Lakers owner Jerry Buss died today at the age of 80, we'll take a look at his life and career. Then, Kitty Felde reports about how immigration reform will affect kids in foster care, Kevin Sites's new book reveals what soldiers won't say about their experiences, a Harvard researcher claims calorie couts on nutrition labels may be way off, and much more.
The national battle over immigration reform
Last week, the White House reportedly sent copies of its draft proposal on the issue to government officials who deal with border security and other immigration issues. USA Today wrote about that plan this weekend, touching off a wave of criticism from legislators working on their own immigration proposals.
In response, the new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told ABC News their immigration plan is still just a work in progress:
"We have not proposed anything to Capitol Hill yet. We've got a bill, we're doing exactly what the president said we would do last month in Las Vegas. Which is, we're preparing, we're going to be ready. We've developed each of these proposals so we're in a position to succeed."
For more on this, we're joined now by Manu Raju, senior congressional reporter for POLITICO.
Immigration reform's unintended impact on foster care kids
As Congress prepares to tackle immigration reform, two Southland Democrats are addressing an unintended consequence of the current policy. KPCC's Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde says it involves thousands of U.S.-born children of undocumented parents in foster care.
The impact of LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss on the NBA & beyond
A big loss for L.A. sports this morning.
Lakers owner Jerry Buss, 80, died today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from kidney failure, confirmed his assistant Bob Steiner. He had been hospitalized since last week for cancer treatment.
RELATED: (UPDATE) A remembrance: LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss, 80, dies (Photos)
Dr. Buss, as he preferred to be called, bought the Lakers in 1979 and transformed the sport in addition to helping the team win 10 NBA titles. Dr. Buss is also credited with turning the NBA into an entertainment powerhouse.
"Dr. Buss had a vision of showtime," said author Roland Lazenby, who has written five books on the Lakers. "He essentially connected this very backwater business of the NBA to the entertainment of Hollywood. I think one thing in particular is the sexuality of that: He invented the Laker girls, he created this show, and with that he brought this sexuality to the NBA that was somewhat jarring for other franchises."
One of the impacts he had on the game was the use of the court side seats to advertise the game. Before, these prime seats would go to press or media, but now only celebrities, VIPs, and those who can afford to shell out big bucks for tickets are privy to the court side area in constant view of the television cameras.
"One of the things he helped to do was to capitalize NBA teams as he began selling those seats on a nightly basis for hundreds of dollars then thousands of dollars," said Lazenby. "The whole financial structure began to shift, as did the seating for the press which went from court side to the upper deck."
In recent years Buss had moved aside from his once-prominent role to allow his sons Jim and John, and his daughter Jeanie run the team.
Last year was a tumultuous year for the team, with the firing of coach Mike Brown and the hiring of Mike D'Antoni. So what can fans expect now that Buss is out of the picture and his three grown children at the helm?
"There's been a sort of a tug of war all along," said Lazenby. "Jeanie and Jim both have a large role with the team, and so trying to decide which way they go forward will be a big factor. The Lakers have always been the kind of organization – for all the glitz – that counted paper clips, so it will be interesting to see what happens from this point on."
'The Things They Cannot Say': Inside the secret world of soldiers
There are some stories soldiers don't share when they return home, because of shame or anger, because they are afraid of what others may think of them, or sometimes just because no one asks.
Writer Kevin Sites has collected such stories in his new book "The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to do in War." The work profiles eleven soldiers and marines from various wars.
It provides readers with a very raw look at not only what happens on the front lines, but the challenges faced when veterans return home.
Hollywood Monday: Screen violence, Oscar accuracy, Ben Affleck
New studies on screen violence, accuracy in Oscar movies and our weekly Ben Affleck update with entertainment reporter Rebecca Keegan of the LA Times.
'The Powerbroker' behind the civil rights movement
Whitney Young worked behind the scenes during the civil rights movement to mold many of the policies that broke down racial segregation. Filmmaker Bonnie Boswell had a front row seat to Young's life and career: she was his niece.
Her film, "The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights," premiers tonight on PBS.
Pro Publica report finds at least 20 CIA prisoners still missing
During the Bush administration, more than 100 suspected terrorists were believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons or shipped to other countries in secret where they were held and interrogated. Now a new report from the investigative news site Pro Publica finds that at least 20 of those prisoners have seemingly disappeared.
They're unaccounted for. We talk to one of the members of the investigative team, Pro Publica's Cora Currier.
Claremont colleges' divestment movement aims to create urgency to get off fossil fuels
Long ago in a Connecticut classroom, then fifth-grader Jess Grady-Benson wrote an essay about growing up to be an environmentalist. She always knew she would be one, which is why she felt she had time to detour to Spain for a semester abroad, like most Pitzer College juniors do.
For sort of a last hurrah before going abroad, Grady-Benson helped rally schoolmates to a climate change event last fall headlined by author Bill McKibben. “I went backstage and I met [him] and I was going to give a speech before he came on and he said, Are you nervous?,” she says. “And he just grabs my arm and says you got this. And it was just, like the most inspiring moment.”
