Two years ago, my son Ben was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. For days after the diagnosis, I anchored the KTLA Morning News and then retired to my office where I closed the door and wept. I was grieving the loss of the carefree life my son and every 12-year-old boy should enjoy. I was terrified about the life-threatening disease he now faced. I was mad. We were good parents who had done everything we could to make sure our child was healthy and thriving. We made him eat healthy foods. We made sure he exercised and was fit. We took him to the doctor for physicals and other regular check ups. When he was born healthy, the doctor told us he had 10 fingers and 10 toes and everything was where it was supposed to be. How could doctors now come to us and say that our precious son actually faced a life-threatening disease?

Thankfully, our son's type 1 diabetes was discovered during a routine physical and not during an emergency hospitalization. Some families have to rush their children to the hospital in an ambulance when blood sugar levels go so high that their children suffer seizures or fall unconscious. Like many of them, we had no experience with diabetes and didn't know anything about it. We would soon learn that our son's life and our family's life was about to change in a big way.

One day Ben was a healthy, athletic and happy 12-year-old boy. The next day he was learning how to check his blood sugars and how to inject himself with a syringe.  Two years later, Ben is an experienced young man who deals with the challenge of type 1 diabetes with aplomb. Several times a day, Ben has to prick his finger with a needle to make himself bleed. He does this to check his blood sugars. Before he eats or drinks anything, he has to estimate the number of carbohydrate grams in a meal or snack to determine how much insulin he has to either inject through a syringe or put in to his body through an insulin pump. If he does the math correctly and puts in the right amount of insulin, he simply continues about his day. If he gets it wrong and doesn't use enough insulin, his blood sugars can spike to dangerous levels--contributing to the long-term effects of diabetes which include kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, amputation, heart attack and stroke. If he uses too much insulin, he "goes low" and my son feels uncomfortable at best. I don't want to think about the worst case scenario but all of us who have children who are facing type 1 diabetes every day know that extremely low blood sugar levels can also cause seizures, unconsciousness, or even death.

I share these things with you because my job is to inform and my son has allowed me to share our story with hopes it might help you.  Researchers don't yet know why some people are stricken with type 1 diabetes. They believe there's a genetic component to it and that environmental triggers cause some people to get it. But we had no family history and to this day we don't know what triggered Ben's onset of the disease. And yet, our son has type 1 diabetes.

These are the kinds of stories being told this week in Washington DC at the Children's Congress--a project of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. A delegation of 150 young people, 4-17 years old, will be led by International Chairman Mary Tyler Moore as they meet with lawmakers to tell them their stories and to encourage them to continue funding research. Among the delegates are seven-year-old Jonathan Richard Platt and Michelle Smolarski, 17, who are representing the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the JDRF. Here are a couple of links to videos so you can see these wonderful kids:

http://cc.jdrf.org/delegates-2011/ca/jonathan-1.php

http://cc.jdrf.org/delegates-2011/ca/michelle.php

All of this is to say: It can happen to you too. Three million Americans are living with type 1 diabetes and 80 new patients are diagnosed every day. That's why it's important for everyone to recognize the symptoms of type 1 diabetes so that if it does, you won't find yourself in a hospital emergency room. According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the warning signs that you or your child may have type 1 diabetes are extreme thirst, frequent urination, sudden vision changes, sugar in urine, fruity, sweet or wine-like breath odor, increased appetite, sudden weight loss, drowsiness and lethargy and heavy labored breathing.  If you or your child are experiencing any of these symptoms, you should call a doctor. If you want more information, you can go to JDRF's website at jdrf.org or jdrfla.org.

On Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Olympic gold medalist and swimmer Gary Hall Jr., NFL football player Kendall Simmons, recording artist Crystal Bowersox and others who have type 1 diabetes will participate in a Town Hall panel "Role Models with Type 1 Diabetes" at 10:30 a.m. EDT (7:30 a.m. our time). If you'd like to watch or participate, go to www.cc.jdrf.org/LIVE. You can also join the conversation at @JDRFAdvocacy on Twitter and add the hashtag #JDRFcc11.

