I've never been a big fan of New Year's Eve parties. Some people drink too much. Others try too hard to make the evening "the best" of the year. As a kid, I usually watched Dick Clark ring in the new year "live" (live on the East Coast anyway--we were watching it on tape 3 hours later here in Southern California). Now that I have kids of my own, I've tended to watch the ball drop "live" on CNN at 9 P.M. PST (midnight eastern) before heading off to sleep. I am "old man Buckley" after all!

 Last year, we rang in the new year with friends who have four young children who invited other families with children. It was good fun to rally the kids (at around 8:30 P.M. I think it was) to begin counting down to the end of the year and the beginning of 2009. The kids didn't seem to mind or even know it wasn't yet midnight anywhere in America. Tonight, we'll go to their home again and then later visit some other folks who've invited us to a more grown-up affair. 

I can't stay up too late though because I leave my house at 4 A.M. on New Near's Day to go to Tournament House (headquarters for the Tournament of Roses Association) in Pasadena for what has become another tradition for me--covering the pre-parade activities for the Rose Parade. We usually grab a hot breakfast prepared by the good folks at Tournament House then take a walk with the KTLA production team to inspect some of the floats. I'll review my notes and then at 6 A.M., go "live" with Michaela Pereira to begin two hours of broadcasting. I've really enjoyed being part of the broadcast over the past few years and I was delighted to be asked to do it again this year. I get an up-close view of the floats and I get to meet some of the people who've worked on or will ride on the floats in the parade. Our own Stan Chambers is among the people who will ride on a float this year. Stan will be on the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California float along with NASA astronauts Leland Melvin and Dr. Robert Satcher (guys I met today who both have great senses of humor), cancer survivors and cancer patients. Stan is a living legend who continues to come to work every day. We enjoy focusing on his stories and having him on with us "live" every Friday on the 1 P.M. show. Congratulations Stan! 

On this New Year's Day, I get to interview Stan and I also get to interview Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed US Air Flt. 1549 in the Hudson River a year ago this month. He's the grand marshall of the parade and in my opinion highly deserving of the honor. He's handled the fame and "hero" status with the same grace with which he handled the bird strike that crippled his aircraft. I'm looking forward to meeting him.

I'm also looking forward to the new year.  I want to thank all of you for watching the KTLA Morning News and for making us in 2009 the most-watched morning news program in Southern California. We will continue to do our best in the months and years ahead to bring you the news you need to get out the door. And we'll continue to try to put a smile on your face before you go to school or head to work. Thanks to all of you who've posted comments on this blog and on my twitter page ktlafbuckley. I've read them all and will continue to do so in 2010. Happy New Year to you all.

Moments ago, President Obama responded to the attempted terror attack aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas day by trying to assure the American people that our government is doing everything in its power to keep us safe. The president refused to answer any questions and he left me unconvinced about the efforts of my government.

After all, the alleged terrorist who tried to bring down Northwest 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of Nigeria, was known by our government to be a potential threat and yet no one gave him a second look when he boarded aircraft in both Lagos and Amsterdam. This despite the fact the alleged terrorist's father, a prominent Nigerian banker, warned U.S. officials a month ago that his son might try to harm us.

Here's what the Associated Press is saying:

"Four weeks ago, Abdulmutallab's father told the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that he was concerned about his son's growing hard-line Islamic religious beliefs and possible affiliations with fundamentalist groups, according to a U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation. This information was shared with U.S. intelligence officials, and Abdulmutallab's name was added to a vast government database of people with suspected or known terror associations.

Abdulmutallab came to the attention of intelligence officials months earlier, though, according to a U.S. government official involved in the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is ongoing.

Still, none of the information the government had on Abdulmutallab rose to the level of putting him on the official terror watch list or no-fly list. Abdulmutallab received a valid U.S. visa in June 2008 that is good through 2010.

His is one of about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said they lacked enough information to place him in the 400,000-person terror watch list, the list of about 14,000 names of people who need additional screening before they fly or on the no-fly list of fewer than 4,000 people who should be blocked from air travel."

How is that after the billions of dollars spent on counterterrorism efforts and a complete change in the culture of the flying public, did the government fail to stop this person from boarding a plane without at least a secondary search of his body? We see children and grandmothers being searched--my own kids have been patted down. But this guy doesn't even make the right list so he doesn't get screened?

And now, the government is again attempting to assure us that everything is being done to protect us. Really? Passengers are certainly doing their part again. This time, we're being asked to show up at the airport earlier. And some are being told to stay seated and keep their hands visible at all times. These are the measures being taken to keep us safe?

This is not a criticism, by the way, of TSA workers or airline workers who are simply doing their best on the front lines to keep us safe. I see how hard they work in often trying circumstances every time I fly. This is directed at our policymakers who have promised us for years that "everything is being done" to keep us safe. Sorry, but this incident seems to suggest that much more needs to be done.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Joe Lieberman, (I-Conn.), plans to hold hearings on the incident in January. While I'm not always a fan of congressional hearings that Monday Morning Quarterback incidents like these, there is clearly a need in this case.

I welcome your thoughts. What are the questions you'd like Senator Lieberman to ask?

