Today, we'll talk about the feasibility of Russia's proposal for Syria and how Obama may respond in his remarks tonight. Then, Rep. Loretta Sanchez on the Syrian conflict; a new study checks up on inmates freed early under Prop 36; Which bills are on the docket this week for California lawmakers?; Justin St. Germain's vivid and gritty memoir 'Son of a Gun', plus much more.
The feasibility of Russia's proposal for Syria and how Obama may respond
If you've been following the events of the last 24 hours, you know that Russia proposed that Syria place its chemical weapons under international control.
It still remains unclear as to what this means, but President Obama has said that it could be a breakthrough that could stop any plans for a military strike against Syria.
For the latest we'll talk with Sebastian Usher, the BBC's Middle East regional editor based in London.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez on the possibility of military intervention in Syria
President Obama is expected to address the nation tonight to make his case for military intervention in Syria. For more on this, we're joined by local congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.
Representative Sanchez is a senior member of both the House Armed Services and Homeland Securities Committees. She also belongs to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
Which bills are on the docket this week for California lawmakers?
The California legislature is entering its last week of this year's session. With just a few days left on the clock, we take a look at some of the hundreds of bills lawmakers will be addressing this week.
John Myers, political editor for the ABC affiliate in Sacramento, joins the show to fill us in on the latest from our state capitol.
Immigrants from India seeking asylum at Arizona-Mexico border
On the national legislative stage, it appears that immigration has moved to the back burner. But a curious new trend has immigration watchers scratching their heads.
Indian nationals from South Asia have been showing up at the Arizona border in increasing numbers. They travel from their homeland across the world to Central America, then make their way through several countries to the U.S. Border.
We'll talk to reporter Daniel Gonzalez.
Border technology contracts take new approach
In the coming months, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts will be finalized for new surveillance technology along the Southwest border. Many feel that past mistakes are now dictating the way the federal government is awarding these new contracts.
From the Fronteras Desk in Phoenix, Jude Joffe-Block reports
New study checks up on inmates freed early under Prop 36
It's been nearly a year since voters in California passed Proposition 36. The new law makes it easier for inmates who have been convicted of three strikes to be released from prison.
So far, 1,000 inmates facing life sentences have been freed. Now, a new report looks at how well they've fared since.
We're joined by Michael Montgomery, reporter with KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting has been reviewing the study.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Eminem, Goodie Mobb, Elvis Costello & The Roots
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday our weekly new music segment. This week we're joined by music supervisor Morgan Rhodes and Oliver Wang from Soul-Sides.com.
Oliver's Picks
Artist: Eminem
Album: "The Marshall Mathers LP2"
Songs: "Berzerk"
"I think it's been three years since his last one, his latest is called the "Marshall Mathers LP 2", which I find to be incredibly awkward, but at this point Eminem can name his albums whatever he wants. His lead single is a song called Berzerk, and it is very much on a throwback Beastie Boys tip. I'm interested to see what Eminem does with this album, the fact that he's calling it the "Marshall Mathers LP 2" seems very strategic since the LP was his first breakout and hugely successful super star album. Is he trying to suggest that he's creating a sequel to that moment, is he supposed to represent some new phase of his career? We'll have to see." -- Oliver Wang
Artist: Elvis Costello and the Roots
Album: "Wise Up Ghost"
Release: September 17
Songs: "Viceroy's Row," "Walk Us Uptown"
"I think the album will challenge the ways in which we assume that certain genres only with within certain styles. There are some songs that work quite well together, but there are other cases where I don't know if the musical chemistry is right. I don't know if that's my own biases in terms of I'm used to hearing certain kinds of voices and vocal styles over hip-hop beats or likewise, I'm used to hearing Elvis Costello with a certain sort of sound backing him." -- Oliver Wang
Artist: Ylvis
Songs: "The Fox"
Novelty single currently being billed as "this year's 'Gangnam Style' but it raises two compelling questions. First, is a song positively calculated for viral success cynical or just savvy? Second, what sound does a fox make? The group is a variety show group from Norway. I
Morgan's Picks
Artist: John Legend
Album: "Love In The Future"
Songs: "Tomorrow," "Wanna Be Loved"
