CNN 2011-02-13

Let's buckle 1 up and go Cross Country. Here's some stories from around the US. First stop, St. Paul, Minnesota, where nearly 200 middle school girls from the Laura Jeffrey Academy put on zombie-like makeup 2 and costumes to re-enact Michael Jackson's "Thriller 3." They performed at a college yesterday to wrap up their quarter-long drama and physical ed class.

All right, San Francisco for a rare sight. Pot of killer 4 whales swimming in waters near the Golden Gate Bridge. A nice surprise for a group of tourists on a whale-watching excursion. As many as 14 orcas came within 30 feet of the boat.

And how about Bowling 5 Green, Ohio? Amy Seiffert has been wearing this simple gray dress every day since November 15th. Why? Well, her goal is to help raise money for victims of sex trafficking. Amy says she will wear the dress until the end of May.

Let's Zone In on San Antonio, Texas. Forget the Alamo for a couple of minutes. The big battle now is between a defrocked beauty queen and the pageant 6 directors who took her tiara. They claim she got too fat to reign 7, among a number of other reasons. So we're hearing both sides. Here's Eileen Gonzalez of KSAT.

Beauty queen Domonique Ramirez is in tears over the drama that stripped her of her crown.

I'm 17 years old, I shouldn't have to be slandered 8 like this, and my future shouldn't have to be ruined over this.

It's a he said, she said sort of dispute. Miss San Antonio Pageant directors claim Domonique violated rules showing up to events with her boyfriend holding her hand. They also say she gained weight and didn't prepare sufficiently 9 for the Miss Texas pageant. But they say the main reason is that she was unreliable.

She did not make it to functions that she was scheduled for, that she agreed to do. She didn't, sometimes she didn't show up at all and didn't even call and tell you she wasn't coming. Or if she would come, she would come an hour and a half late.

They're bringing stuff up from the past and making stuff up that is not even true.

Pageants 10 directors had already passed the crown to runner- up Ashley Dixon, but Ramirez's lawyer filed a restraining order.

Domonique is going to fight to the bitter end, and she will retain her reign.

For now, the position of Miss San Antonio is in a holding pattern. Ramirez's lawyer claims Domonique still has the crown. Pageant directors say she doesn't. Nothing will be done until the legal case is settled.

The court date is set for next week. If all this drags on too long, San Antonio might not send anyone to the Miss Texas pageant in July.

All right. A new sex scandal boiling up on Capitol Hill and it's already cost a congressman 11 his job. It's because of the shirtless beef cake photo that you're taking a look at right there.

New York Republican Chris Lee resigned after the photo and some tawdry details at the Internet.

CNN's Deb Feyerick outside Lee's home in Amperes 12, New Jersey 13.

My guess is he's not going to step out and talk to you and the cameras, Deb.

Well, he's definitely not going to step out and talk to us. As a matter of fact, the last reported sighting was as he was leaving Capitol Hill and someone asked him where he was going and he basically had no comment except to say this is something that he needed to figure out between he and his wife.

Now Chris Lee, he apparently 14 lied about his age, he lied about being divorced, he lied about his job. The one thing he did tell the truth about is what his name was. Well, apparently this was not the first time he had reached out to a woman on Craigslist as some of those e- mails suggest.

What seemed like a promising 15 career for this up-and-rising Republican ended in just a matter of hours. He had served Congress for two years, but once this hit the Internet on Gawkers, once those photos came out, it took about three hours for him to actually resign.

Now the House Speaker John Boehner apparently did not force him out. However, it did appear that this was something that he simply could not survive. He issued a statement saying how sorry he was, saying how he needed to fix this, that he would do everything he could to make this all right.

Now the e-mails apparently were sent from a G-mail account linked to his personal Facebook page. His spokesman had earlier said that perhaps that e-mail account was hacked 16 into. However, the e-mails to this woman on Craigslist were sent before that hacking 17 was reported and the picture that was sent was from a BlackBerry which you can clearly see in that photograph.

Now folks here in western New York, really they're pretty disappointed. One of the main reasons is this was a businessman who was really trying to rebuild the area and bring businesses to this part of Buffalo 18. That's why there's sort of a sense of loss and sadness.

You always come home and there'd be messages to what he was doing and, you know, updating you on progress or whatever, and for him to do something like this and throw it all away was sad.

Sad state of affairs when you have someone that you are supposed to respect publicly lets you down.

Really we need qualified 19 people in Congress to represent us and, I mean, everybody makes mistakes and nobody seems to be able to live with what they do.