The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a discussion of the Republicans' outbreak of religious war, Margaret Warner and Jan Crawford Greenberg report on today's Supreme Court arguments on frisking by the police, Jeffrey Kaye previews a California vote on juvenile justice, and Ray Suarez talks about the stuff of life with author Matt Ridley. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: There were presidential primaries today in Virginia and Washington State. The Republicans voted in both states and had caucuses tonight in North Dakota. The sole Democratic contest was in Washington. Also today, Governor Bush again criticized Senator McCain for attacking leaders of the religious right. He called it spiteful. But McCain repeated his charge that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are on the extremes. We'll have more on the Republicans' religious fight right after this News Summary. Philip Morris said today it might be open to new federal tobacco controls, the company is America's biggest tobacco producer. A top executive told several newspapers it's willing to let the Food and Drug Administration regulate sales to young people, among other things. It still opposes letting the FDA classify tobacco as a drug. At the White House President Clinton welcomed the statement.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I'm heartened today by news reports that the nation's leading cigarette maker is now willing to accept government regulation of tobacco. That is an important step forward. Every day 3,000 young people smoke for the first time, and 1,000 of them will die earlier as a result. We have a duty to do everything we can to save and lengthen their lives by protecting our young people from the dangers of tobacco.

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering a case that would decide whether the FDA has the authority to regulate tobacco. At the court today, the Justices heard arguments in two cases about police power to search people. A Texas case involved whether officers may squeeze luggage to check for drugs. A Florida case asked whether police may stop and frisk someone for a gun after getting an anonymous tip. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. A first grader was shot and killed at a Michigan school today, and police said the shooter was another first grader. It happened in Mount Morris Township, northwest of Detroit. Investigators said a six-year- old boy fired a single shot during class, hitting a six- year-old girl. It was unclear whether the shooting was accidental or intentional. But a prosecutor said the children may have scuffled on the playground yesterday. Overseas today, the president of Mozambique appealed for more help in rescuing flood victims. Thousands of people were still trapped on roofs and treetops. We have a report from Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MARK AUSTIN: A family just clinging on. 14 in all, 11 of them children, trapped in the tree branches now for two days. At last, rescue is at hand. A South African helicopter comes to the rescue. As the winch man is lowered, suddenly the rescue is more urgent. A young boy has fallen into the water, blown off by the helicopter's down draft. The winch man tries to drag him to safety, but it's no easy task, and he slips away. The boy is in danger of drowning, when finally he is saved. And there's still the rest of the family to be winched to safety. For the exhausted helicopter crews, the arduous task of trying to pluck people to safety is compounded by an appalling dilemma: Who do they rescue, and who do they leave behind? There are still fewer than a dozen helicopters, simply not enough to cope. These people are waving. Do we pick them up? Maybe someone's sick or injured. Or what about this group here? Or here? Perhaps we can go back to them later. The South African air force says it's rescued some 5,000 people in the last two days, but more help is needed to try to respond to the scale of a disaster, which has simply overwhelmed this country's fragile infrastructure.

JIM LEHRER: In Chechnya today, Russia's military said it captured the last major rebel stronghold in the southern mountains. A top commander said it marked the end of the full-scale offensive in the region. But lower-ranking Russian officers said fierce fighting was still underway. Journalist Andrei Babitsky was released and returned to Moscow today. It was done in apparent reaction to President Putin's questioning of the way of the case was handled. Russian troops detained Babitsky in January over his reporting in Chechnya. After that, he disappeared, before resurfacing Friday in a neighboring republic. He still faces investigation. The European Union vowed today to continue its diplomatic isolation of Austria. It did so despite the resignation of Jeorg Haider as head of the far-right Freedom Party. The group joined a coalition cabinet in the Austrian government earlier this month. In Washington, President Clinton said it was too early to tell if Haider's resignation would make a difference. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Republicans' religious problem, police frisking, juvenile justice in California, and a conversation about the human genome.

FOCUS - RELIGION & POLITICS

JIM LEHRER: Spencer Michels begins our look at religion and Republicans.

SPENCER MICHELS: Texas Governor George Bush has frequently introduced religion into speeches and debates by mentioning that he's a born-again Christian. He talked about it at a debate in Iowa last December.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as your Savior, it changes you heart and changes your life. And that's what happened to me.

SPENCER MICHELS: In the New Hampshire primary Bush lost to Senator McCain. In Bush's first stop in South Carolina, the site of the next primary, was at Bob Jones University, a school grounded in biblical doctrine. Nearly every Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has spoken there.

SPOKESMAN: How can I communicate God's message rather than my message?

SPENCER MICHELS: Bob Jones University was founded in 1927 by a segregationist who believed that born-again Christian students needed a refuge from the outside world. Even the school's web site acknowledges that if there are those who wish to charge us with being anti-Catholicism, we plead guilty but we are not Catholic haters. Bush won South Carolina overwhelmingly, but is appeal to the religious right there haunted him in the next primary. McCain's campaign made phone calls to Catholic voters attacking Bush's appearance at Bob Jones.

SPOKESMAN: This is a Catholic voter alert. Bob Jones has made strong anti-Catholic statements, including calling the Pope the "anti-Christ" and the Catholic Church a "satanic cult." John McCain, a pro-life Senator, has strongly criticized this anti-Catholic bigotry, while Governor Bush has stayed silent, while gaining the support of Bob Jones.

