House Leadership Battle: Clyburn Accepts 3rd Rank Deal

Deal Ends Democratic Leadership Fight


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has struck a deal that ends the leadership fight for the number two slot in the new House minority, multiple senior Democratic sources tell CNN.

Under the compromise, current House majority leader Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer will become the Democratic whip, which will be the number two spot in the new Democratic minority.

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn agreed to end his bid for that spot and instead hold a new, third-ranking leadership post that will be created for him. In a letter to Democratic colleagues on Saturday, Pelosi said she plans to designate him "Assistant Leader."

In a statement Saturday, Clyburn -- an African-American -- said it was important that the party's House leadership represented "the diverse views, backgrounds and experiences of our membership." The new structure, he said, "honors the diversity and fosters the unity" of House Democrats.

"I believe this resolution allows us to begin the journey back to a stronger and more resilient majority," said Clyburn, the current majority whip and a congressman since 1993.

When the Democrats become the minority party in the House they lose the position of Speaker, a shift that left Hoyer and Clyburn jockeying for the House minority whip position.

Hoyer also released a statement Saturday, saying he would look forward to serving as the Democratic whip.

"Since the election last week, I have made clear my belief that it was important for my friend Jim Clyburn to continue serving our Caucus as the third ranking Member of our Leadership," he said.

The deal allows Rep. John Larson of Connecticut to keep his post as Democratic caucus chairman and Rep. Xavier Becerra to remain as the vice chair of the Democratic caucus.

Speaker Pelosi revealed the deal in a somewhat cryptic statement late Friday night.

"Should I receive the honor of serving as House Democratic Leader, I will nominate Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina to the number three leadership position," Pelosi said.


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Sources: CNN, Media Matters, MSNBC, Politico, Youtube, Google Maps

FBI Scanning Driver's Licenses To Catch Fugitives...Mistaken Identity Possibilities, Privacy Violations

(Illinois Exoneree Jerry Miller discusses his 1982 wrongful conviction and the 24 years he was incarcerated for a crime DNA now proves he didn't commit. Jerry was the 200th person exonerated by DNA testing nationwide - learn more at www.innocenceproject.org)







Driver's licenses scanned in search for fugitives


In its search for fugitives, the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts in a high-tech analysis of chin widths and nose sizes.

The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.

"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.

In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.

A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.

"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."

Law enforcement database?

Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.

So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.

FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.

Calabrese said Americans should be concerned about how their driver's licenses are being used.

Licenses "started as a permission to drive," he said. "Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they're becoming the de facto law enforcement database."

State and federal laws allow driver's license agencies to release records for law enforcement, and local agencies have access to North Carolina's database, too. But the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos. That means the facial-recognition analysis must be done at the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles.

"Unless the person's a criminal, we would not have a need to have that information in the system," said Kim Del Greco, who oversees the FBI's biometrics division. "I think that would be a privacy concern. We're staying away from that."

Dan Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, added: "We're not interested in housing a bunch of photos of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong."


Scanning for similarities

Gone are the days when states made drivers' licenses by snapping Polaroid photos and laminating them onto cards without recording copies.

Now states have quality photo machines and rules that prohibit drivers from smiling during the snapshot to improve the accuracy of computer comparisons.

North Carolina's lab scans an image and, within 10 seconds, compares the likeness with other photos based on an algorithm of factors such as the width of a chin or the structure of cheekbones. The search returns several hundred photos ranked by the similarities.

"We'll get some close hits, and we'll get some hits that are right on," said Stephen Lamm, who oversees the DMV lab.

The technology allowed the DMV to quickly highlight 28 different photos of one man who was apparently using many identities. It also identified one person who, as part of a sex change, came in with plucked eyebrows, long flowing hair and a new name — but the same radiant smile.

Mistaken for a terrorist?

The system is not always right. Investigators used one DMV photo of an Associated Press reporter to search for a second DMV photo, but the system first returned dozens of other people, including a North Carolina terrorism suspect who had some similar facial features.

The images from the reporter and terror suspect scored a likeness of 72 percent, below the mid-80s that officials consider a solid hit.

Facial-recognition experts believe the technology has improved drastically since 2002, when extremely high failure rates led authorities to scrap a program planned for the entrances to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Lamm said investigators reviewing the galleries can almost always find the right photo, using a combination of the computer and the naked eye.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, questioned whether the facial-recognition systems that were pushed after the Sept. 11 attacks are accurate or even worthwhile.

"We don't have good photos of terrorists," Rotenberg said. "Most of the facial-recognition systems today are built on state DMV records because that's where the good photos are. It's not where the terrorists are."



DNA exonerates a second Forsyth Inmate


While Joseph Abbitt grew older in prison, forensic science grew more sophisticated, enough to prove the truth he'd been telling since 1991.

Abbitt walked out of jail Wednesday, 14 years after a jury found that he raped two teenage sisters in the early morning darkness as they dressed for school. He swore his innocence from the day police found him, which, at the time, sounded like hot air from a man who had seen plenty of trouble on the streets of Winston-Salem.

On Wednesday, new DNA tests on long-kept evidence proved that an unidentified man had violated the girls.

"We're here today not because of any wrongdoing by any one person," David Hall, a Forsyth County assistant district attorney, told the judge. "We're here because of the inexact science long ago. Science has marched on over the years."

Abbitt is the seventh man in North Carolina exonerated by DNA evidence years after being sentenced. Nationally, he joins 241 men exonerated by more sophisticated testing of DNA; three quarters of them, like Abbitt, had been wrongly identified by witnesses. An untold number of others never had the chance to prove their innocence because evidence from the crime was destroyed long before the state passed laws requiring that the pieces be kept forever.