The latest journalist to offend by expressing a personal opinion is Marie Claire's Maura Kelly. Here's a link to her blog titled "Should 'Fatties' Get A Room? (Even on TV?)." http://www.marieclaire.com/print-this/sex-love/dating-blog/overweight-couples-on-television?page=all

In it, Kelly talks about the CBS sitcom, "Mike and Molly,' which features an overweight or plus-sized couple who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous. Kelly says in her blog that an editor asked her if "people feel uncomfortable when they see overweight people making out on television." She checked out the show and determined: "Hmm, being overweight is one thing--those people are downright obese!" She argues the show is effectively promoting obesity. She added: "So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other...because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room--just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroin addict slumping in a chair."

As you might imagine, the blog sparked an uproar and it prompted Kelly to update her blog with this apology: "People have accused me of being a bully in my post. I never intended to be that--it's actually the very last thing I want to be, as a writer or a person. But I know that I came off that way, and I really cannot apologize enough to the people whom I upset."

At the moment, it appears Kelly remains employed by Marie Claire. But should she be fired? If she is, she'd join Juan Williams, formerly of NPR, and Rick Sanchez, formerly of CNN, who were both terminated for expressing personal views that offended large groups of people.

There's no doubt they all had a right to say what they did but for journalists--especially those who purport to be objective journalists attempting to present all sides to every story--it's thin ice we're walking on when we begin to tell you what we think. But as a consumer of news--is that what you want?

In England, I know what political slant I'm getting when I buy certain newspapers. When I buy The Sun, it's going to be a tabloid treatment written from a conservative point of view. If I buy The Guardian, it's a liberal approach to a given story. The news consumer can make a judgment on the information he or she is receiving against the backdrop of what's known about that publication. Should we be doing that in this country? Do you want us to tell you what WE think or just present the facts as objectively as anyone can?

Should journalists be punished for expressing their personal points of view when they offend or when they're at odds with what their viewers/readers/listeners believe is appropriate? Was NPR's Juan Williams wrong to say he felt "nervous" when he boards a plane and sees people in Muslim garb? Was Rick Sanchez wrong to call Jon Stewart a "bigot" and implying Jewish people run CNN and all of the television networks? If they were wrong to state their personal opinions, should they have been fired for expressing those opinions? Finally, do we end up avoiding discourse on serious issues because people fear they'll say the "wrong thing" and be labeled a bigot?

I'm old school and don't think it's for me to tell you what to think. I try to present the facts in context with perspective. I ask the questions. As always, I'll be interested to see your answers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg&feature=player_embedded

Was he joking? Watch the video at about 1:15. It certainly made me chuckle.

Rep. Hank Johnson, a democratic congressman from Georgia, was questioning U.S. Navy Admiral Robert Willard at a hearing of the Armed Services Committee last Friday about the impact of 5,000 Marines and their family members being stationed on the island of Guam when he made a statement that has gone viral. Johnson said: "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Admiral Willard's play-it-straight response: "We don't anticipate that."

Congressman Johnson's office had to issue a response after all of the attention. According to Rep. Johnson: "The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island."

Get it?

That's the question posed by our cameraman Boog this morning after our segment today with the LAFD firefighters who rescued Spikey the dog from the LA River and Spikey's owners. The owners had a chance to meet the rescuers for the first time in our studio. The firefighters had a chance to meet the folks whose dog they rescued.

After they left our studio and during a commercial break, we were talking about the segment and Boog asked the provocative question: If your family dog was floating down the river and a complete stranger (a human being) was also in the river and you could only save the life of one of them, who would you choose?

It's not the most important question in the world but it sure was a conversation starter. Who would you save and why?

Do you remember how you felt when President Obama was inaugurated? Chances are whether you supported him or not, you felt change was in the air. After all, that was the promise that candidate Barack Obama offered when he swept in to office. But just a year in to his term, many Americans feel little has changed and many have lost their patience. 

As I write this on Friday morning, there are reports that bands of young men armed with machetes are roaming the streets of Port-au-Prince looting and scavenging. There is anger among many Haitians who have not received any of of the relief presumably purchased by the millions of dollars raised by relief organizations. The victims of this earthquake are in need of water, food, shelter and medicines. While trained urban search and rescue teams wait for orders to go on tarmacs at March Air Reserve Base and Travis Air Force Base here in California, Haitians are using their hands to try to free their loved ones trapped underneath tons of rubble.