SPENCER MICHELS: In Michigan, Bush got help from evangelist Pat Robertson in getting religious voters to the polls.

PAT ROBERTSON: I urge you to go to the polls and vote in tomorrow's election. This is Pat Robertson. Thank you and God bless you.

SPENCER MICHELS: But Bush lost the Michigan primary overwhelmingly among all voters. And over the weekend he wrote a letter to Cardinal John O'Connor of New York saying he had erred by not separating himself from the University's positions. At a news conference Monday he attacked the Arizona senator, who has called himself a proud Reagan Republican.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: First of all, Senator McCain is running a stealth campaign, saying one thing and doing another. He's playing the religious card. That's not Reaganesque.

SPENCER MICHELS: McCain fired back while campaigning in Virginia, attacking two stalwarts of the Christian right.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.

SPENCER MICHELS: Today, while campaigning in Stockton, California, McCain continued to bring up the issue.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: The overwhelming numbers of people in the Christian right - we want them back; we want them to join us. But they have to reject those leaders that are on extremes that have caused frankly a very harmful impact on not only the American people but our party.

SPENCER MICHELS: As voters in Virginia and Washington State went to the polls today, Bush held a news conference in Ohio.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I don't appreciate the politics that still goes on out of Senator McCain, the politics of saying I'm going to run a campaign to tell the truth when, in fact, this is a man who yesterday authorized calls in this commonwealth of Virginia, calling me an anti-Catholic bigot. That kind of politics needs to be set aside. It's the kind of politics that continues to persist today because of Senator McCain.

SPENCER MICHELS: And Bush once again said today he regretted not speaking out against anti-Catholic violence when he had the might of Bob Jones University.

JIM LEHRER: Four perspectives now on this fight within the Republican Party: Haley Barbour, a Bush supporter, is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee; New York Congressman Peter King was a Bush supporter but he is now endorsing McCain; Marvin Olasky is a Bush adviser and he's a professor of journalism at the University of Texas and editor of the Conservative World Magazine; David Brooks is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, another conservative magazine, but one that has not endorsed either of the Republican candidates.

Mr. Barbour, what's going on?

HALEY BARBOUR: I think Senator McCain has seen some states that he's had a hard time getting Republicans to vote for him, and it's made him the first candidate I remember who has attacked Republicans in the Republican primary in order - in Virginia to try to get Democrats to cross over and vote in a Republican primary for our nominee. And I do think it's as simple as that.

JIM LEHRER: It's Senator McCain's fault exclusively that religion has come into this campaign?

HALEY BARBOUR: Religion is in all sorts of campaigns. I mean, there are all sorts of people in - religious people - most of the Catholic Republican members of the Congress in the Senate and the governors, and that very many of them - the overwhelming majority of them are for George Bush. But it is the first time we've seen something like the Catholic voter alert, which was condemned by Cardinal Meda- the archbishop of Milwaukee - after it happened, because nobody knew it was happening, or it would have been condemned beforehand. But I feel comfortable about where we're going to end up, and I think Peter's a prime example. I think Peter King will tell you, George Bush is not anti-Catholic, is he, Peter?

JIM LEHRER: But, Peter King, how would you describe what's going on? We'll ask you whether or not... then you can answer Mr. Barbour's question. What do you think is going on here first?

REP. PETER KING: First of all, George Bush is not anti-Catholic. Nobody suggested he was. What we did say was he was willing to work with people who have an anti-Catholic bigotry to get votes in South Carolina. That's clearly what happened. Now, as to where this is going, I think that Senator McCain had an obligation to raise this issue, to show that Governor Bush in South Carolina was willing to work with people who are anti-Catholics. It's as simple as. That nothing wrong with that phone call that was made in Michigan. It was on target. It never said George Bush was anti-Catholic. What it did say is he was willing to tolerate anti-Catholics. And I think that this is a very healthy debate within the Republican Party. I also think that Senator McCain is raising very valid issues about Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and there are many people in the Republican Party who, and myself -- I usually get 100% rating in the Christian Coalition. But I am offended when I see someone like Pat Robertson constantly using the religious veneer and putting that around issues that really have no religious connotation at all.

JIM LEHRER: What about that, Mr. Barbour, the Robertson-Falwell statement from Senator McCain - and follow up now about what Peter King just said.

HALEY BARBOUR: Senator McCain yesterday attacked Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. The day before he attacked Governor Jim Gilmore and Senator John Warner. You look at the two together, and I can't come to any conclusion except that he's decided that he can't win the nomination with Republican votes, but maybe in Virginia he can incite enough Democrats in Northern Virginia to come out and vote for him in the Republican primary. I do think the important thing that Peter said is that everybody knows George Bush is not anti-Catholic, and the idea that because he went to Bob Jones University and therefore he's condoning stuff... you know, Lindsay Graham, who was John McCain's campaign manager and stood at his elbow step through the South Carolina campaign, just got an honorary degree from Bob Jones university. Lindsay Graham's not anti-catholic. Lindsay Graham is a great guy. But that's the inference that Peter would have you believe, because Lindsay Graham took an honorary degree from Bob Jones University he's associating with anti-Catholics, tolerating them?