From the moment the summons arrived, I had anticipated my jury service with a sense of dread. The thought of spending hours in a crowded jury assembly room followed by intrusive questioning by lawyers and judges didn't exactly put me in the holiday spirit. So--like many of my fellow prospective jurors--I was somewhat grumpy as I showed up at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.

I'd been to the courthouse a million times before--most notably during the so-called "trial of the century" when I was in a courtroom to witness the reading of the "not guilty" verdicts in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. But it's one thing to be a dispassionate observer as verdicts are delivered, quite another, I imagined, to be one of the jurors who contributes to a verdict. What would it feel like to sit in judgment of another human being, knowing my vote could help to send a person to prison or even death? As it turned out, I would not find out this time around. I was excused from jury service on Thursday afternoon before the jury was impaneled.

Still, I appreciated the experience (can't quite bring myself to say I enjoyed it but I did appreciate it) because I had a chance to meet some interesting people, I heard about their lives and businesses and their favorite restaurants (looking forward to having the Hollenbeck burrito at El Tepeyac Cafe in Boyle Heights one of these days). And I got to see firsthand the hard work being performed every day at the courthouse by so many people. It also reminded me of the gang violence that plagues our communities even as crime rates are going down in Los Angeles. That's because I almost made it onto the jury in a murder trial in an alleged gang shooting. More on that in a moment, but first a bit about my jury duty experience.

I spent the morning of my first day in the jury assembly room--a huge room with chairs organized in rows where we listened to a judge talk to us about the importance of jury service in a democratic society. We watched a video that told us about the restaurants and museums and shopping opportunities in downtown Los Angeles. I read the sections of the New York Times Sunday paper and magazine that I hadn't had a chance to read last weekend. Then, it was time for lunch. I walked to Little Tokyo to meet a friend during my 90 minute lunch break.

Upon returning, I was dispatched with 40 or so other prospective jurors to Department 122, Judge Craig Veals presiding. Judge Veals struck me as a thoughtful and patient jurist with a kind face. It was only after I'd been released from my jury service that I googled him and learned that in 2005, he slapped a prospective juror like me with a $1,000 fine (later reduced to $100) for yawning too loudly in his courtroom. According to the Los Angeles Times, as Juror 2386 waited for lawyers to question him, Judge Veals said: "You yawned rather audibly there. As a matter of fact, it was to the point that it was contemptuous." When the juror apologized that he "was really bored," the judge found him in contempt and said: "Your boredom just cost you $1,000."  By my second and third afternoons of watching my fellow prospective jurors being questioned (after waking on those days at 4:30 A.M. and anchoring the morning news), I wanted to yawn, too. Fortunately, I didn't yawn loudly enough to catch the attention of Judge Veals. I understood though why Judge Veals might not appreciate the lack of focus. Because while jury duty is a mere annoyance to most of us, it can literally be life and death for the defendants and justice or no justice for the victims and their families.

The judge, the prosecutor and the defense attorney in the trial I was being considered for were all eager to know how each prospective juror felt about gangs and whether they could be fair to the defendant if they learned he was "associated with gangs."  That's because the case of "The People of the State of California v. Jose Almando Alatriste" is a murder trial of a young man charged with using a semi-automatic handgun to commit murder and attempted murder "for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang," as I later learned from court documents. In short, it was a violent gang-related crime that in many cities across America would have been front page news. In Los Angeles however, it was just one of the many trials underway involving gang violence. Only the most heinous of those crimes ever make the news in L.A. In this case, I was the only reporter present in the courtroom and I was there as a civilian. This trial wasn't going to be covered. As Deputy District Attorney Bradley Lieberman assured the prospective jurors, there would be no sequestration in this trial, no media hounding the jurors for interviews after the verdict.

It made me think about the thousands of victims of gang violence in Los Angeles and their family members who quietly sit through trials that most of us will never hear about. It made me think that while most of us see jury duty as a burden, it really is the important civic duty we've all been taught to believe it is. When we step in to a courtroom as jurors, we are not only participating in democracy, we are honoring those victims of crime whose deaths or wounds were not deemed worthy of news coverage. We are honoring the police officers and prosecutors who are trying to put away the perpetrators of those crimes. We honor those working in the court system to keep it operating even as they suffer cutbacks that make their jobs and their personal lives more difficult. And we honor the defendants and their attorneys when the defendant is wrongly accused. The trial is their one shot to have a jury of their peers see the truth.

Don't get me wrong--the system ain't perfect and I'm sure there's plenty that could be fixed. For example, too many of my fellow prospective jurors were going to lose money as prospective or actual jurors because in today's economy, many of them are part-time workers or freelance workers whose only compensation is the $15 per day plus mileage we all receive beginning on the second day of jury service. According to Mary Hearn, the deputy public information officer for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, 14,503 people were excused for "financial hardship" in 2008-2009. But with 3,035,631 summons being mailed out, how many people are being forced to sit on a jury when they really need to be working to feed their families.

I'm sure some of you have thoughts on what else is wrong or right with jury duty. I'd be interested to hear about your jury duty experiences and your thoughts on how things could be improved.