"Love In The Future is his brand new album, and good things come to those who wait. We've been waiting five years for this new project, it is an ode to love. He's a classic crooner, he owes a lot of his phrasing to Sam Cooke and Nat King Cole. When you hear this album you either start comparing your own relationship or you dissolve into bitterness. The lyrics are gorgeous and it's arranged beautifully. I think what sets him apart is the maturity, he speaks about love in very evolved terms. It feels like a sonnet." -- Morgan Rhodea
Artist: RDGLDGRN
Album: "RDGLDGRN"
Songs: "Doing The Most," "Building A Home"
"It's pronounced 'Red Gold and Green,' and they've got a new self-titled project. I guess after you call yourself RDGLDGRN what do you call your new album? You just go with "Self-Titled." They've coined their own genre called indie go-go. Go-go music is an African American-based music, it's very heavy percussive call and response and well-known in the area of Virginia — they're from Reston. It's more to me indie pop, indie rock and indie hip-hop, not much known about them except they have the good fortune to convince Dave Grohl to play drums on their entire album. They are making quite the splash." -- Morgan Rhodes
Artist: Goodie Mobb
Album: "Age Against The Machine"
Songs: "Father Time," "Understanding (feat. V)"
"What's it like to get older? If someone asks me I'm going to say I don't know, I'll claim that I'm still drinking from the eternal Fountain of Youth. But what's it like to get older in hip-hop, I think this album speaks to that. Goodie Mob are the elder statesmen of Atlanta hip-hop, before Outkast, before Ludacris, before T.I., before Two Chainz. I think this album is them saying, "we were here first, but we're still relevant." It's futuristic, it's old school, they have a lot of smart things to say and they have some expert guest appearances from Janelle Monae and T.I." -- Morgan Rhodes
India convicts four men in fatal gang rape on New Delhi bus
Today, a court in India convicted four men in the brutal gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Dehli. The 23-year-old victim later died in the hospital, inciting protest over the widespread sexual abuse of women in India.
When this story broke in December, we spoke with Anu Jain, the director of operations and outreach at SAHARA. The group provides assistance to domestic violence victims in the South Asian community in Southern California. It's based in Artesia in the heart of Little India.
For more on today's verdict in India, Anu Jain joins us once again.
14 Schools, 1 Plan: Nevada's new blueprint for ELL education
Nevada schools have the largest percentage of English Language Learners in the country. Those are students whose first language wasn't English, and maybe not the language spoken at home.
For the first time, the state has designated funds to go directly towards improving ELL education. The bulk of the money, nearly $40 million, will go to one county in Las Vegas, the Clark County School District
From the Fronteras Desk, Kate Sheehy reports.
'The Child Exchange': The underground market of unwanted adopted children
Adopting a child is an often lengthy, expensive and emotionally taxing experience, so it might be hard to believe that there's a network of adoptive parents out there who want nothing more than to hand off their children to someone else.
A new investigative report from Reuters uncovered a harrowing story about the trend among adoptions called re-homing. The term refers to when adoptive parents decide they no longer want to house a child and then look to find the child a new home.
Re-homing often happens with little in the way of background checks, and adoption officials say some children wind up in abusive homes.
"Many of the children that I identified who were being offered up in this re-homing network had been originally adopted from foreign countries," said Reuters investigative reporter Megan Twohey on Take Two. "A common thing that you hear from these adoptive parents who offer their child up for re-homing is that they weren't adequately prepared for the challenges that followed."
Re-homing isn't always done without agency oversight, however. In an official re-homing, the scenario must be vetted by a third party, and a judge must sign off on the adoption. In addition, the original adoptive family must terminate their parental rights.
It is possible to go outside the oversight of a judge, however, with simple power of attorney. An adoptive parent can find someone via the Internet who is interested in taking the child. They can then have a document downloaded off the Internet transferring guardianship to the new parents and have it notarized to make it official.
"It basically functions as a receipt, it's not filed in any court, there's no government involvement and many times that's the way that many children are re-homed," said Twohey.
Twohey began her investigation by identifying numerous Yahoo! and Facebook groups that served as a kind of bulletin board for unwanted children. In addition to posts from parents talking about the challenges of raising an adopted child were posts that read like advertisements for kids people hoped to re-home.
Yahoo! closed the groups identified in Twohey's report, but Facebook has not made any plans to follow suit.