JIM LEHRER: What about that, Congressman?

REP. PETER KING: Well, first of all, I had nothing to gain from this. I was supporting Governor Bush until he went to Bob Jones University. It would have been a lot easier for me if he hadn't gone there, but as a Catholic, I was offended because I know what Bob Jones stands for. They gave an honorary degree to Ian Paisley, the most vicious bigot in Northern Ireland. They advertise his books on their web site. Each of the presidents of Bob Jones University has continued to make anti-Catholic statements. That wasn't a campaign stop by Governor Bush. That's the way he keynoted and kicked off his campaign in South Carolina. He was sending a signal. And I did interpret that as being a signal he was willing to take the votes of that part of the Christian right which is anti-Catholic to get through in South Carolina. And I found that offensive. I still find that offensive. I'm thankful that he did finally sent a letter to Cardinal O'Connor. But I wish he hadn't waited three weeks, I wish he hadn't waited until he was out of South Carolina and was on the eve of the New York primary which has almost 50% Catholics voting in the Republican primary. By and the way, as far as getting votes of Democrats and independents, the New York primary is solely going to be among Republicans. I think Senator McCain is going to do very well in New York.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Barbour, if everything was okay on Governor Bush's going to Bob Jones University, why did he then apologize?

HALEY BARBOUR: Well, I think because when... You know, Bob Jones University has been a campaign stop, not only for Republican politicians for two generations, but the Democrat governor of South Carolina, Governor Hodges campaigned there. I mean, it's just like in South Carolina going to Clemson or going to the Citadel or going to the Darlington Raceway, the motor speedway. That's why George Bush went there. This flap that came up afterwards, as I say, if it weren't for the hypocrisy of the fact that Senator McCain's co campaign manager, the president pro tem of the South Carolina senate, is a Bob Jones graduate, and Lindsay Graham, his campaign chairman, a great congressman from South Carolina just got a degree from there. But the hypocrisy is so transparent. But they did succeed in getting the media to help them make a big issue of out of this after the fact.

JIM LEHRER: So you don't think the governor should have apologized?

HALEY BARBOUR: No. I think what the governor did was to say I recognize because a big stink was made after the fact that something was an issue I wasn't aware of before hand. And I wish I had been aware beforehand because I should have said something. And I think Bush is doing the right thing to make very plain to his friends who know he's not anti-Catholic that he sees in retrospect that this could be something that gives people a misperception about him.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now to Marvin Olasky and David Brooks. David Brooks, you heard what Congressman King just said, that this was healthy for the Republican Party. Do you agree?

DAVID BROOKS: It's great. For 20 years this Republican Party has been a marriage - since Ronald Reagan - of two things: tax-cutting economic conservatives and the religious social conservatives. John McCain is saying that coalition is dead. He's not a big tax cutter, and he just attacked PatRobertson and Jerry Falwell, the two leaders of religious conservatism. He's saying that coalition will not lead us to victory anymore. We learned that in impeachment. We've learned it over the past few years of defeat, and he's got this new coalition which he thinks will lead it, which is a conservative reform coalition, sort of a thinking man's Ross Perot, and a patriotic conservatism, which issue sort of a political Colin Powell. So he's got an entirely new coalition for the Republican Party. He says he's remaking the Republican Party, and this speech is the logical and really breathtakingly daring attempt to do that. So as an observer, it's just been great the watch and really potentially a seismic event.

JIM LEHRER: A seismic event, Mr. Olasky?

MARVIN OLASKY: Well, the old coalition is dead only if people stab it and then dance on the corpse. Actually, the... all through American history it's been the combination of libertarians and religious conservatives that have compelled a lot of the most important political changes we've had. For example, the revolution back 200 plus years ago, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are folks today we would call libertarians. Franklin really hated Pennsylvania Presbyterians. He despised them. These were the members of the religious right at this point. But he worked with them. He decided to bring them into the coalition. On the other side, you had people like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, who were very strong Christians. Today we would call them members of the religious right. They were willing to work with Franklin and Jefferson in order to topple the big government British at that time. This coalition has been successful for 20 years and it could still be as long as folks do not try to stab it.

JIM LEHRER: Well, what about David Brooks' point that like it or not, John McCain is challenging the whole premise of this and saying, "hey, wait a minute. There's another way to go?"

MARVIN OLASKY: Well, he's not really challenging the whole premise of it. He is trying to get political advantage here right now in a way that distracts us from the main issues. You know, it's important to looks at questions of interracial dating, but it's actually more important to look at questions of what happens to these kids growing up in inner cities, that compassionate conservatism is designed to help. That's what Governor Bush wanted to do. This whole campaign has gotten away from that. And we're dealing with issues that divide us instead of dealing with ways to go from the successes of welfare reform to the second stage of really helping poor people in inner cities.

JIM LEHRER: What about that point, David Brooks, this may be an important debate, but it isn't what it ought to be about?

