nomination. mitt romney is still in front. newt gingrich has 38. rick santorum has 34 and ron paul, you see it there, has 20. dozens of syrians are reported dead today in a city under siege from its own government. this is homs, where anti-government activists say mortar fires from unseen attackers is almost constant. one says we cannot count the dead any more. i'll have more on this 11 will have month conflict and the choices facing washington in the west in our next segment moments from now. the white house is and congress are all too eager to support u.s. troops, but at the same time, the u.s. government might be able to further limit their legal rights. for more than 60 years, federal law has essentially barred military service members from suing the u.s. because of medical mass practice because of an injury or death on active duty. but government lawyers are trying to expand that, arguing the u.s. should be protected from malpractice lawsuits involving military families. we're going to dig much deeper into what this could mean for troops and their families. that's coming up in just about 20 minutes. in washington state, new developments in the story of a man who blew up his house with his kids inside. the social worker who took the two boys to visit their father clearly felt something was wrong. listen to her 911 call. >> something really weird is happening. the kids went into the house and the parent, the buy lomgal parent whose name is josh powell will not let me in the door. what should i do? >> minutes later, the house exploded. her 911 conversations were part of many released by the sheriff's department detailing the moments leading up to the death. powing sent out an e-mail earlier saying i'm not able to live without my sons and i'm not able to go on any more. i'm sorry. good-bye. josh powell was a suspect in the 2009 disappearance of his wife, susan cox-powell. tv host ellen degeneres is saluting jcpenney for keeping her on the payroll. the group 1 million moms is calling to boycott the chain for hiring her as a spokes woman because she's gay. she sticks it to 1 million mom in the show that airs today. >> normally i try not to pay attention to my haters, but this time i'd like to talk bit because my haters are my motivators. i would like to read just a few comments from the million moms facebook page. this is on their page. and not that there's anyone counting, but for a group that calls themselves a million moms, they only have 40,000 members on their page. so they're rounding to the nearest million and i get that. >> 1 million moms is an offshoot of the american family administration. all airbus a380 airplanes have been order to check for cracks in its wings. the cracks on a quantitiace airline were discovered after long turbulence. the carrier blames manufacturing issues. the new order doesn't mean planes must be grounded, but they might be checked within a given time frame. prosecutors say former penn state assistant coach jerry sandusky should stay ip doors during his house arrest because neighbors have expressed grave concern of seeing him outside his house which borders an elementary school playground. prosecutors oppose sandusky's request to see his grandchildren, arguing his home is not safe for children. a hearing is set for friday. men, women and children being slaughtered. in syria, it seems all humanity is dissolving as the government attacks its own people. why isn't the international community put ago stop to this and what can the u.s. do to help? when you have tough pain, do you want fast relief? try bayer advanced aspirin. it's not the bayer aspirin you know. it's different. first...it's been re-engineered with micro-particles. second, it enters the bloodstream fast, and rushes relief to the site of your tough pain. the best part? it's proven to relieve pain twice as fast as before. bayer advanced aspirin. test how fast it works for you. love it, or get your money back. at meineke i have options... like oil changes starting at $19.95. my money. my choice. my meineke. a relentless government john lawsuit continues for the fourth straight day. opposition groups say at least 60 people have been killed in homs today alone in what's described as the heaviest bombardment so far. the dead included 20 members of three families in homs, according to a syrian human rights group. civilians have died today elsewhere in the country. syrian president bashar al assad calls this being done by terrorist groups. this little boy is one of the thousands of civilians killed since the resolve erupted nearly one year ago. most world leaders have expressed outrage over the senseless killing. just yesterday, the human rights commissioner says she is appalled by the government's willful attack on homs. the u.n. estimates 6,000 people have died since the start of that uprising. president assad rarely allows foreign journalists to enter the country to see for themselves what's happening. cnn and other news organizations must rely in part on syrian opposition members who risk their lives to tell us about the carnage. >> these are civilian thousands. this is the clinic, a doctor's clinic. we're asking for humanity to help us. we're asking for the u.n. to help us. we're asking for the arab league to help us, anyone. anyone with any kind of humanity in their heart, do something about this. >> the obama administration just might be inching closer to providing some]/ñ kind of help the syrian anti-government administration. cnn is told that the pentagon has started a preliminary internal review in the event president obama calls for them and they're giving assad a very blunt warning. >> your days are numbered and it is time and past time for you to transfer power responsibly and peacefully. the longer you hang on, the more damage you do to yourself, your family, your interests and indeed, your country. >> echoing those tough words, senator john mccain said says assad's killing of the syrian people must stop. >> i think we have a contact group and we should start considering all oppositions, including arming the opposition. >> for the latest on the uprising in syria, be sure to stay with cnn. our reporters in the are doing all they can to keep us updated there. today's decision is important to that young me that never dreamt that i would wake up in a country where i could marry the person that i loved. >> and now he's closer to making that dream come true. we'll talk with paul katami and his partner