"This is just the beginning of the response, both from the people who operate these larger online networks to the fact that this rehoming is going on," said Twohey. "It'll be interesting to see if Congress responds, if the foreign countries respond. Time will tell how this plays out, but I do think that we're going to see some changes to the re-homing landscape here in the coming weeks and months. "
Justin St. Germain's vivid and gritty memoir 'Son of a Gun' (excerpt)
Justin St. Germain grew up the second son of a single mother, and much of his childhood was spent running around the barren landscape of Tombstone, Arizona, the same town famous for gunslingers like Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral.”
He was 20 years old when his mother was found dead, shot in her trailer on the outskirts of town, apparently by her fifth husband.
His book, "Son of A Gun,"explores her death, the investigation that followed and how he came to terms with everything that happened.
Excerpt from "Son of a Gun"
Soon after we learned that our mother was dead, my brother and I went to a bar. We'd already worked the phones. Josh had called our grandparents, who'd been divorced for forty years but both still lived in Philadelphia. Grandpop said he'd book the first flight he could, but air travel was snarled from the attacks nine days earlier. Grandma was afraid of flying, so she stayed in her rented room in suburban Philly, wrecked and helpless. I called my dad's house in New Hampshire, but he wasn't home. Eventually he called back. I told him she was dead and a long pause ensued, one in a litany of silences between my father and me, stretching across the years since he'd left and the distance between us, thousands of miles, most of America. Finally he said she was a good person, that he'd always cared for her. He asked if I wanted him to fly to Arizona. I said he didn't have to and hung up.
I emailed my professors and told them what had happened, that I wouldn't be back in class for a while. I called the office of the college newspaper where I worked and told my boss. Josh called in sick to his bartending job. Then we sat on the couch with our roommate, Joe, an old friend from Tombstone we'd known since grade school. It was a Thursday, and we had nothing to do. Somebody suggested the French Quarter, a Cajun joint nearby that had spicy gumbo and potent hurricanes. It seemed like a good idea: I'd heard stories of grief in which the stricken couldn't eat, but I was hungry, and I needed a drink. So that's where we spent our first night without her.
When we walked in, President Bush was on TV, about to give a speech. The jukebox was turned off, as it had been since the attacks, because now everybody wanted to hear the news. Joe went to the bar to talk to some of the regulars. Josh and I took a booth in the corner. Orion, the bartender and a friend of ours, came over and told us he was sorry, and to have what ever we wanted on the house. I wondered if Joe had just told him or if he'd already heard. I didn't know yet how quickly or how far the news would travel, that within a few hours we wouldn't need to tell anyone about our mother, because every one would already know.
I flipped through the menu but couldn't understand it. We'd both put our cell phones on the tabletop, and mine rang, chirping as it skittered across the glass. I ignored it.
"What now?" I asked.
Josh kept his eyes on the menu and shook his head. "There's not much we can do."
"Should we go out there?" I didn't know what to call the place where she'd died; it wasn't home, because we'd never lived there, and it didn't have a name. It was just a piece of land in the desert outside of Tombstone.
"We can't. The property is a crime scene."
I asked him if we should talk to the cops and he said he already had, that we were meeting with them on Monday. I asked about a funeral home and he said the coroner had to do an autopsy first, the cops said it was standard procedure. There was a long pause. My mother and her parents always said Josh was more like my father, difficult to read, and he looked like Dad, too, sharp nosed and handsome. I got more from my mother, they said, the dark and heavy brows, the temper, the heart on my sleeve. But if I was like my mother, why was I so numb?
Food arrived. Through the windows I watched the sky outside go purple and the traffic on Grant die down. A hot breeze blew through the open door. On television, President Bush identified the enemy, a vast network of terror that wanted to kill all of us, and finally he said the name of a murderer.
"Do you think Ray did it?" I asked. The police couldn't find our stepfather or the pickup truck he and my mother owned. He was the only suspect, but I didn't want to believe it.
Josh waited awhile to respond, chewing, letting his eyes wander the walls decorated with beads and Mardi Gras masks and a neon sign above the bar that said "Geaux Tigers."
"We'll know for sure when they find him."