DAVID BROOKS: On policy grounds, you know, this campaign is sometimes depicted as if it's Chez Guevara versus Francisco Franco, but they're both moderate conservatives. On most issues they are together. One area they different on is how they talk about public morality. Bush is a sincere Christian, we saw that in the clip - he talks that way. But when you talk to McCain about public morality, even about impeachment and the Clinton scandal, he talks as a patriot; he talks in a secular language. His book was called "Faith of My Fathers." His face is in the country. It's a patriotic talk. He's very uncomfortable talking about the sex scandals, the private morality. He lovers talking about the fund-raising scandals. And that really is a different way of talking. And it leads to some policy distinctions because McCain doesn't talk about sin and trying to alleviate sin in the inner city or elsewhere. He talks about selfishness. If you look at McCain's career, it is a series of crusades against people he thinks are selfish. The tobacco industry, special interest. There is some policy implication, but on many issues, they are just straight down the line, moderate, conservative, both of them.

JIM LEHRER: You think the party can come together after all of this? Let me ask you another question. Why is religion still such a volatile subsequent like this? It's just exploded suddenly because of George Bush's going to make a speech at that South Carolina University.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think it's always... America's a religious country. But I think one of the thing Bob Jones signifies, the potential that Bob Jones is the Willie Horton of the Republican Party. Just as Willie Horton symbolizes the excess of liberalism, Bob Jones symbolizes conservative growing out of step with American culture. And this became an issue because up until now no candidate was willing to challenge the religious right - the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. But two things have happened. One, John McCain came along, who happens to be a challenging sort of guy. Second, religious conservatives have grown less powerful and certainly less organized this time than they were four years ago or eight years ago.

JIM LEHRER: How do you see the Bob Jones thing, do you see it the same way, Mr. Olasky?

MARVIN OLASKY: Well, I see that as an opportunity to try to develop a dialogue here on these issues. But we're not seeing that. We're seeing a lot of ridicule of those folks. I find it interesting listening to David. A couple weeks ago I wrote a column in the Austin American Statesman explaining exactly what David is now coming to, that, in fact, this is a battle between folks who emphasize the biblical virtues of faith, hope and charity, and others who are very uncomfortable with any mention of Christ and so find in Senator McCain a person of great biography and valor who emphasizes some of the classical virtues of courage and bravery and discipline and fortitude. Those are very good virtues, too. But there's a real difference here. I wrote a column, and rather than deal with that, David Brooks and others have decided to ridicule that. I started out writing about... Starting with Tom Wolfe who wrote in "A Man in Full" about the religion of Zeus. And I played off that into looking at the difference between Christian and classical virtues. Instead of dealing with the substance, David has a column in this week's "Newsweek" that just ridicules that whole notion. And this is exactly what a lot of Christian conservatives object to. These folks are not poor and stupid and easily led and ignorant. These are folks who are intelligent but instead of being willing to enter into a dialogue on some of these very basic issues of what our lives are all about, what's the purpose of our prosperity and so forth, they are just met with attacks and ridicule. It's an attempt to close off debate, and it's not something that's going to be successful either for the Republican Party or for the country as a whole.

JIM LEHRER: Haley Barbour, is this kind of thing we're talking about tonight healthy for your party?

HALEY BARBOUR: I think in some ways it's not. However, I don't think it's going to be a big problem come November. People asked me if I think our party will be divided because of this primary or because of disagreements. Albert Gore will unite the Republican Party. When Republicans look at do we wantfour more years of Clinton/Gore, there will be unity like you never saw, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: But do you agree with David Brooks that this was... what was the term you used to describe this?

DAVID BROOKS: There are so many seismic..

JIM LEHRER: A seismic event.

HALEY BARBOUR: I think when Republicans personally attack other Republicans that that's bad. When people disagree on the issues and talk about why they disagree, I think that's healthy. I think these huge turnouts are healthy. But I think when people say, this person's an agent of intolerance - and even though every Peter King says - and every McCain person says they know George Bush is not anti-Catholic -- who are you kidding when you try to act that phone call wasn't to make the voter think George Bush is anti-Catholic.

JIM LEHRER: Peter King.

REP. PETER KING: It was to show that George Bush used totally poor judgment in allying himself with inside Catholics, and he must have known what Bob Jones University was about. My wife is a Catholic who grew up in Georgia. She knew all about Bob Jones University. And as far as Marvin Olasky saying we should engage in a dialogue, I don't see the purpose in engaging in a dialogue with people who say another religion is a satanic pope or the Pope is the anti-Christ or the Pope is the equivalent of Judas. That goes beyond legitimate debate. That's the type of thing that should have died with the Al Smith campaign in 1928. But to agree with Haley Barbour, yes, no matter what happens in Philadelphia, we will stand together and defeat Al Gore. But if we really want to defeat him, we should nominate John McCain because he's winning by 25 points in the polls.

JIM LEHRER: We'll leave it there. Thank you all four very much.

FOCUS - SUPREME COURT WATCH

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, two Fourth Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, juvenile justice in California, and a conversation about the human genome. Margaret Warner has the court story.

MARGARET WARNER: Police power and the fourth amendment's protection against unreasonable searches are at the heart of two cases argued today before the court. We get more on today's proceedings from NewsHour regular Jan Crawford Greenburg, legal affairs correspondent for "the Chicago Tribune."