straight after the break. and when little max's 16-year-old brother got paralyzed in a hockey game, he decided to do something to cheer him up. so he wrote to former nhl star wayne gretzky for help. what he didn't expect was 32 nhl jerseys delivered to his hospital room and a phone call from gretzky himself. that and gifts and support from everywhere are help jack get through this difficult time. so we would like to say, max, for loving your brother so much and wayne gretzky for making jack's day, you guys are today's rock stars. welcome back. it's been 24 hours almost to the minute since a federal appeals court struck down california's proposition 8. and gave supporterses of same-sex marriage the biggest yet they rules proposition 8 serves no purpose and has no effect other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in california and to officially reclassify their rips as inferior to those as same-sex couples. paul and jeff are among the mrefs in that lawsuit. hi, guys, nice to have you on the show. so i understand that this is certainly big news in california. are there some wedding plans now in the works for the two of you or do you see this as another round in vary long fight? >> well, you know, there's always wedding plans after a decade of being together with someone that you love. so we are definitely looking forward to the day where we can actually be fully recognized in our state and in our country. so, yes, we're constantly planning. >> you've waited all this time. jeff, why didn't you go and get married maybe in another state that allows it? >> well, we're californians. paul was born and raised in san francisco. i've been here for over a third of my life. we work here, we have friends here. we want to be married in the state that we are living in. you know, we don't want to have to go to another state. we live in the united states of america where all 50 states should street their citizens equally. >> a lot of this big news coming out of california is because of the two of you along with another couple who filed this lawsuit to make this change happen. are you considered heros by those who support same-sex marriage? what are you hearing from people? >> what's great about this whole process is the educational aspect of it. what we set out to do was just what we feel is right. so there's really no ego about it. chris and sandy have a family and we have jobs and we go back to our everyday regular lives. i'm going to work right after this interview. so it's all about the educational aspect. it's about getting our stories out there. it's about showing everyone that if we have equal rights, it doesn't negatively affect anyone, it only benefits our lives and our community. so it's a matter of making sure that we're out there telling the truth. >> jeff, why was this so important to you? >> well, you know, we're americans. you know, and i love this man that's sitting next to me. i want to be able to marry him. my farnts have been married for 43 years. i have both sets of my grandparents were married for over 50 years. marriage has global recognition. i want to be able to introduce this person next to me as my husband. that's important. love and commitment is important. >> and, jeff, i also want to ask you -- and, actually, both of you about some of the backlash. because your side has really made progress through the court system while the gay marriage ban was actually passed by voters. and some of those say, you know what? it's the voters voices that need to be heard, not the court's. paul, what do you say to those people? >> you know, we believe in the democratic process. we absolutely do. and as gay americans, we appreciate our freedoms, we appreciate our liberties. but the one thing that we honestly believe is that those liberties and freedoms should never be put up to a vote. so our rights should never be subjected to the whim of a political campaign. they should never have to be lobbied for or voted on. they should be ours and, you know, good people can come to separate conclusions and still respect the fact that in our country, the freedom is to protect everyone. when you strip a right through a ballot initiate ip, that's unconstitutional. >> and i would just add, randi, the courts are there to protect us. we have the ballot initiative process, but when the majority infringes the rights of the minority, that is what the courts are there for. the courts must step in and relieve that oppression. >> and do you expect this is the end of it or do you think it will go up to the higher court now? >> well, we're not lawyers, and obviously the ball is in the court of the opponents right now, but if they do decide to go to the supreme court, we're confident that they will reach the same conclusion. we are 2-0 so far. we've won in the district court and we've won in the court of appeals and that says a lot. >> it doesn't make sense to think you can move to one state and have a set of rules and move to another and not have those same rights. we hope this will have a more national impact. we want this for california. we need it as a nation. >> and when you talk about the national impact, i want to ask you about the impact come 2012 in the election because all the gop candidates, except ron paul, support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex maermg. rick santorum has said he would nullify all existing same-sex marriages. are you concerned at all, paul, about the election later this year? >> well, i'm going to though this one to jeff. i think he has a great answer for this one. >> you know, i said this all along. i would love to invite rick santorum, mitt romney, newt gingrich, come to my house. sit down with me. sit down and have dinner with me. let's have a conversation. look at my loving home. i want them to look me in the eye and tell me that i don't deserve the same rights. i would them to look at elliott perry in the eye after listening to spencer on stage yesterday and tell him that his family is not equal. >> and what's unfortunate is when the responses come out and they're somewhat uneducated. the ruling just came out and so to be educated on the facts and if you were to sit down and understand these rights in our constitution, i think that's a more responsible way to have this discussion, have a responsible debate rather than trying to strip away the rights of a minority. >> i think because this is cnn, i think you guys technically just invited rick santorum and mitt romney to your homes for dinner. if they come, we'll be there, as well. >> come on in. >> thanks so much. >> thanks, randi. if i get sick and something goes goes wrong at the hospital, you have the right to sue. the military men and women who serve our country don't necessarily have those rights. how the government may be trying to restrict their legal rights. 