As these things go, Abbitt, 49, was lucky. He was convicted in Forsyth County, where the exoneration of another man had weighed on the conscience of the district attorney.

Darryl Hunt was freed in 2003 after serving 18 years for the rape and murder of a Winston-Salem woman. His innocence was a sucker punch for Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith.

"We did not want another Darryl Hunt case," Keith said. "I couldn't take it."

Keith wanted to sleep through the night not wondering whether his office had banished other innocent men to prison. In 2005, his office compiled a list of every suspect from Forsyth County in prison -- 2,247 total. Keith mailed each a letter, advising the inmates that if they thought a new DNA test would help prove a claim of innocence, he'd make the test happen.

Only 150 inmates took him up on the offer. Of those, 80 were reviewed by the local bar association and students at Wake Forest University Law School, who looked for cases that had evidence that could be tested. Only Abbitt's case resulted in exoneration.

Abbitt appealed directly to the N.C. Center for Actual Innocence, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping prisoners who believe they were wrongly convicted. In 2008, Christine Mumma, the center's director, solicited the help of Keith and the Winston-Salem police department to look for any shred of evidence remaining in Abbitt's case.

In one of the department's six warehouses, Winston-Salem Capt. David Clayton hit pay dirt: the girls' two rape kit exams, undisturbed since the day the state lab sent them back with a report saying it couldn't get a positive read. Clayton immediately drove them to a state lab for more testing. The kits were eventually sent to a private lab for more sophisticated work.

A logical suspect

In 1995, Abbitt's conviction made sense. He'd been in trouble with the law before; he had even been charged in another sex crime years before. The girls, 15 and 13 at the time of the crime, knew him, and said, with certainty, that he was the man who snuck into their house and raped them at knife-point. They saw paint on his shoes and pant-legs; Abbitt had been working as a painter.

Abbitt always swore his innocence. His family believed him and never thought a jury would convict him.

"We all knew he didn't do it," his brother Thurmond Abbitt said Wednesday. "It hurt to watch that fall upon him."

A hulking man in a beige dress shirt and glasses, Joseph Abbitt wept as a judge granted his freedom. Abbitt hung his head and shook with sobs; Mumma rubbed his arm.

The judge offered an apology. Abbitt nodded.

When Abbitt finally spoke, he did not rant against the system that wronged him. Instead, he focused on the girls violated by someone years before.

"I pray for those two young victims every day," Abbitt told a judge. "I hope they catch the one who did this because these two young girls are still the victims of this awful crime."

Keith plans to do that. On Wednesday, a judge signed an order allowing $5,000 to pay for more DNA tests at a private lab, where they hope to decipher the signature of the real rapist.



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Sources: MSNBC, FBI, McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, Innocence Project, Youtube, Google Maps

White House, Congress Mulls Severe Restrictions For Mobile Phone Usage While Driving

(As Congress mulls a federal ban on texting while driving, hundreds of experts gather at a two-day summit to discuss ways to prevent the hazards of distracted driving. NBC’s Tom Costello reports.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Linda Mulkey, whose daughter Lauren was killed by a driver distracted by texting, talks about her loss and what she has done to convince people to pay attention on the roads.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Drivers yakking or texting may see new limits

With more drivers yakking on their cellphones or texting from behind the wheel, the Obama administration is taking its first hard look at U.S. highway hazards with an eye toward potential new restrictions on using mobile devices while driving.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is kicking off a two-day summit on Wednesday involving researchers, automakers, safety advocates and lawmakers to find ways of preventing distracted driving from leading to widespread deaths and injuries.

LaHood said he plans to make recommendations Thursday on ways federal and state governments, as well as safety groups can address the distractions, pointing to previous approaches for drunken driving and seat belts.

Ultimately, LaHood said, he wants the summit to set "the stage for finding ways to eliminate texting while driving."

"You see people texting and driving and using cell phones and driving everywhere you go, even in places where it's outlawed like Washington, D.C. We feel a very strong obligation to point to incidents where people have been killed or where serious injury has occurred," LaHood said.

Some seek nationwide ban

Eighteen states and the U.S. capital have passed laws making texting while driving illegal and seven states and the district have banned driving while talking on a handheld cell phone, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Many safety groups have urged a nationwide ban on texting and on using handheld mobile devices while behind the wheel.

"People who wouldn't get drunk and drive somehow think it's OK to text and drive — which is just as dangerous," said Kristin Backstrom, a senior manager with the American Automobile Association's Foundation for Traffic Safety and one of the forum's speakers.

In July, the Virginia Tech University Transportation Institute found that when drivers of heavy trucks texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater. Dialing a cell phone and using or reaching for an electronic device increased risk of collision about six times in cars and trucks.

The Virginia Tech researchers found the risks of texting generally applied to all drivers, not just truckers. A separate report by Car and Driver magazine found that texting and driving is more dangerous than drunken driving.

Congress is watching

Congress is watching closely. Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat who will address the summit, and other Democrats introduced legislation in July that would require states to ban texting or e-mailing while operating a moving vehicle or lose 25 percent of their annual federal highway funding. The Obama administration has not taken a position on the bill.

Transportation officials will try to develop a consensus on the roadway hazards and hear warnings from young adults who caused car accidents because they were texting while driving.

Some groups want tough laws on the distractions. The National Safety Council wants a total ban on cell phone use while driving. The Washington-based Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety has petitioned the government to consider federal rules that restrict talking and texting by drivers of tractor trailers, motorcoach buses and large vans.

Other groups have focused on texting, which has grown from nearly 10 billion messages a month in December 2005 to more than 110 billion in December 2008, according to CTIA — The Wireless Association, the cellular phone industry's trade group.

Sources: MSNBC, US Dept of Transportation, 888redlight