MARGARET WARNER: First of all, Jan, before we get into the two cases, what do they have in common in terms of what's at stake?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, both cases really raise issues about the breadth of police power and how far we are going to let police go in conducting searches or investigating crimes. And also, they raise issues about a person's right to be left alone, to be free of unreasonable government interference. The defendants in both of these cases say that police went too far, that they committed illegal searches and violated their Fourth Amendment rights. As you know, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable government searches. But the police say, no, they needed to be able to conduct these searches to investigate and deter crime.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's take the first case where the 15-year-old Miami boy was frisked by police after they got an anonymous call saying there were three kids at a bus stop near a pawnshop. One of them... the one in the plaid shirt had an illegally concealed weapon. The police frisked him, and the kid in the plaid shirt had an illegally concealed gun. What were the arguments like in that case today?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, the government lawyers for both sides, for the state and Justice Department argued today.They said the police had every right to frisk the boy for the gun. There was a strong interest in public safety and also to protect the officer as well. But lawyers for the boy said, no, courts have never allowed these kind of frisks, pat downs based on anonymous tips. We always require something more, and there's a very good reason for that. The lawyer for the boy said, for example, you could have disgruntled employees or people in child custody suits calling in allegedly anonymous tips so that the police would go and bother the people.

MARGARET WARNER: As you may know, today there was another shooting case at a school. Did either side bring up that kind of, you know, kids are being asked for instance now to let the teachers know if they think a friend has a gun -- was that brought in, that sort of current events part of it?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Yes. That's one of the things that made these arguments quite remarkable today. The Justices were very concerned about societal problems and several of the Justices specifically mentioned recent episodes of mass violence. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor referred specifically to the murders at Columbine High School -- suggesting that police, if they get an anonymous tip, have some obligation in and responsibility to pursue it, particularly when a school or a public building, when people there, their lives potentially could be in danger.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, did any of the... I assume some of the justices made comments on the other side.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Right. And there was the other concern, than was the one that I had mentioned, that the boy's lawyer had focused on. Justice Kennedy, Justice Anthony Kennedy expressed concern about the validity, the reliability of anonymous tips, saying that they could be the basis for somebody going out for revenge or a vendetta. So that concern also was quite prevalent among the Justices.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the other case involved a bus passenger named Stephen Bond, I think.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: He's on a bus. Immigration authorities... An immigration officer gets on to check for illegal aliens, but at the same time starts poking the passengers bags looking for drugs. Feels a hard object in his bag. Says, may I look at it? He is given permission to open it, and he finds a brick of what? Methamphetamine? What were the arguments like in that?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The government lawyer argued today the officer didn't conduct a search at all. Mr. Bond should have known that when he threw that green duffel bag in the overhead bin that passengers were going to touch it. They were going to move it around to put their bag up there. And if a passenger can touch it, then surely an officer can touch it, as well. But the lawyer for Mr. Bond said, no, no, no. That's very different. A passenger touching a bag to move it so that he could put his wag up there than an officer coming on and squeezing it and manipulating it to try to figure out what's inside.

MARGARET WARNER: How did the Justices react?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, Justice Scalia I think had the line of the day when he said, "this all could have been avoided by hard luggage." He suggested that he was not that sympathetic to Mr. Bond. But some of the other Justices did seem more sympathetic. Justice Souter engaged in a lengthy discourse about the difference in looking and touching and that a person may know that they've exposed themselves to being observed, but that they might not think that they're going to allow someone to touch them or their belongings. Some of the other Justices focused on where this case might take us. Justice John Paul Stevens said, "what if the bag was in the lap or under the seat or in the storage bin that the bus driver uses when he puts it outside the bus?" Justice Ginsburg said, "What about coat checks? Because we give our coat to a coat check person, could the police come in and feel the coats, as well?"

MARGARET WARNER: Does all this derive from the fact that previous cases have held that it's one thing if you have something in your house or maybe on you person, then that's considered a search if police want to search for it - but that if you've somehow put it in a public place, that then the presumption is different?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's what the government lawyer tried to argue today. He said that Mr. Bond knowingly exposed his bag and so therefore, because he had knowingly exposed it, police could look at it. And that reasoning has been used to allow officers to conduct aerial surveillance, for example, and to go through your garbage that you put out on the curb. They have every right to do that because you've put it out there.

MARGARET WARNER: Why, went we all go to the airport, we fully expect our luggage to be sniffed by dogs or scanned by x-rays, which are totally intrusive. Why is that not an illegal search?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Some of those searches are a little different. And you can't just willy-nilly search people at airports. But courts have interpreted those searches to basically be what they call consent searches. If you're going to board a plane, you've given your consent that you're going to walk through that metal detector.

MARGARET WARNER: But when you're going to board a bus, you haven't given your consent?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: And Justice Stevens today suggested that you might have lesser expectations of privacy on an airplane than on a bus for some of the reasons that you suggested.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, how do these two cases fit into other Fourth Amendment cases that this court has looked at?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, over the years, the Rehnquist court, led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist has been pretty sympathetic to police powers and giving police broader powers to do their job, and it comes on the heels of an earlier ruling this term in which the court in an opinion by the Chief Justice said that officers generally could stop and pat a person down if he ran upon seeing the officers. His flight in high crime area, for example, would be enough for the officer to pursue him. So they've generally been pretty sympathetic. Today's arguments weren't that clear which way they were going, because I hi the competing concerns on both sides were pretty obvious to the Justices.

MARGARET WARNER: But what you're saying is, at least given that one case earlier this year, there's been a certain willingness on the court to expand the definition of what's reasonable on the part of... for police?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's right, that's right.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, well, Jan, thanks very much.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Thank you.