Inspiring enough to change her mind. She skipped her study abroad to stay in Claremont. Now she and dozens of students are working to convince trustees at Pitzer, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd, Pomona College and Claremont McKenna to take the schools’ endowments fossil fuel free.
The divestment movement at the “5 C’s” is one of hundreds seeded by 350.org and McKibben. 350.org sponsored the “Do the Math” rally at which Grady-Benson met McKibben, too.
The group’s name refers to 350 parts per million, a target for atmospheric carbon dioxide that if met would slow global warming.
350.org has leveraged buzz generated by a Rolling Stone article McKibben authored, in which he argues that higher education should stop investing endowment funds in top oil and gas companies.
350.org campaigner Deirdre Smith works with college students in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Smith makes frequent visits from the Bay Area to train Claremont’s core climate activists.
One rainy night in Vita Nova Hall, Smith asks 7 students to stand on a blanket. She tells them to imagine they’re safe as long as they’re standing on it, but they’ve also got to imagine being surrounded by lava. In this game they need to turn the blanket over to survive.
Student activists solve the problem pretty quickly, giggling, and telling each other to jump together as they slide and flip the blanket.
The game’s a metaphor for the challenge of switching away from fossil fuels. It’s part of a campaign playbook, tactics and strategies 350.org shares at hundreds of universities around the country.
Smith says every school she works with needs a slightly different touch. Stanford, for instance, is very methodical, she says. “Now that I’ve worked with them for a while with Stanford if we have to make a plan we’ll make it 2 weeks in advance of when it’s happening,” she says. “Whereas with the 5 C’s as I like to call them. We have this thing in like two days, so we’ll talk tonight, and we’ll figure it out,” she laughs, adding, “they’re both really great ways of being.”
Students across the 5 undergraduate Claremont colleges work together, but they’ve got to win over each school’s trustees separately.
Grady-Benson argues fossil fuel divestment makes sense for Pitzer, where sustainability has been a core value since the beginning. “It’s such an imperative to align what you’re projecting as an image and what you’re saying are your core values with where your money is,” she says.
Student activists met with Pitzer’s President Laura Skandera Trombley to urge immediate action. Trombley invited a representative to speak to the trustee’s investment committee, but she says she also told them that any decision about the school’s endowment requires cautious deliberation.
“I said, this is the beginning of a conversation where I think both sides are interested in doing right in the same issues,” says Trombley. “We want to be socially responsible, and part of being socially responsible is earning enough on our endowment that we can provide enough on our financial aid.”
Pitzer’s endowment is around $110 million. Pomona College, where students will speak to trustees later this month, holds reserves around $1.6 billion. Divestment at any Claremont school would be a big deal: just three small New England colleges have voted to divest from fossil fuels so far.
“This is a well-intentioned idea but I don’t think it’s gonna work,” says the Assabet Group’s Ralph Earle. Assabet’s a renewables-focused investment fund; before founding it, Earle directed environmental policy in Massachusetts.
Divestment from South Africa was a major movement during Earle’s college years. He says climate change is the biggest problem of our time, and his generation’s failure. But he argues earlier divestment efforts have had little impact on big problems.
“Conditions in the Sudan are unchanged from pressure that was on 8 to 10 years ago,” Earle says. “Tobacco companies have done better under pressure to divest than the rest of the stock market.”
Grady-Benson says she’s heard arguments that students should try other tactics against climate change, like helping campuses go carbon neutral, or pledging to drive only fuel-efficient cars. That’s already happening, she says.
“Unfortunately right now the fossil fuel industry has a political and economic stronghold on this society,” she says. “We need to create the society in which its easy to make those changes in our lives.”
A Church Divided: Growing up gay and Mormon
Few issues have been as divisive in recent history as same-sex marriage. California has been at the center of the malestorm since voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008. Outside of the legal questions facing the ban on same-sex marriage, many churches and their followers are grappling with their own position on gays and lesbians.
The California Report's Steven Cuevas has the story of a Mormon mother and son working to bridge a historical divide
RELATED: See part one of this two-part series on Mormons and same-sex marriage
Calorie labels may be inaccurate by up to 50 percent, says Harvard researcher
If you're a calorie counter, you are probably constantly checking the nutrition labels of everything you eat. It's just part of trying to stay fit, be healthy, keep track of your diet, right?
But what if those calories you've been counting are wrong? And not just by a little, but by as much as 50 percent. That's what Rachel Carmody, post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, says.
Today, she's making the case at the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the way calories are counted and listed on your food needs an update.
Author David Maraniss on 'Barack Obama: The Story'
In this President's Day, we look at the life of the current commander in chief: Barack Obama.
Shortly before he was re-elected, writer David Maraniss published an extensive biography of the 44th president.
The book "Barack Obama: The Story" chronicles President Obama's childhood through his post-college years in New York and Chicago. When we spoke with David Maraniss last fall, he explained why he focused on these early chapters of the president's life, long before the White House.