A pool cue cracked and a ball fell into a pocket with a hollow knock. My phone rang again. I didn't answer. My voice mail was already full, and the calls kept coming, from distant family, my friends, her friends, acquaintances from Tombstone, people I hardly knew. At first I'd answered, but the conversations went exactly the same: they'd say they were sorry and I'd thank them for calling; they'd ask for news and I'd say there wasn't any; they'd ask if there was anything they could do and I'd say no. It was easier to let them leave a message.
On the TV, the president talked about a long campaign to come, unlike anything we'd ever seen. He said to live our lives and hug our children. He said to be calm and resolute in the face of a continuing threat.
"You think he'd come here?" I asked. Ray knew where we lived. He'd been to the house a few times, with our mother, staying on the pullout couch in the living room.
"The detective mentioned that. He said he doubted it, but to keep an eye out."
I wondered what good that would do but didn't ask. Josh said we'd know more on Monday, after we met with the cops.
"What do we do until then?"
I could tell Josh was wondering the same thing: what the hell were we going to do? "Wait, I guess."
Behind me the pool table rumbled as the players began another game. I looked down at my plate, realized that my food was gone, and scanned the old newspaper articles from New Orleans pasted beneath the glass tabletop. My mother was dead. I leaned back against the vinyl seat and finished my beer, watching the president try to soothe a wounded nation. He said that life would return to normal, that grief recedes with time and grace, but that we would always remember, that we'd carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.
Late that night, I said a prayer for the first time in months. When I was a kid, Mom had always made me say prayers before bed, and it became a habit, something I felt guilty about if I didn't do. I'd stopped praying regularly after I left home, but that night I prayed for my mother's soul, because I knew she'd want me to, and I figured it couldn't hurt.
I didn't pray for my own safety; I knew better than to rely on God for that. Instead, I got up off my knees, pulled a long gray case out of my closet, laid it on the bed, and flipped the catches. Inside, on a bed of dimpled foam, lay a rifle, a gift from my father on my thirteenth birthday, an old Lee-Enfield bolt-action. I lifted it out of the case, loaded it, chambered a round, and rested it against the wall by my bed. Then I tried to sleep, but every time a car passed, I sat up to peek out the window, expecting to see Ray in our front yard.
After a few sleepless hours I got up and went to my desk. I turned on my computer, opened a Word document, and stared at the blank screen. I kept a journal, in which I wrote to the future self I imagined, chronicling important moments in my life, because I thought he might want to remember, and because it made me feel less alone. I would write about how much I missed Tombstone, how dislocated I felt after moving from a town of fifteen hundred people to a city thirty times that size, how I felt like an impostor at school, was failing half my classes, would never graduate. I wrote about girls. I wrote about money, how little I had, my mounting debt, my fear that I wouldn't be able to cover tuition and rent. And I wrote about Mom, how she'd gone crazy after I moved out, how she and Ray had sold our trailer outside of Tombstone and gone touring the country with their horses, camping in national parks, how one day I'd get a card in the mail postmarked from Utah, and the next she'd send an email from Nebraska—all of them signed xoxo, Mom and Ray—and how she'd leave rambling messages on our answering machine at five o'clock in the morning, saying how much she loved and missed us.
I thought I should write something about that day, so the future me never forgot how it had felt to be twenty and motherless, my life possibly in danger, numb from shock and hating my own inability to feel. But I didn't know what to say. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do the feeling justice, that I'd choose the wrong words. I was in my first literature class at the time, an American lit survey, and I'd just written a paper on Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle." So I did what any English major would: I quoted someone else.
My mother is dead. The Beast has sprung.
It worked. I sat down to write at the end of every day for the next few weeks, and each time the words came easily. Sometimes I return to those entries, when I'm afraid I've begun to forget. But I can't read them for long without wanting to write back to my old self, to warn him of what's to come, to tell him that the Beast will always be with us.
I woke up the first day after learning of her death and turned off my alarm, then went back to sleep until the room got too bright. When I woke again, I looked out the window at the yard full of weeds. I stood, stretched, brushed my teeth. Walking down the hall into the living room, wondering what I'd do with the day ahead—it was Friday, so I had a softball game that night, and afterward somebody would be having a party—I glanced through the screen door at the front porch and remembered.
My grandfather arrived from Philly that afternoon, pale and harried, lighting new cigarettes with the still-burning stubs of the last. We went straight from the airport to a Denny's by the highway and sat drinking iced tea and watching cars pass by outside, planes taking off and landing, families piling out of minivans in the parking lot, other people going places. The world hadn't stopped, despite how it seemed to us.