FOCUS - JUVENILE JUSTICE

JIM LEHRER: And speaking of crime and the police, in California, a zero tolerance youth crime initiative is on the March 7 ballot. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: Highly publicized school shootings by troubled teens have fueled fears of youth violence nationwide. In California, former Governor Pete Wilson is sponsoring a ballot measure to crack down on violent youth crime.

PETE WILSON, Former Governor, California: We cannot ignore the fact that there are kids in age who are committing violent adult felonies, and we cannot tolerate it. And youth is no excuse for committing murder, robbery, rape, home invasions, or for terrorizing entire neighborhoods.

JEFFREY KAYE: California's Proposition 21 on the March 7 ballot is part of a national movement to stiffen juvenile sentences. The initiative would, among other provisions, require more juvenile offenders as young as 14 be tried as adults; put more juvenile lawbreakers in prison; increase criminal penalties for violent and serious crimes, like unarmed robbery and vandalism; and toughen penalties for gang- related crimes. Opponents say the measure would sweep more youth into the criminal justice system in a state that already locks up more kids per capita than any other. Young activists recently protested the measure outside of Wilson's Los Angeles home.

KENNISHA AUSTIN: I just believe that he's looking for ways to incarcerate more youth and to devastate more communities of color.

JEFFREY KAYE: At the heart of the debate over Prop. 21 are sharp differences in outlook over how to treat juvenile offenders. There are also different perceptions about the extent and severity of youth crime.

PETE WILSON: While adult crime has been falling dramatically, the same cannot be said for youth violence and gang violence.

JEFFREY KAYE: Proponents argue stern measures are necessary to combat rising youth crime. Alarming news reports describing teens as time bombs and super predators have heightened fears of youth violence run amok. In fact, the public has distorted impressions of juvenile crime, says Barry Krisberg, president of the nonprofit National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

BARRY KRISBERG: When you use an inflammatory phrase like "super predator," you're creating fear and anxiety in the public that is unwarranted. Juveniles account for about 11% of all the arrests for violent crime. The public thinks they account for 75%, 80%.

JEFFREY KAYE: Krisberg says fears of teen violence come at a time of declining youth crime nationwide. In California, youth arrest rates for murder are down more than 50% since 1993.

BARRY KRISBERG: Prop. 21 is coming at a time when juvenile crime rates have been steadily declining for, now, six years in a row; when rates of victimization and crime rates in general are the lowest they've been for 25 years.

GROVER TRASK: I'm Grover Trask.

JEFFREY KAYE: Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask heads the California DA's Association, a main backer of the initiative. He testified recently that statistics don't tell the whole story.

GROVER TRASK: Most alarming from our point of view is that we see juveniles becoming certainly more sophisticated, in terms of their activity, and juvenile gang crimes.

JEFFREY KAYE: Trask says prosecutors need more authority to try violent juveniles in adult court, because regardless of the numbers, the current system isn't tough enough.

GROVER TRASK: The bottom line is that there is too much violent juvenile criminal activity going on. Whether the rate is at 400 per 1,000 or 500 per 100,000 population, the rate is way too high. And what is happening throughout the nation is there's a recognition that there's a small group of very violent, serious juvenile offenders that can't be helped within the juvenile justice system.

JEFFREY KAYE: The California ballot measure follows a nationwide trend in juvenile justice. The discretion to transfer youth to adult court is shifting from judges to prosecutors. New laws increasingly require that juveniles charged with certain violent crimes such as murder be tried as adults. But in California, judges still have much of the authority to decide whether or not to transfer a youth to adult court.

JUDGE: Then what happened, Rene?

RENE: Then they just started kicking me.

JEFFREY KAYE: Recently in a riverside county juvenile court, a young victim described how classmates had assaulted him. When defendants like these are convicted in the juvenile system, they can be incarcerated only until the age of 25. But in adult court, they can face sentences up to life in prison.

JUDGE: The court could then place you in a juvenile facility.

JEFFREY KAYE: Presiding juvenile court Judge James Warrren says judges consider individual crimes and circumstances before deciding how to treat youthful offenders. He fears prosecutors, wanting to appear tough on crime, will be more inclined to send kids to adult court.

JUDGE JAMES WARREN: In the adult system, we have a purely retribution-type system, where people are just incarcerated, where they do not address the issues that will be able to allow them to go back out in the community and be safe citizens. In juvenile court, we do the opposite: We treat those children's needs. We provide them with services. We keep them in custody for as long as it's needed, so that they can address those issues before they go back out into the community.

JEFFREY KAYE: Warren says under current law, judges already transfer the majority of youth charged with violent crimes to adult court. But he worries that Prop. 21 expands the list of lesser crimes for which prosecutors could try youth as adults-- crimes such as unarmed robbery.

JUDGE JAMES WARREN: We see all the time children who come into our court charged with felony robberies for pushing another child off a bicycle and riding that bicycle away -- for pushing a child off a skateboard and stealing that other child's skateboard. That's a robbery, and under their proposal, that is an offense that if the child were 16 years or older, they could file as an adult on that child.

JEFFREY KAYE: Warren sees a measure that could lead to unnecessarily harsh treatment for many juveniles. Trask, on the other hand, welcomes a law that gives prosecutors more tools to punish a relatively small number of young, violent criminals.

