blizzard warnings, heavy snow, ice, covered roads, the upper midwest and northeast getting hammered right now. some areas are getting socked a second time no less. just as they were starting to dig out. it's being called the worst airport security breach since the september 11 attacks. only it didn't involve an unruly passenger. why the tsa is under fire for something that happened online. plus, this convicted child molester is now 100 years old and free on parole. is he still a threat? it is so good to have you with us today. thanks for kpg me company. you're with hln "news and views." i hope you are not one of the so many people that are in the blizzard areas today. blizzard warnings in effect right now in parts of illinois but drivers all across the upper midwest are dealing with ice-slicked roads and people venturing outdoors are bundling up and watching their steps. certainly new england is getting hammered by this monster storm, too. look at the roads in worcester, massachusetts, blanketed with sleet and snow and that white stuff is expected to stop and turn into wind-driven rain at some point today as well which is scary. you hope it doesn't ice over. the weather center says 45-mile-per-hour gusts are possible in some areas there as well. that doesn't look pretty does it? nebraska getting pummeled again today as well. they were already trying to digth way out of yesterday's nasty storm which dumped as much as 10 inches of snow on parts of omaha. drifts in some areas were up to four feet, in fact. now, this storm also brought wind gusts near 100 miles an hour to texas and new mexico yesterday. the surveillance video shows the roof flying off a business. this is in el paso. do you see it? no one was hurt. it did hit several cars though. one man who works nearby saw it happen. >> this is the worst i've ever seen. i've never seen it like this, seeing trash cans, roofs flying off. i've never seen a roof fly off next to me. >> strong winds complicated this high drama in houston, too. rescue crews saved several men who were stuck on the side of a building yesterday, some 12 stories up. the workers had to hold on for dear life when a window washer scaffold broke loose making their platform sway in the wind. emergency crews got the workers to safety by removing some window panes in order to get them into the building. well, people who live near a chemical plant outside houston are waiting for the all clear. an explosion rocked the facility this morning sending a mushroom cloud of black smoke into the blue texas sky. now, police and fire departments from surrounding communities converged on the american plant on the houston ship channel. apparently no one was hurt thankfully but nearby neighbors remain under a shelter in place order. new information is emerging about what took place after tiger woods' car crashed november 27th. on "nancy grace" last night there were indications he might have been more seriously injured than previously believed. >> doctor, tiger woods we now learn was admitted to the intensive care unit. reports surfacing that he was actually intubated to stabilize his breathing. what does that say to you? >> there was some serious trauma, either trauma that had injured his head, there could have been cervical or neck injuries, chest trauma, but also raises the question if there was intoxication, so if you're in a near comatose state because of drugs or alcohol, you may have to be put on a ventilator in order to prevent any problems with your breathing, you sustain your blood flow, so this is not something that's done without really serious injury. >> now, a police report indicates a florida trooper wanted a subpoena for woods' hospital blood test to see if he had been drinking but that petition was rejected. tiger woods hasn't only disappeared from public view since this incident. you might have noticed. he's disappeared from primetime tv advertising as well. nielsen research finds not a single ad featuring the golfer has aired since november 29th and he has been dropped by sports drink giant gatorade. it's continuing its tiger focus drink or discontinuing it, a decision which was reportedly reached before his accident and first reported by an industry publication two days in fact before that mishap. forget lip stick on the collar. text messaging is the new way people are finding out about cheating spouses. according to the "new york times" more divorce lawyers are having their clients provide text messages as proof of infidelity. and the american bar association offers classes on how to use electronic evidence. text messages now outnumber regular phone calls, cell phone calls, by 3-1. homeland security has taken action against some people directly involved in what is being called the most serious airport security breach since 9/11. secretary janet napolitano says the contractor improperly posted a secret tsa guide for screening airport passengers online and that person has been disciplined. she says tsa supervisors were also at fault. the document was available for a short time on the federal business opportunity website. copies are now making the rounds all over the internet. some say it's like giving a how-to manual to bad guys who want to get past security. >> it gives up everything, a playbook for anything you want to know to get through the screening process with the i.d.ing systems, the explosive trace systems, who gets accepted, certain screening procedures. it just has way too much information on there. >> one example of what's in the manual how screeners cut corners during peak travel times. every page includes the warning, quote, no part of the manual may be disclosed to people who aren't need to know. what makes this even more embarrassing here is some of the sensitive information was covered with black boxes that can easily be removed. the tsa says the information is outdated and it's confident airport security remains strong but some lawmakers are suggesting those directly involved face criminal charges. let me ask you, have you always dreamed of having a daughter or maybe you only want to raise a son? gender selection is legal in the united states. not everyone thinks it's the right thing to do, however. we want to ask you. what do you think about choosing the sex of your baby? okay. the technology that allows parents to pick the sex of their child has been around for at least 20 years but now scientific advancements are taking it main stream. that has experts concerned. preimplantation genetic diagnosis or pgd oshlg nationally was developed to allow embryos to be tested for genetic disease