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[ female announcer ] only from aveeno. you, your wife, husband or child gets sick. you rush them to a military hospital. but instead of getting better, they get worse or worse still, you find yourself asending their funeral. and what if you think the doctors are to blame? most of us have the right to sue formal practice. do you know u.s. troops are blocked from doing that in most cases? it's been that way for decades. military times reporter andrew tillman has done extensive reporting on had. he joins us live from d.c. to break this down for us. andrew, nice to have you here. this goes back to a landmark 1950 supreme court ruling that helped establish the military doctrine, that military men and women cannot sue the u.s. for million practice. this was originally meant to protect the government from liability in connection to military service. but really, andrew, what did that ruling do beyond that? >> well, this law was originally intended to apply narrowly to combat situations. to a lot of people, that makes sense. you can't have a commander worried about making split section decisions. but the ruling in 1950 significantly expanded that. it was the case of an army soldier. he died when the housing barracks burned down. his family sued and the court says basically that was unacceptable, that the military should be protected from a whole raung of lawsuits. government lawyers now in florida are looking to expand this and block their families and their children from bringing a suit, as well. what if there are spouses or children are civilians? >> according to the u.s. attorney in florida, that shouldn't matter. there's a long tradition of military service members themselves not being able to sue the government. for years, the defense department has settled malpractice claims on behalf of spouses and children and retirees. just last year, there was a case in kentucky when a soldier got a settlement of about $2 million when he accused the defense department of not diagnosing his wife with cancer. but the u.s. attorney in florida is now making this argument which would expand that exemption, not just service members, but to their families, as well. >> we've reached out to the justice department about this and they pointed us to a statement that they gave you. it's unique in that entitlement to the defense is determined by the status of the plaintiff rather than the status of the function of the defendant. as a general rule, the touchstone for the defense is whether the plaintiff is a member of the armed services and whether the injuries arose out of the or were incident to that service. he's basically saying that feres case applies to that statement. >> yes. i found that striking at the time. as i said, for the past couple of years, the department of justice has settled cases that seem to run counter to that. i don't know. i'm interested to know whether this is a policy that the department of justice is planning on pursuing in all sorts of jurisdictions or if it's just limited to florida. so far, doj hasn't said much about that. >> at the end of the day, military hospitals certainly have more legal protection and less accountability than civilian hospitals. isn't that what is happening here? how do military hospitals compare to civilian hospitals? >> yeah. i think that's a really good point. the medical provides inferior care in some cases because their doctors and their hospitals don't have the same exposure to lawsuits. if this law was to now expand, that would exaggerate that -- what you might call an accountability gap. >> andrew tillman, your reporting has been exceptional on this. we appreciate you coming on the show. thank you. >> thanks. it was a sweep for rick santorum last night, and he says this about the gop front-runner. >> mitt romney is not the best choice to go up against barack obama. >> but is rick santorum the guy? that's fair game, next. but first, our political junky question, only three times in history has an incumbent democratic president lost in the general election. mart yn van buren was one. who were the other two? be the first to tweet me and i'll give you a shout out. [ male announcer ] this...is the network. a living, breathing intelligence that is helping business rethink how to do business. in here, inventory can be taught to learn. ♪ in here, machines have a voice... ♪ [ male announcer ] in here, medical history follows you... even when you're away from home. it's the at&t network -- a network of possibilities, creating and integrating solutions, helping business, and the world...work. rethink possible. helping business, and the world...work. for fastidious librarian emily skinner, each day was fueled by thorough preparation for events to come. well somewhere along the way, emily went right on living. but you see, with the help of her raymond james financial advisor, she had planned for every eventuality. ...which meant she continued to have the means to live on... ...even at the ripe old age of 187. life well planned. see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. before the break, i asked you which three incumbent he was serve two nonconsecutive terms because you probably knew that correct answer. rick santorum wins three states in one night. those victories are fair game. let's talk about it with lenny mccall sister who is in chicago today and democratic strategist maria cardona in washington. first, i want you both to listen to rick santorum this morning on cnn. he says voters realize that he, not mitt romney, are the true cop servive. takeover of indust and energy with the cap and trade. so mr. private sector was mr. big government when he was out there running from the private sector. >> lenny, what is the impact, do you think, of santorum's sweep? >> well, the impact of the santorum sweep is regardless of how much money you have, if you generate a little mitt of enthusiasm within the conservative base, it's not going to do you much good. what santorum is going after is some of the same arguments that michele bachmann laid against maybe you're not t