GROVER TRASK: The murderer, the rapist, the kid that goes into a home and takes a baseball bat and beats somebody to death, or slices their throat, or does some of these dangerous crimes that the system really doesn't effectively do a very good job in dealing with.

JEFFREY KAYE: Supporters of the initiative emphasize punishment and accountability, while opponents stress prevention and rehabilitation.

MALE: You say no to cops, you say please.

MALE: No more jail cells, please.

MALE: None of those nights where I'm on the run, and now the hope just got sprung. No on Prop. 21. (Applause)

JEFFREY KAYE: Recently in Los Angeles, a group of kids who have done time in juvenile detention performed for an audience of young civil rights activists opposed to Prop. 21.

MALE: But this is my life, and these are my dreams...

JEFFREY KAYE: Robert Lizana spent nine months in juvenile detention for an armed robbery. He got his high school diploma while in a juvenile camp.

ROBERT LIZANA: I like the line "unfair like your nightmares."

JEFFREY KAYE: Lizana is studying to be a teacher. He returns to the camp every week, and leads the same poetry class that helped transform his life. Under Prop. 21, he could have been tried as an adult and sent to prison, where he would have had few educational opportunities. Studies suggest that juveniles who serve time in adult prisons are more likely to reoffend than kids dealt with in the juvenile system.

ROBERT LIZANA: Kids can be rehabilitated. At 16, you're still in a molding stage. I'm who I am now because people didn't give up on me. I was given a second chance.

JEFFREY KAYE: As a victim of crime, Dennis Brown has a different take on Prop. 21. In 1992, his son Christopher was murdered by a 14-year-old in a convenience store robbery. The young murderer will get out of the California Youth Authority at age 25. Brown and other victims' rights activists believe some very violent youth are beyond rehabilitation.

DENNIS BROWN: We're having a certain amount of juveniles that simply can't be rehabilitated. I think as a survivor of a victim of homicide, I don't look to the fact that the perpetrator can be rehabilitated. I mean, the rehabilitation that I would want him to find would be to recognize the severity of the crime that he has committed.

JEFFREY KAYE: Opposition to the ballot measure has energized a vigorous youth movement that began years ago in response to anti- immigrant and anti-affirmative action initiatives. At an organizing conference, activists said get-tough laws have a disproportionate impact on non-white youth, and reflect misplaced priorities.

FEMALE: They would rather lock us up than educate us. They would rather lock us up than put money into prevention programs.

JEFFREY KAYE: Proponents concede Prop. 21 doesn't put money into prevention. But prosecutor Trask expects it to make the current juvenile justice system more efficient.

GROVER TRASK: We're saying let's speed up the process, make the system more accountable, and ultimately, hopefully the cost savings that we can take from this new approach we can put back into the juvenile system for the kids that can be helped.

JEFFREY KAYE: But independent experts say there will also be a cost in building additional prisons and detention centers, should the measure pass.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, Ray Suarez has another of our conversations about new books.

RAY SUAREZ: We're unraveling one of the biggest scientific discoveries concerning one of the smallest bits of information, the human genetic code. A new book, "Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters," explains how mapping out our human DNA could change everything from medicine and politics to what it means to be human. The author of the book, Matt Ridley, is a former editor of the "Economist" Magazine, and joins us now.

It helps the non-scientists really understand these articles that have been bubbling up on the news pages lately. There's a nice passage close to the beginning of the book that starts, "Imagine the genome is a book." Take it from there.

MATT RIDLEY: Well, I think, in a funny way, the genome is a book. I mean, that's one of the great discoveries, is that there is an instruction manual-- a recipe, if you like-- written inside ourselves. It's 800 times as long as the Bible, but it's very small, because we've got 100 trillion copies of it. And it's broken up into 23 chapters-- 23 individual pairs of chromosomes, we call them. And so that's what I did with my book, was split it into 23 chapters and try to tell one story from each chromosome. The stories are the genes, if you like. There's 80,000 of them on these various chapters.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, a lot of scientists have said over the years that when faced with the option of complexity or simplicity, that nature has a bias toward making things more simple. So why do we have this thing that's billions of letters long, replicated hundreds of millions of times in every one of us?

MATT RIDLEY: Well, it's simple in concept. That's what's so nice about it. I mean, it actually uses a very simple code. It uses an alphabet that's simpler than the one you and I use. It's got four letters in the alphabet, and each word is three letters long. But if you think about it, if you had to write down the recipe for how to build and run a human body, it would be quite a big instruction manual. And that's why it has to be so complex. And unraveling it, reading it for the first time, which is what's happening now-- it seems to me it's very appropriate it's happening in the first year of the millennium-- will set out a cornucopia of knowledge for us to explore for many decades to come.

RAY SUAREZ: In these latest decodings of parts of the genome, they're finding a lot of repeats-- long, long, long repeats-- of thousands of these sequences that don't apparently have any purpose. Why would we do that?

MATT RIDLEY: Well, that's one of the really fascinating discoveries, I think, about our genomes, and in a sense, it's rather a disturbing one. The actual messages that count are only a small proportion of the text. A lot of the rest, some 24%, consists of two sequences that are repeated over and over and over again-- just 100 or 1,000 letters long-- and just repeated again and again and again. And the reason they're there, we now think, is because they're good at being there. They're almost like computer viruses that have got into the system and copied themselves all over our hard disk, as it were. We've got them under control. You know, our bodies function without them running away with us, but they're the evidence of sort of parasitism of our genes.