What's taking so long for the help to reach the victims?

According to AP journalists on the ground in Port-au-Prince, "poor or blocked roads, airport congestion and other logistical obstacles" are to blame. I've seen these sorts of delays firsthand while covering the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. I saw it with my own eyes when I was sent to Kobe, Japan in January of 1995 to cover a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that left more than 6,300 people dead, 35,000 people injured, hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings damaged or destroyed and roads and bridges unusable.

Like Haiti, Japan needed international help immediately to help save lives and it was offered. Dozens of countries immediately offered everything from medical aid to food to search and rescue assistance. Unfortunately, it didn't arrive for days. In that case, bureaucratic delays and national pride got in the way. As a reporter on the ground, it was frustrating to hear that Japanese officials were refusing help when I could see it was clearly needed. Given the criticism that followed and the introspection that occurred in the months and years that followed, I have to believe that would never happen again in Japan. But there are delays (albeit for different reasons) again in Haiti.

What's so disheartening is to think that 15 years after I watched the people of one country suffer from delays in getting relief aid, people in another are suffering from delays yet again. It seems to me--there needs to be an international conference or a treaty of some kind that nations should sign on to that would better coordinate aid in the future. There should be an international relief czar who could open the "relief handbook" and make it flow in a more coordinated fashion. Victims of earthquakes and other disasters need help immediately. If the roads are impassable (and they so frequently are in disasters), the "relief handbook" should call for helicopters to be deployed by the dozens to drop supplies at designated spots. There should be a protocol for which aircraft land first to make sure the local airport doesn't become too congested (as it has in Haiti). I'm obviously not an expert on emergency management or emergency aid, but I hope one of the things that will come out of the Haiti experience will be a convening of such experts to work out these "logistical obstacles" before the next disaster occurs.

I played hooky from the 1 P.M. show yesterday to play golf at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress. It was golfing for a good cause.

KTLA supports an organization called USA Cares and I represented the station in the tournament. USA Cares is one of the many non-profit organizations created in recent years to support our troops and their families. With our troops still deployed in Iraq and with many more about to deploy to Afghanistan, the services these organizations provide to our service members and their families are as important as ever.

As some of you may know, I grew up in a military family. My dad retired as a master chief with 30 years in the U.S. Navy. He was a hospital corpsman. They serve as "medics" to U.S. Marines. That's how we ended up moving to Twentynine Palms in 1976. My dad served with the marines and later was the command master chief at the base hospital. As a kid, I was aware of only one non-profit that helped marines and sailors in need. It's an organization we called "Navy Relief"--technically it's called the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society.

Navy-Marine Corps Relief is a private non-profit sponsored by the Department of the Navy. It was founded in 1904 and provides everything from interest free loans and grants to "food lockers" to make sure military families never go hungry. For more information or to make a donation, here's a link to their website: http://www.nmcrs.org/index.html

The folks I played golf with yesterday were supporting USA Cares--founded a century after Navy-Marine Corps Relief--in 2003. Since then, they have provided $6.4 million to thousands of military families whose needs "fall through the cracks" of government sponsored support programs. They provide grants to wounded soldiers and their families. They make direct payments to providers "to keep the lights on, the home warm, food on the table and the car in the driveway," as the organization puts it. And recently, they've been more involved than ever in making sure military families don't lose their homes to foreclosure through something they call the Homeownership Preservation Foundation. They have advocates who go to bat for military families to re-work terms with lenders and to provide counseling to homeowners.

USA Cares founder Roger Stradley told me they've "saved" 47 homes in California alone as of August 31st of 2009 and spent a total of more than $373,000 on their 1330 California "clients." Know of a military family about to lose their home or in need of help? Here's a link to the website for USA Cares:  http://usacares.org/. Here's their phone number: 1-800-773-0387.

Turns out Roger Stradley is a retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major. I was honored to buy him a beer after golf yesterday and he declared it his favorite kind: "Cold and free." I loved the line and plan to use it in the future. I also love what Roger and all the volunteers and staffers at USA Cares are doing--not just remembering our troops and their families, but actually helping them when they need it.

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.