inside four weeks until iowa. a brand new poll showing newt gingrich as running away with it. now his past used by conservative critics. more disturbing allegations against jerry sandusky. another man saying he abused him and gave him alcohol as a boy. i have been excused of being a tramt traitor to both sides. a woman goes from wall street protester to wall street professional on this american morning. captions by vitac www.vitac.com all right. good morning, everyone. it s wednesday, december 7th. ali is off today. i m christine romans along with carol costello on this american morning. welcome, everyone. welcome and good morning. up first this morning, newt gingrich threatening to run away with the republican race. his bid for the gop nomination going gang busters. it s beginning to look like a gingrich juggernaut. look at the latest gallup poll. among republican voters nationwide, 37% now say gingrich is their choice. he leads mitt romney by a whopping 15
the former illinois governor is going to have an opportunity to speak before the federal judge announces the sentence. prosecutors want blagojevich to get at least 15 years for his conviction on corruption charges. a 19-year-old man says that jerry sandusky gave him whiskey when he was 12, then sexually abused him. sandusky s latest accuser claims it happened once inside an office inside the penn state football building. the man says he was a member of the second mile. that is sandusky s charity for disadvantaged kids. sarah ganim broke the story. there s a lot of new things in this allegation. first of all, we ve never heard that sandusky gave one of his victims alcohol. in this situation this man alleges it was in an office in this building and he was given whiskey while jerry sandusky talked to him about his life and how he ended up with the second mile and then he was assaulted. so i m going to speak live with sara ganim in a few minutes. his preliminary hearing is
south carolina. where robbers attack two people who were leaving a walmart. in kissimmee, florida, a fight breaks out at a big box jewelry counter. turning to l.a., a woman actually used pepper spray to fend off her fellow shoppers. and in north carolina, an off-duty police officer pepper sprays an unruly crowd. happy shopping season, folks. these of course are just the exceptions. the one thing mostly the shoppers are out there trying to fight is just maybe some fatigue. the only thing they want to attack is their chris pass list. but still, 152 million people. that s the number the estimated number of people that will be shopping over this thanksgiving weekend. also roughly the population of france, italy and saudi arabia combined just to give you perspective there. still not impressed? a cnn poll finds 23% of americans plan to shop today, just today alone, on black friday. we re not going to know until much later how much they re actually spending and if that s going
a sign that there s going to be lawsuits ahead and they will involve the second mile. watch the second mile. that s the charity that jerry sandusky filed. they are right in the middle of this, and all the children that jerry sandusky is alleged to have abused came from second mile programs. he met them through the charity programs. governor rendell, i want to ask you a question about your successor. look, the msnbc audience knows you as the chief executive of the state. i need to remind everybody you were the district attorney of philadelphia. you were a very successful prosecutor, wand that in mind i want to show you a rudimentary timeline that we ve created which draws attention to the fact that it was in january of 2009 that victim number one, as he s known to the grand jury report, then age 15, came forward. the report went from the clinton county d.a. to the center county d.a. and then was referred to the pennsylvania attorney general s office. tom corbett was the attorney gener
general s office. tom corbett was the attorney general. the patriot news is reporting that for the first 15 months of the investigation there was only one state trooper assigned to this case, and it was not until november of this year, this month, that sandusky was finally arrested, and so many at home and across the country are now asking why the delay and were there sufficient resources committed by the attorney general s office to this investigation? well, michael, that s a hard question for me to answer. i would assume for a moment that the patriot news story is correct, and, you know, we can t always assume that, but the patriot news is a really good newspaper and i ll assume for the moment that the story is correct. you don t know what evidence the grand jury was dealing with, what evidence the attorney general, now governor corbett was dealing with, so it s hard to answer without knowing the inner workings, but let me say this. the one thing we do know, everyone who has