RAY SUAREZ: The book is full of warnings. At the same time as you're talking about how determinant these genes can be, you sometimes feel like you've got to pull on the reins and say "whoa," and tell us all the things the genes are not doing, at the same time as you're telling us what they are doing. That must have been tough.

MATT RIDLEY: Well, it is tough, because you tend to get carried away I think these days with genes, and how they are controlling everything in our bodies. And sure, they're involved in lots of things, but the interactions between genes and between genes and the environment means that it's a very complex story, and you know, the simple idea that one gene is going to sort of be pulling a string and making us into a certain kind of personality or something like that is too simple, and it's not going to be that simple at all.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, how about the example of the search for, in the popular mind, genes that are connected to a specific disease, is it really the gene connected to a specific disease?

MATT RIDLEY: Well, yes. I mean, the problem is... I mean, sometimes the only thing we know about a gene is that it's connected to a specific disease, that when the gene goes wrong, you get a disease like Huntington's Chorea or something from the gene going wrong. But that's a bit like saying the only thing you know about heart is that you get a heart attack when it's not working. There are obviously more interesting things you can say about hearts than that, and it's much more interesting trying to understand what the gene is really doing when it's functioning right, as well as what happens when it goes wrong. Genes are not there to cause diseases. Diseases are sometimes caused by faulty genes. And a lot of things like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's Disease, very common diseases, have a strong genetic basis. I mean, there are genes involved in producing that disease, and understanding them is going to shed new lights on therapy.

RAY SUAREZ: Here we are looking forward to years where we'll be understanding this code, billions of letters long, more and more, and yet it's unlocking the past for us in a kind of way, the way human beings moved around the earth, and even how much in common we have with chimpanzees. Do you feel different about your own humanity, now that you've finished understanding this?

MATT RIDLEY: Yes, I think I do. I mean, certainly the lesson of the genome does drive home our kinship with other species. I mean, at the genetic level, we're 98% chimpanzees, and that's quite close. But also, more than that, I mean, if you're going to look at fruit flies, you find there's a lot of similarities in genes there. Genes that fruit flies use to plan the development of their bodies are genes that we use, as well. And that implies that the common ancestor of humans and fruit flies, which lived 600 million years ago, must have had these genes, too. And so, you know, just by... That's why I call it an autobiography of our species, because in a sense you can look back and read about our past as an animal, and indeed the past of our ancestors, too.

RAY SUAREZ: There's a lot of misgiving at the same time, a lot of unease that people feel about unlocking these mysteries, and our responsible use of what they tell us, isn't there?

MATT RIDLEY: Well, it is a... I mean, knowing this knowledge has huge opportunities, obviously, for curing cancer and things like that. But it also brings great risks: Risks that we might misapply this knowledge, that we might do things with it that could be unethical and cruel. And we have to watch that very carefully. We have to tread very carefully into the future. I mean, if we were to start genetically engineering our children, not just to get rid of cruel diseases, but also perhaps to enhance their intelligence or their musical ability or something like that, then that would be a very dangerous step. And that's something that we have to tread very carefully, while we work out how society deals with problems like that.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, in your book, you mention things like Downs, even gender-- some of the birth defects that children can be born with, and how they may be connected with genes. Are we at risk of turning all the kinds of variations of human randomness, our wonderful diversity, into something to be cured once we know what gene connection there is?

MATT RIDLEY: I don't think we are at that risk, and the reason I think that is because there doesn't seem to be one consensus on what makes a desirable child. And in fact, if you look at the use of in-vitro fertilization, it hasn't led to people selecting only one kind of child to have. It's actually increased the desire for diversity, for everybody to have their own children, and so on. And I think that will continue to be the case. Not everyone's going to have the same criteria about what a desirable child should be. There is obviously... There's a difficult line to draw between what is curing a problem, and enhancing or standardizing what is really quite a normal condition. And that's... How we draw that line is the big policy issue that faces us, I think, in the next few years.

RAY SUAREZ: And a line that may be moving from year to year to year?

MATT RIDLEY: Well, that's right. I think people's ideas about what is acceptable do change once they come up against reality. I mean, you know, in the abstract, people say, "well, I wouldn't want to be able to do that." But if you're sat down in the privacy of a doctor's office, "would you like to fiddle with the genes of your child or not?" I think perhaps the best defense is to swamp up with too much knowledge. I mean, at the moment, we know a few hundred genes, and the temptation is to think they're very important. But once we know all 80,000, and we say, "would you like to change half of these," it begins to seem much too daunting a task, and you begin to realize just how complex it is, and how if you pull one little thing out of the puzzle, the whole thing might change.

RAY SUAREZ: Matt Ridley, thanks for being with us.

MATT RIDLEY: Thank you, Ray.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday: Philip Morris said it might be open to new federal tobacco controls, and police said a first-grader was shot and killed by a classmate at a Michigan school. And there were presidential primaries in Virginia and Washington State, and Republican caucuses tonight in North Dakota. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with full analysis of today's primary results. I'm Jim Lehrer.