CNN 2011-03-14

Fridays are always awesome 1 here on CNN Student News. And we thank you for spending part of your Friday with us. Hi, everyone. I'm Natisha Lance, sitting in today for Carl Azuz.

First up, we're talking about hearings on Capitol Hill that caused controversy 2 even before they started. The House Homeland Security Committee is holding these hearings to look into the radicalization of American Muslims. Basically, the idea that a group like al Qaeda could recruit U.S. Muslims and turn them into terrorists. Some critics called the hearings an unfair attack on loyal Americans. But Representative Peter King, who's the chairman of the committee, says that the goal is not to condemn 3 Islam as a religion or American Muslims as a group. But he says the hearings are designed to limit the threat of terrorism. And he also believes they're important to America's safety.

Let me make it clear today, that I remain convinced that these hearings must go forward and they will. To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication 4 of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this committee: to protect America from a terrorist attack.

One of the people who testified during yesterday's hearings was Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress. He acknowledged that some Muslims are responsible for violent actions. But he said you can't blame an entire community for the evil of some individuals. He got especially emotional talking about a Muslim paramedic and police cadet who died trying to help others during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be identified as just as a member of an ethnic 5 group or just a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow Americans.

Bullying 6 has been a big topic in the news recently. And yesterday, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosted the first ever White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. Parents and students got together to talk about the effects of bullying and how to stop it in school and online. Ed Henry, our senior White House correspondent, has more on that event.

President Obama using this first-ever White House anti-bullying summit as a forum 7 to try to bring attention to this very, very difficult issue and say, look, for too long there have been students all around the country who have just accepted it, that they were going to get picked on, that they were going to be bullied 8, be the subject of assaults and violence and that it was sort of a rite 9 of passage for kids. The president says that given all these tragic 10 incidents where some kids have committed suicide over bullying, he says it's time for all of this to end, for schools to have higher standards. And he and the first lady have used various social media tools like Facebook to bring that message directly to students, to report some of these bullying incidents, for example. The president used his forum at the White House to say that even he as a kid was bullied.

As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard. And I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn't immune. I didn't emerge unscathed. But because it's something that happens a lot, and it's something that's always been around, sometimes we've turned a blind eye to the problem. We've said, "Kids will be kids." And so, sometimes we overlook the real damage that bullying can do, especially when young people face harassment 11 day after day, week after week.

So the bottom line is, the key moving forward is going to be, will there actually be some action to back up some of the talk at this summit. Ed Henry, CNN, the White House.

The showdown in Wisconsin may be over. The anger is not. This started with Republican Governor Scott Walker's budget proposal that would limit negotiating rights for workers' unions. Fourteen Democratic state Senators fled the state so that there wouldn't be enough people there to pass the bill. On Wednesday, Republicans took out all the parts of the bill that had to do with the budget. Voting on non-budget bills requires less people, so the reduced negotiating rights passed. Protesters at the capitol yesterday started pounding on the windows. That forced police to put the building in lockdown! They closed the capitol and forcibly removed anyone inside who wouldn't leave. One entrance was re-opened later in the day.