but the process can also be used to select the gender of the embryo implanted during invitro fertilization. many health experts believe it's wrong even unethical to use the technology for nonmedical purposes and critics say it could lead to gender imbalance particularly in societies with a traditional preference for boys such as china. others say it opens up more choice in family planning. gender selection is banned in most countries but again it is legal in the u.s. and the procedure including ibf costs around $18,000. >> i absolutely agree. >> a huge story. we know there are thousands of you out there right now trying to start a family. but is it okay to pick the sex of the baby in advance? richelle carey? i got to tell you, my facebook lit up on this one. how about you? >> it did. and people's initial reaction was this is wrong. this is crazy. and then started to turn into a real discussion. back and forth. okay? so we got some samples here for you. the question, christi is science hurting or helping? a big response. taking the your views tour, this respondent had this to say. >> personally there shouldn't be a choice. whatever is meant to be will be. i think, you know, any kids, boy, girl, it's all a blessing and imagine if you just had one girl and one boy and you're like, okay. i have one of each. i'm finished. what happens to the other kids that could fulfill your lives? so i think it should be left up fate, god. >> all right. i got a caller on the line who disagrees. she has been holding, calling from indiana. what do you think about this? >> caller: well, i think there are many different reasons to choose the sex of your child before it's born. not to mention just one would be the genetic diseases passed on through one sex or the other. personally, i knew at the beginning of my reproductive life i would have problems conceiving and carrying a child to terms. knowing that my pregnancies were going to be few and difficult, i wanted a boy and a girl like most people and that was it. instead, i ended up giving birth to four boys. now, i'm very thankful for all the children i have but if i could have had one of each, i would have stopped there. that would have been much easier on my body and the child's body, the unborn child's body and certainly my pocketbook. >> okay. vicki, speaking of pocketbooks right now, it is very expensive to have this procedure because it has to go with invitro. imagine way in the future that this could be possible for anybody, just a very common thing. would you be okay with that, no concerns at all? >> caller: yes, i would. i'd be fine with that. >> okay. >> caller: i think there are plenty of people who want girls and plenty of people who want boys and it would equal out in the end anyway. with our over population it would be good to have less people. >> vicki, thank you for your phone call. got lots of viewers weighing in on my facebook page as well. mallory says this. the way i'm approaching this is the same way i approach abortion. it's not for me to judge, but if other people want to use that option, more power to them. here's what jamey has to say. no, i really think this is crossing the line. what happened to using old wives tales? why do people think we need to control everything? we need to remember, a boy or girl doesn't matter as long as the baby is healthy and every child whether a boy/girl is a gift from god. this is a great debate we are having today. gender selection. do you think this is a good idea or was this the beginning of a very slippery slope? what's on your page, christy? >> i had one person write in. why not? you get to pick the house you live in, the car you drive. talk about comparing things. a child is a bigger investment of both of those. might as well get what you want is what he said. >> all right. just getting started though. >> absolutely. >> let's remind people of the question. would you like to choose your child's gender? would you want to be able to? is it ethical, unethical or going too far? are we playing god with the natural order of things? think about this. call us right now at 1-877-tell-hln. e-mail us at cnn.com/hln or jump into the facebook world if you want, richelle carey, hln and we're just getting started. we'll keep talking about this. >> we hope you jump in. richelle, thank you. well, he was fined mucho dinero for his odd touchdown on sunday. he has to pay $30,000 for donning a sombrero and poncho after scoring a touchdown. this fine comes a month after he was fined 20 grand and reprimanded by the league for pretending to bribe an official with a dollar. his sense of humor is getting him in trouble. the couple who apparently got into a state diner at the white house without an invitation may get invited to another event today, a congressional hearing. find out what kind of rsvp they may send to the investigating committee. they refused to testify before congress. the attorney for tareq and michaele salahi says the couple will invoke the fifth amendment to avoid self-incrimination. the house homeland security committee is set to vote on whether to subpoena the couple at 2:00 p.m. eastern today. a federal investigation is under way. the l.a. city council is getting ready to vote on guidelines for dispensing medical marijuana. it's legal in california but los angeles hasn't done much to regulate it. the city believes as many as a thousand distense ris are operating there. the new rules would reduce the number to 70 and push marijuana store fronts out of neighborhoods and into industrial areas. the white house is praising ten senators who hammered out a plan for health care compromise. the plan won't be made public until the congressional budget office assesses the impact on federal spending. democratic sources say it would allow people to buy into the government's medicare system at the age of 55 and say it would also establish a nonprofit insurance program run by the government. it would be modeled on the current health insurance plan for federal employees. a republican congressman from wisconsin wants to shut down any talk of legislation to reduce emissions blamed for global warming. representative james sensenbrenner claims e-mails reportedly stolen from climate scientists expose them as manipulating data and trying to stifle debate even though the house has already approved climate legislation he says that congress will not act until those practices stop. >> i call it scientific facism. we should not be making decisions that will cost the american rate payor billions or even trillions of dollars in higher electric and natural gas bills based