Should the Mich. Asst. AG be fired?: Join the Live Chat
Tonight on 360, more on the strange case fo the Michigan Assistant Attorney General targeting a gay University of Michigan student. Also, Dr. Phil joins us to talk about cyberbullying and the Rutgers student who committed suicide this week after his roommate streamed live video online of him kissing another boy. And an update to our Dr. Detectives series. 360 MD Sanjay Gupta joins us along with patient Sally Massagee. That and more on AC360° tonight at 10pm ET.
Scroll down to join the live chat during the program. It's your chance to share your thoughts on tonight's headlines. Keep in mind, you have a better chance of having your comment get past our moderators if you follow our rules.
Here are some of them:
1) Keep it short (we don't have time to read a "book")
2) Don't write in ALL CAPS (there's no need to yell)
3) Use your real name (first name only is fine)
4) No links
5) Watch your language (keep it G-rated; PG at worst - and that includes $#&*)
Evening Buzz: Mich. Asst. AG banned from UM campus
Cate Vojdik
AC360° Writer
There’s new evidence tonight of possible grounds for the dismissal of Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell. We learned today the University of Michigan has banned Shirvell from its Ann Arbor campus. Shirvell has been attacking Chris Armstrong, the first openly gay president of the Michigan Student Assembly, through blog posts. He’s also protested outside Armstrong’s home and on campus. We also learned today that Armstrong has filed a personal order of protection against Shirvell. Last night on 360, Shirvell’s boss, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, told Anderson that if a restraining order were to be filed against Shirvell, it would open the door for disciplinary measures. Will the news that Armstrong has filed for a personal protection order force the AG’s hand? Michigan’s Governor, Jennifer Granholm weighed in today on Twitter, saying “If I was still Attorney General and Andrew Shirvell worked for me, he would have already been fired.” Keeping them honest, we’ll dig into the legal implications of the latest developments.
Also tonight, Sarah Palin is using Twitter to attack U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, a democrat who’s running for re-election. She’s also accusing the media of not checking the facts in a recent Grayson ad. Actually, we already did. We’ll tell you what we found.
We also have an amazing update in our Doctor Detectives series. 360 MD Sanjay Gupta has been following the story of Sally Massagee for more than a year. Sally has been a medical mystery for nearly a decade. Doctors couldn’t tell her what was causing her muscles to grow out of control. She was desperate for a diagnosis, and finally found one at the Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the National Institutes of Health. In his recent reports, Sanjay showed us how teams of highly skilled doctor detectives worked together to solve Sally’s mystery. Tonight, you’ll see just how far she’s come since getting a diagnosis. She was in New York this week. We think you’ll be amazed by her transformation. We certainly were.
We’ll also talk to Dr. Phil about another disturbing case of cyberbullying. Tyler Clementi, who had just started his freshman year at Rutgers University in New Jersey, apparently jumped off the George Washington Bridge, after his roommate and another student streamed a web cam video of Clementi having a sexual encounter with a man in his dorm room. Dr. Phil weighs in on this troubling story.
See you at 10 p.m. eastern.
Beat 360° 9/30/10
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:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks during the Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum on September 30, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images)
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.
Update: Beat 360° Winners:
Staff
Eli Lazar
“...and I said, “the bag of cash was THIS large!”
Viewer
Tanner Roberts
"See everyone I have officially washed my hands clean of everything'"
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Prosecutor: Bias charges may come in webcast of sexual encounter
CNN Wire Staff
New York (CNN) - New Jersey prosecutors said Thursday they are determining whether additional charges, including bias, may be brought against two Rutgers University students accused of invading the privacy of fellow student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his sexual encounter with another man was streamed online.
"The initial focus of this investigation has been to determine who was responsible for remotely activating the camera in the dormitory room of the student and then transmitting the encounter on the Internet," Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J Kaplan said.
"Now that two individuals have been charged with invasion of privacy, we will be making every effort to assess whether bias played a role in the incident, and, if so, we will bring appropriate charges," Kaplan said in a statement.
UPDATE: 'I feel normal now,' former UDP patient says
Martina Stewart
AC360° Digital Producer
Editor's Note: Watch Sally Massagee's sit down with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta
New York (CNN) - A woman who suffered for years from a mysterious disorder that caused out-of-control muscle growth tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that her life is finally returning to normal.
Related: Dr. Gupta's Reporter's Notebook: Practicing medicine on the fringe
Four years ago, Sally Massagee began a medical quest, with the support of her family, to find help for her unexplained disorder.
She headed first to Duke University Medical Center. For two years, she saw doctor after doctor and had test after test, but no one at Duke could figure out what was happening to her body. After Duke came up empty, Massagee applied to the the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But they rejected her because she did not have a diagnosis.
In 2008, she got a glimmer of hope. With a referral from her endocrinologist from Duke, she was accepted into the Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the National Institutes of Health.
FULL POST
Letters to the President: #619 'Striking while the iron is hot'
Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent
Reporter's Note: President Obama is campaigning for Democratic candidates around the country in hopes of staving off big congressional losses in November. I’m wondering, however, if in this climate it might be a shade premature.
Dear Mr. President,
Do you think all of the polls about the upcoming vote really mean anything right now? Because I really feel like they don’t.
Sure, there are some candidates with such commanding leads, they’ll hold onto their seats unless they’re caught holding onto someone else’s, if you know what I mean. But so many other races seem so much in flux, who the heck knows what will happen?
We’ve already gone over the problems. The voters’ dislike of your party is only matched by their distaste for the other one. Faith in government is in the toilet, optimism is rarer than a 49er’s victory, and all the “Yes, We Can” chanting has been replaced by a muttering chorus of job seekers humming Fast Car.
That’s why the polls are popping up and down like a Dick Cheney heart monitor. I’m convinced that in a lot of places people are so skeptical that this vote will produce a positive change that when pollsters call, they give one answer one day, then a different one the next, and on and on it goes.
FULL POST
Michigan attorney general defends employee's right to blog
CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) - Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox defended an assistant's constitutional right to wage an Internet campaign against an openly gay college student, even though he considers that employee a "bully."
"Here in America, we have this thing called the First Amendment, which allows people to express what they think and engage in political and social speech," Cox told Anderson Cooper on CNN's "AC 360" on Wednesday night. "He's clearly a bully ... but is that protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution? Yes."
"Mr. [Andrew] Shirvell is sort of a frontline grunt assistant prosecutor in my office," Cox said. "He does satisfactory work and off-hours, he's free to engage under both our civil service rules, Michigan Supreme Court rulings and the United States Supreme Court rule."
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