In new york, and massachusetts and connecticut and rhode island and New Hampshire and across the region, 650,000 homes and businesses are without power this morning. New york mayor Michael Bloomberg urged people to stay off of the roads, but the long island expredzway is littered with cars that became stuck overnight. New england is getting the brunt of the snow with two feet of snow in boston. And Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has banned every vehicle on every road in the state. And the snow is creating a travel nightmare for passengers with more than 5 sthou flights cancelled already. We will have updates throughout the show this morning, but now we are turning to a threat that is more manmade than naturemad naturemade, and that is the threat of war. This mile an houring, i wa inii morning i want to direct your attention to a little skirmish in the china sea and the bbc it is calling it a little skirmish that could have big, big consequences, think world war iii consequences,
there is no time like the present especially when justice is overdue. monday, alabama legislature unveiled proposals that might finally of turn the convictions of the young men who were ranging from age 12 and 19 who were falsely accused and arrested for raping two white women in a freight train ride in alabama in 1931. the landmark case would eventually reach the supreme court and end the exclusion of black citizens from juries, but the scotsboro boys would spend their lives proving their innocence. for years it has been a blight on the legal system and time to correct the wrong, so my let ther week goes to alabama s governor. governor robert bentley, it is me, melissa. for 82 years, clarence, charlie, haywood, ozzie, and eugene and roy have been deserved to be clear officially of a crime they did not commit. given that we are in the middle
bates, one of the alleged rape victims recanted and testified for the defense. he reversal set off a year of court cases with the rape charges being dropped for five of the nine and the four convicted in the retrials. ultimately, it set up a lifetime of struggle for nine innocent young men. so if you need some encouragement, governor, to finally right this wrong, there s former alabama governor bib graves who commuted the death sentence of one of the scotsboro boys, clarence noyes, to a life in prison which was a step, and george wallace even though he was inextricably linked to segregation pardoned norris, and another small step or recent example north carolina governor bev purdue who signed pardons for the wilmington 10 who were wrongly convicted 40 years ago in the firebombing of
0 president obama. just last month in his second inaugural address president obama called for an inlasting p does not require perpetual war, but that is what this administration has largely institutionalized. this week, michael isikoff got a hold of a secret department of justice memo which outlines the legal basis for the administration to use legal force in count terrorism tactics even against american citizens. this is the provocation for use of force and one that trumps constitutional protections and it goes further that the military can engage in a preemptive attack even without clear evidence that a specific p attack is eminent. while we can be sure that a mere territorial dispute will not lead our troops back into the and the definition is so vague that drones can be employed anywhere in the world against united states citizens without due process of law and that makes us ask, when is the united states, the president, and the administration very often in secret justified in proj