upon scientific facism. >> sensenbrenner says he will make the same argument at the copenhagen climate conference. former vice president al gore says opponents of regulating greenhouse gas emissions are wildly distorting what's in the purported stolen e-mails. gore, who won the nobel peace prize for promoting global warming education spoke on cnn's "american morning." >> well, they took a few phrases out of context. these are private e-mails more than ten years old and they've tried to blow it up into something that it's really not. just to pick one example, some of those exchanges you're talking about had to do with years ago whether or not a study that they thought was of poor quality and shouldn't belong in the scientific report should be excluded from the report. well, they had exchanges back and forth and it ended up in the report. fully analyzed and discussed. so if you take one little thing from ten years ago out of context and describe it inaccurately then it becomes a controversy without any real substance. >> now, at the copenhagen conference, itself, the head of the epa explained how that agency intends to use its newly announced authority to regulate u.s. greenhouse gas emissions. u.n. weather forecasters announced when all the data is assembled the last ten years will go down as the hottest decade ever recorded. president obama will soon leave for norway to collect this year's nobel peace prize. during tomorrow's ceremony the president will also accept a $1.4 million check. now, some critics wonder if he's done enough to deserve it but the nobel committee says he's working to solve the world's problems and the president by the way is the only -- only the fourth u.s. president to win that award. okay. no doubt you've seen the price of gold going through the roof. i know. how can you cash in on the gold rush? hln money expert clark howard tells you how to get a fair deal. >> have you heard all these pitches on the web or on radio or on tv for how you can make a lot of money by selling your old jewelry? that people are buying it for the gold because the value of gold has gone up and up and up. well, "consumer reports" did undercover shopping where they tested a loft the online and advertised gold services to see if you really were getting paid a fair deal for the intrinsic value of the gold. and, no. most of the time people were getting paid only about ten cents on the dollar to 25 cents on the dollar of what their gold was actually worth. think about that. you're going to score some quick cash but if it's only 0.1 of what you should get that's not a deal at all. so what is the right way for you to find out what your jewelry is actually worth? i can help you with that on my website. my website? cnn.com/clark howard. >> get more terrific consume aerodynamic vice from clark howard every saturday and sunday at noon and 4:00 p.m. eastern right here on hln "news and views." clark will help you save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. think about this. a 100-year-old pedophile is just released from jail but authorities say don't let his age fool you. why they say this man is still a threat. you might need to look out your window to know this. blizzard warnings are in effect right now in parts of illinois but drivers all across the upper midwest are dealing with ice-slicked roads and people venturing outdoors and bundling up and watching their step here. new england is getting hammered by this monster storm, too. look at the roads in worcester, massachusetts, blanketed with sleet and snow. that white stuff is expected to stop and then turn into wind-driven rain at some point today. hope it doesn't freeze over. the national weather service says 45-mile-per-hour gusts are possible in some areas there. we love the white stuff during the holidays but that doesn't look fun. nebraskans getting pummeled again today and they were already trying to dig their way out of yesterday's powerful storm that dumped as much as 10 inches of snow on parts of omaha. drifts in some areas, think about this, up to four feet. you might be looking at this thinking all right. where is it going? who is under the weather cloud next? our meteorologist has been watching this for us. who is next in line? >> well, they're still getting it in the midwest pretty much in terms of next in line everybody who's getting it now will continue. they might be a little changeable, rain changing to snow or, you know, snow conditions turning into brutal cold conditions. so we still have a long way to go with this storm. you can see that snow stretching here across the midwest through the great lakes. you don't see a lot in the ohio valley but the winds are really brutal here still and you can see into the northeast. in fact, we even have some rain showers, some pretty nasty thunderstorms going all the way down here into florida. so millions of people being affected by this storm at this hour. the worst of it in terms of accumulating snowfall is over with across the midwest but the winds are going to continue to stay pretty strong. we'll put a couple of these wind locateors on here to give you an idea. you can see just north of des moines babout 30 miles per hour. these are sustained winds not to mention the gusts. you were talking about the three-foot drifts i guarantee you out in the wide open country in this area and across wisconsin they'll be seeing drifts a little bigger than that, about 20 miles per hour there in the milwaukee area and chicago about ten to 15 miles per hour. now, when you put winds like that combined with the snowy conditions, and it's just a nightmare for travel, take a look at all the delays that we have. these are just the major ones. not to mention about a half dozen to a dozen other, smaller airports that are dealing with the delays because of de-icing. more than two hours at laguardia, about an hour at jfk. newark pushing two hours. over an hour in philly as well as teterboro and into the cincinnati area. the northeast is going to be feeling the brunt of this storm this afternoon and into tonight but by tomorrow the majority of this is going to be out of here and we'll watch for the wind and possibly putting some power outages here in the ohio valley stretching into the northeast. >> we're just getting word from o'hare in chicago that 200 flights have been canceled and they're on a 45-minute delay. all righty. thank you for the heads up. you know, people who live near a chemical plant outside houston are waiting for the all clear this hour. an explosion rocked the facility this morning sending a mushroom cloud of bl