Attorney-Gate, Missing Boy, Human Trafficking, Tax Cheating Doctors, And Raw Politics (Tuesday's Second Hour)

Hi everyone. We begin with Anderson in Bangkok and he throws it back to John Roberts for some attorney-gate redux. From there we have a Tom Foreman piece about Karl Rove's role in the whole issue. I was wondering when they were going to hit on this indepth. Basically what happened was attorney Bud Cummins was kicked to the curb to make room for Tim Griffin, a well qualified, but very politically connected attorney. Hmmm. He spent years working for Rove, so yeah, he's most likely a little evil. This could cause some trouble for Rove, but I don't know, the guy seems to be made of teflon. Maybe the 58th scandal is the charm.

Next up we have John Roberts and Jeffrey Toobin again, though this time not discussing ANS. I'm going to have to skip it though. Sorry, no time! Afterwards we have a repeat Anderson piece and then Randi Kaye joins us live with new details about the missing boy. Except, um, she has no new details. I guess they meant new details for those who weren't watching during the first hour. Anderson then interviews her a bit and when they have their two shots up together Randi's suddenly freezes-in mid sentence. Well that was weird. And highly ironic since Randi's all frozen in the states and Anderson is fine half a world away. Ahhh, technology. The shot then quickly goes just to Anderson, who does his snapping thing to someone off camera. Yeah, we know about that. Wake up off-camera person! Charlie Moore are you napping? Oh and, Anderson Cooper it is not polite to snap! I swear, they entertain me so.

Transitioning back to John in New York and he has a completely unnecessary interview with one of the rescuers of Michael, the missing boy. Seriously, why? And for more why, we're then joined by Sanjay Gupta because apparently Michael had ADHD and now we of course need to learn all about it. Look, I'm not saying there's not good info here, but I'm still rolling my eyes because if Michael had epilepsy that's what we would be learning about right now. Why throw this info at us so randomly?

Moving on to a Dan Rivers piece that I was going to link to because I thought I blogged it before, but apparently I skimped, so sorry. Next Anderson has an interview with Lisa Rendy Taylor, technical adviser to the U.N. interagency Project for Human Trafficking. They cover a lot of stuff we've basically heard before, but Lisa points out that a lot of people think this problem stems from poverty and lack of education when actually the problem is there will always be people that exploit. In fact, Lisa tells us that sometimes the people that fall victim to human trafficking exploitation are the most educated because they are the ones who thought they had a shot to get out of the situation they grew up in. Interesting...and sad.

Back to John in New York now and he intros us into a Joe Johns "Keeping Them Honest" piece. It seems that 21,000 doctors paid by Medicare are tax cheats and they're using the money to buy things like cars and boats. What, do they think they're politicians or something? The Duke Cunninghams of the medical field apparently. And these doctors aren't even good. Yet they still get paid even though some have been reprimanded or had their liscense suspended. The Health and Human Services Department reportedly has a way to collect these taxes, but they're just not for some reason. Probably incompetence. Joe tells us this problem has been going on for 10 years now. Yeah, well, apparently we like to take our time with problems.

After the piece we've got John doing the "Raw Politics" and now there's music. Was there always music? Anyway, first up we learn that the filing deadline for first quarter fundraising is less than a month away and John McCain "played a little ba da bing" with contributors in Alabama. Yep, "Johnny Mac" is hoping to bring in the cash to gas up that straight talk express. Next up, we've got some anti-war squabbling between Obama and Clinton. They're both vying for the title of anti-war-est of all. There's some sparring with Obama coming out on top when his people point out he spoke out against the war when it was unpopular to do so and she voted for it. Oooooh. "Take that, Senator Clinton," says John. Indeed. Finally, Edwards is following Al Gore's lead in going carbon-neutral and he's going to buy carbon credits on the market. John wonders where one might buy carbon credits because he hasn't seen them at "Tarjay." And yes, that's how he pronounced it. John is so down with the hip retail lingo. Aw, "Raw Politics" was all punchy again. It comes in cycles I suppose. Kiran then gives us the headlines and we're out.

Screencaps by cskitten.