When our food came, we picked at it and discussed our plans. My dad had decided to come and would be flying in the next day. On Monday we had meetings scheduled with the detectives and the funeral director and my mother's bank and lawyer, a gauntlet none of us wanted to think or talk about. My mother's closest friend, Connie, was taking care of the horses and Chance, Ray's dog, who'd been left behind. She said that my mother's property was still cordoned off, that the cops were there in a helicopter, looking for Ray or for his body. We'd go to Tombstone in the morning. For now, there was nothing we could do but try to get some rest.
Grandpop went to his hotel. Josh and I went home and sat on the couch watching pirated cable for the rest of the afternoon. As the room began to dim, I checked the time and re membered that I had a softball game in half an hour. I went to my room and changed. When I walked out carrying my bat bag, Josh asked where I was going.
"We've got a doubleheader." "Seriously?"
I put on my hat and grabbed my keys off the coffee table. "There's nothing better to do."
"OK," he said, shrugging.
I realized it would be the first time we'd spent apart since we heard the news, and an unfamiliar feeling came over me: I was worried about him. "What are you going to do?"
"I might go to the Bay Horse."
The Bay Horse was a bar two blocks away where our roommate worked. I was glad to know Josh wouldn't be alone while I was gone, and the thought of joining them later at the Bay Horse gave me comfort. We spent a few nights a week in that smoky dive, playing darts and feeding the jukebox, writing graffiti in the bathroom, drinking ourselves into stupors.
I walked through the door and across the porch and out into the yard, where I stopped and looked back. The blinds were open, revealing my brother's face in the blue glow of the television. The house loomed gray below a purple sky; the stucco had cracked along the edge of the roof and one of the address numbers had been missing since I moved in. It was the only home I had left.
The dugout went quiet when I walked in. My teammates continued lacing their cleats, hanging bats in the racks, filling their mouths with sunflower seeds, but nobody spoke to me, and hardly a head turned in my direction. They were trying to act normal. They failed, but I appreciated the effort.
It was a coed league of born-again Christians. Our team's coach was a pastor. Most of the players, the men especially, took the games too seriously, heckling opponents and yelling at umpires, and nobody was any good. But I'd played ball my whole life and I missed being part of a team, so when my friend Brent had asked if I wanted to join, I'd jumped at the chance to play.
I spotted Brent at the far end of the metal bench and sat next to him. We'd known each other for a few years, had played together on our high school baseball team. I could tell that he had heard.
"You made it," he said.
I nodded. "Had to get away for a while."
"Sure." He worked a sunflower seed between his teeth, thinking of something to say, but just then the umps called us in for the pregame prayer. Before each game we stood in a circle around home plate and held hands while our coach, the pastor, said prayers that were clearly made up as he went. I was raised Catholic, communed and confirmed and all that, so it sounded like amateur hour to me, but I always went along, joined hands and bowed my head and pretended to listen.
That night's prayer was oppressive. I stood staring down at the dusty home plate, with my hat beneath my arm and a stranger's sweaty palm pressed against mine, listening to an error-prone second baseman preach about our great and just and loving God. At the end he said something about those of us suffering hard times and I wondered if he knew.
When it was over, I grabbed my glove. I played left and liked ranging the outfield. The bats would ping and I'd be off, tracking down a deep fly ball at the fence, snaring a liner to the gap, trying to throw out runners at home. For a moment I'd forget that it was a coed church league, that the person I'd just robbed of a double was somebody's aunt. I'd forget the score, the number of outs. I'd forget about school and work, forget my name, forget who I was. The world shrank down to a field of grass, and all I had to do was catch the ball.
I played well that night. I made a basket catch on a liner over my head, slid to pluck a Texas leaguer just before it hit the grass. I don't remember what I did at the plate, only sprinting across the outfield, catching everything. A lull would come, a few groundouts in a row, a string of walks, and I'd feel something stalking me just outside the white ring of the field lights, something creeping in. But then the yellow ball would rocket across the night sky and I'd be off, gauging its depth, fixing on a point ahead and running, running as fast as I could.
Excerpted from SON OF A GUN by Justin St. Germain. Copyright © 2013 by Justin St. Germain. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.