officials are focused on this one 26-mile stretch of a dirt road to nowhere. it s actually the levee. see the crew on the left hand side, it s for the yazoo and mississippi river. this levee is holding it back. however, there s one foot between the level of the water and when it goes over the top. the prediction is it s going to go over the top. we were talking with the secretary of state of mississippi, they expect it to happen overnight. water going over the levee is not the end of the world unless it triggers the collapse of the levee. they don t want to guesstimate. i put the question of how bad it would be with peter. here is what he said. if this levee were to fail, what are the consequences and who would be impacted and how far? the town is 30 to 35 miles from here. that town would be under water. numerous towns would be under water. highways under water. thousands of people have to evacuate the area. hundreds of thousands of acres would be under water. we would floo
it s going to take everything we have got. all right. let s turn back to this morganza spill way, just north of baton rouge, residents living west of the mississippi all the way down the flood plane have been warned about what this might mean, it will mean flooded homes and farms. ed, do we know when they might open this thing up? we re probably looking at sometime this afternoon, t.j., probably 2:30 central time, 3:30 eastern time. this is all very much in the air and we re waiting to get official confirmation in the next three hours perhaps early in the afternoon. to set the scene, all this water you see behind me, this is a holding reservoir for the morganza spill way. the fact that there s this much
new orleans and baton rouge would be saved. also mirroring arizona, the second state with some stiff immigration laws. the governor nathan beale signed that law yesterday. the author will be here with me in the studio live and also someone who s against it. you want to hear the conversation. also another conversation you ll be interested to hear, a rare interview with hank aaron, talking about baseball, how it s letting down the black community. also talking about who the real home run king should be. from the cnn center, this is your cnn saturday morning. glad you could spend part of your day here with us. it s 7:00 a.m. in morgan city, louisiana. all eyes on morgan city today. let s talk about this flooding, major flooding has swamped the upper mississippi and ohio river valley is now making aim at lower mississippi. later today the army corps of engineers could open the morganza spill way in louisiana. it has not been opened in more than 40 years. w450i why would they
say don t single out just this one industry. right. well, let s move on a bunch of senators and members of congress did finally see for the first time photos of a dead bin laden. what did we learn from these senators who were talking about it? well, after so much pressure about should they be released there were members here who wanted a chance to see it and the cia made it available, also able to be see some of the video that the president and the his national security team were able to watch as it was all happening. what we heard from some members who were in law enforcement themselves, a former attorney general that kind of thing that they believed it was important evidence. i think some of the newer members were more eager, if you can use the word eager to go see this as a way of having the opportunity to interact with the cia and be able to talk about this. somebody like john mccain said i ve seen enough dead people in my life, i don t have any interest. you have a mix of reac
senators this is the finance committee that says that gas prices are part of the responsibility of these very, very profitable oil companies, but from the ceos, you will hear a different argument. they will say that these subsidies, as they are called by democrats are jillion just standard tax deductions that businesses get and that to take those away would actually be counterproductive in the view of these oil executive it would inhibit in their view, future exploration and business development and that, of course, always leads its way to jobs. so, that is backdrop. but what democrats here want do is take away roughly $21 billion of these deductions that the oil companies get to take and to put that toward the national debt. it s the kind of political argument that is very popular when people are paying more and more at the pump. so expect the ceos to give some sort of a sympathetic nod to their customers and the constituents of these senators about the price at the pump, but it s one