy with the search and rescue operation.
Video: Bunning remains defiant
Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent
Roger Ebert debuts his 'new voice' on 'Oprah'
Breeanna Hare
CNN
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert hasn't been able to speak for the past four years, but that doesn't mean he's been silent.
The Chicago-based author still pens film reviews, posts updates on his online journal, and offers his picks for the Academy Awards, as he did on Tuesday's "Oprah Winfrey Show," using a computer-generated voice that sounds remarkably similar to his own.
Until recently, Ebert communicated with hand signals and monotone text-to-speech software.
When Ebert sat down for an interview for Esquire magazine's March issue that chronicled his life since he lost his voice to thyroid cancer, he said he had used an English voice with his text-to-speech software, which he named "Lawrence." But "Lawrence" had a tendency towards odd phrasing and Ebert ultimately settled for something more generically American.
Interactive: Key 2010 primary races
Robert Yoon
CNN Political Research Director
Interactive: Political tweets of the week
Eric Kuhn
CNN
TR: The conservatives' new demon
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/POLITICS/10/09/us.nobel.presidents/art.teddy.gi.jpg caption="Glenn Beck called former President Teddy Roosevelt an enemy of human freedom at the Conservative Political Action conference."]
Michael Gerson
The Washington Post
Such is the zeal in portions of the tea party right that it is not enough to sweep out living members of the establishment such as John McCain. A brisk, ideological scrubbing must be applied to history as well.
So Glenn Beck, speaking recently at the Conservative Political Action Conference, identified a great enemy of human freedom as . . . Teddy Roosevelt. Beck highlighted this damning Roosevelt quote: "We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used."
Ah, you don't discern the scandal in this statement? Look closer. "This is not our Founders' idea of America," explained Beck. "And this is the cancer that's eating at America. It is big government - it's a socialist utopia." Evidently, real conservatives defend wealth that is dishonorably gained and then wasted.
Rage on the Right: The year in hate and extremism
Editor's Note: According to a new report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream. We're looking into the report tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET. Read the full report below and don't miss Anderson's conversation tonight.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/18/art.teaparty.gi.jpg width=300 height=169]
Mark Potok
Southern Poverty Law Center
The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.
Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.
The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.
Brown seeks governor's mansion - or at least the office - again
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/POLITICS/03/01/jerry.brown.profile/story.jerry.brown.gi.jpg caption="Jerry Brown, the once and future California governor? The current state attorney general leads in polls." width=300 height=169]
John Helton and Ed Hornick
CNN
You could make a serious argument that Jerry Brown is the most unconventional politician America has ever known.
On Tuesday, he's expected to defy convention again, announcing that at age 71 he's running for governor of California, an office he left almost three decades ago.
Three sources told CNN on Monday that Brown will announce on Tuesday that he's running.
Brown has run three times for president and once for the U.S. Senate. After leaving the governor's mansion in 1983, he started over, serving as the state party chairman, hosting a radio talk show - in which he routinely referred to himself as a "recovering politician" - serving two terms as mayor of Oakland and is currently the state's attorney general.
