of this call to judgment, this quick rush to judgment, i guess, david. shirley on the show the last hour said she told the department of agriculture people who were calling her insisting she pull over to the side of the road and blackberry her resignificant nation. she said you got to listen to the whole tape pip this is a story that paints a very different picture. and they didn t. and if this had just been on breitbart, do you believe it would have been as big blown up to as big as what it is now, an issue? if the department of agriculture hadn t reacted the way it did, and the naacp reacted in the way it did in swiftly condemning her before knowing everything? well, this station is under a lot of pressure. it wants to be a rapt response administration, it doesn t want to make a mistake of the bush administration of sticking by
context. now, her old boss says he wants her back and is offering a profound apology. i want to make sure everyone understands, this was my decision. and it was a decision that i regret, having made in haste. i ve learned a lot of lessons from this experience in the last couple of days. one of the lessons i learned is that these types of decisions require time. i didn t take the time. i should have. and as a result, a good woman has gone through a very difficult period. and i ll have to live with that for a long, long time. so will she go back to work for the same people, who, as she said, threw her under the bridge? we spoke to shirley sherrod earlier on american morning. i m not so sure that going back to the department is the thing to do. i know that i have lots of farmers and others in georgia that i ve been getting messages, saying, shirley, please come back to work with rural department in georgia. but that s not what the offer is.
for a woman whose comments were taken way out of context. the white house even acknowledging that the shirley sherrod situation was bungled. you ll hear her reaction on all of this, including her thoughts at getting back at the guy mosted the video, andrew breitbart. another embarrassing moment for bp, admitting it photo shopped the demand center to make it look busier than it was. we ll show you what cutting and paste can go do. thousands of people without power this morning. trees and power lines pulled out of the ground all over connecticut. at least four tornado warnings were issued as a dangerous batch of storms ripped across the northeast. can we expect more later today? some answers from the cnn extreme weather team. first, the white house trying to make good with former agriculture department official shirley sherrod who we just spoke to moments ago on our show. she was foreed out of her post when a portion about comments about race were posted online. comments taken out
you know, that happened late yesterday. and i really have not had a chance to look at he told me he would send the offer in writing. i haven t had a chance to see that yet. i m not so sure, i m not so sure that going back to the department is the thing to do. i know that i have lots of farmers and people in georgia, i ve been getting messages, shirley, please come back to rural development in georgia. but that s not what the offer is. as i understand it would be something to do with civil rights, perhaps in an office of outreach? yes, yes, it would. and that s you know, that s another reason why i would not want to be the one person at usda that s responsible for issues of discrimination within the agency.
i think if we learn if we look back and decide what we want to learn out of this, i think it is, as i said, everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all of the events. kiran, initially, white house aides said that they do not the president necessarily to pick up a phone and apologize. we ll see if that changes. we ll see if the mood or tone has changed over the last 12 to 24 hour us. it is unclear whether or not the white house will give any further details about kind of the back-and-forth discussions about the white house and the agriculture department before this was opened. as one aide put it, look, they don t want to turn this into another beer summit. clearly it s a teachable moment, but they want to point outs that it was pretty much handled by the department.