Transcripts For WBAL Today 20100310 : vimarsana.com

good morning. say what? former new york congressman eric massa admits to groping a male staffer. not only did i grope him, i tickled him until he couldn t breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. then, just hours later, he takes it back. he s resigned, but is the controversy really behind him? 7-year-old hero. they ring the door, and they have guns to shoot my mom and dad. right now? yes. can you come really fast? a brave, young boy s dramatic 911 call that may have saved his family from would-be robbers. and what s in a name? lindsay lohan files a $100 million lawsuit, claiming this television ad makes a mockery of her. does she really have a case or is she the one being the baby today, wednesday, march 10th, 2010? captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning. welcome to today on a wednesday morning. i m matt lauer alongside meredith vieira, who is back from her oscar trip to hollywood. did you take the new boat back from l.a.? now, that is so wrong. nice to have you back. nice to have you back, too. i didn t know there was a boat leaving. you should try it next time. were you watching cable television yesterday with massa? i watched a little bit, yeah. i watched both shows. you may have found yourself in a state of disbelief, former new york congressman eric massa spoke out about allegations of harassing male members of his staff. first in a commentary with glenn beck, he acknowledged groping at least one man, but a short time later on larry king live, he said he never admitted groping anyone. massa has resigned, but doesn t seem to be going out quietly. we ll have much more on what s become a bizarre story, coming up. also ahead, another accident, apparently involving a prius and a stuck accelerator. a new york woman claims that her toyota prius accelerated on its own, causing her to slam into a wall. now, this comes a day after a california man says the accelerator on his prius got stuck on a san diego freeway. coming up, we ll hear part of the frantic 911 call that driver made as he dodged in and out of traffic for some 30 miles at speeds of more than 90 miles an hour. yeah, he s lucky he s alive. he is. very lucky. but we begin this morning with the latest fallout over new york congressman eric massa s resignation. nbc s kelly o donnell is on capitol hill with the latest. good morning to you, kelly. reporter: good morning, meredith. here we go with another turn in what has been an unusual drama. eric massa is a democrat from new york state, and he went on cable and gave two interviews where he poured out details about his bankrupt resignation, his cancer and his behavior towards staffers that he called inappropriate. admitting that he groped a staffer. reporter: an unfolding scandal made for cable. he could be an angel, he could be a complete dirtbag. reporter: hours after additional allegations surfaced suggesting there were many incidents of harassment, former congressman eric massa made this surprising admission to glenn beck on fox news. now they re saying i groped a male staffer. yeah, i did. not only did i grope him, i tickled him until he couldn t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. reporter: massa said that happened at his 50th birthday party last fall while the new york congressman was rooming in d.c. with bachelors on his staff to save money. my chief of staff had a conniption and said you can t live there. that s not congressional. so, i moved into my office. reporter: but later, in a second interview with cnn s larry king, massa back-tracked and said he had not groped a staffer. in fact, i never admitted groping. reporter: massa denied any sexual contact. did you ever touch anybody sexually no. or grope anybody sexually? no. no, no, no. okay. have you ever had an inappropriate sexual contact with anybody on your staff, male or female? no. reporter: a married father of two, massa bristled at this question. are you gay? well, here s that answer i m not going to answer that. reporter: in a separate tv project called the freshmen, the first-term congressman described his unusual living arrangements. i have two kids in college. i can t afford to spend a lot of money on an apartment in washington, d.c. crash on the couch, go to the gym, catch a shower in the morning. trust me, i ve slept in worse. reporter: massa admitted he had been too familiar with staffers but claimed that had been acceptable conduct during his 24 years as a navy officer. he hinted more personal details may still come out. i m sure there s text messages, because we bantered back and forth all the time. reporter: beyond his personal conduct, a huge political fallout, and even there, more confusion. and i owe an apology, i do. reporter: massa appeared to apologize for harsh things said on the radio about pressure tactics coming from white house chief of staff rahm emanuel, but then added this i said he d tie his kids to the railroad to get a vote. he wouldn t do that. he d tie my kids to the railroad to get a vote. reporter: in the end, massa still claims his opposition to the health care bill led to his fall. you end up bucking your party, you re out. reporter: and when pressed, massa could not name a specific democratic leader or a time and place when he was pushed to resign his office. he talked about some general pressure when his votes didn t line up with the white house, but he couldn t go any further. meredith? all right, kelly o donnell, thank you. for more on the fallout over eric massa s resignation, we welcome in house minority whip eric cantor of virginia and house majority leader steny hoyer of maryland. congressmen, good morning to you both. good morning. congressman hoyer, if i could start with you. i want to ask you directly, was there ever any orchestrated effort by the democratic leadership to oust congressman massa? absolutely not, period. period. any pressure put on him at any time? no, absolutely not. was there ever any effort to keep him there? i mean, many people are investigated and they don t resign during an investigation. well, as you know, the facts are that one of his staffers called me on february 8th, on monday. my staff got a hold of me the next tuesday. we were out, got a hold of me the next day. i told them that they need to respond to this staffer, that he needed to immediately bring this to the attention of the ethics committee. these were serious allegations and needed to be dealt with, and i said further, if you don t make the complaint, i will. and within the next 48 hours, i was told that, in fact, that they had contacted the ethics committee, and that was confirmed. did you ever talk to congressman massa directly about these allegations? no, i did not. and why not? well, because i thought the ethics committee was the appropriate venue in which to have this matter quickly investigated and resolved, and in fact, of course, within three weeks, as you know, the congressman decided that the charges that were pending, or the situation that existed, was serious enough that he was going to resign from congress. initially, of course, he said that his cancer, which he had had, had reoccurred. obviously, a sad occasion. but then went on to say that there was going to be inappropriate behavior brought out and he thought it best to leave. and so, the situation was resol resolv resolved within just a few weeks. there are reports now that the house ethics committee had heard about staffers complaining about him over a year ago. they re now hearing this. had you ever heard rumblings? no. never, prior to last week? no. the first i heard about not last week the first i heard about this was february 8th i m sorry, february 8th. excuse me, my staff heard about it. we were not in session. we were on the presidents day break. the next day, they tried to get a hold of me. i think they probably got a hold of me wednesday, which is when i said no, tuesday, i said get a hold of the staffer. they got a hold of the staffer on wednesday and indicated that he ought to make immediate complaints to the ethics committee so that they could address this matter immediately. it was a serious allegations that were being made and i thought they needed to be dealt with immediately. and of course, as you know, they were and the result was shortly thereafter mr. massa decided that he was going to resign from the congress. let me bring in congressman canter, if i can. some of the republicans have rallied around massa as an example of the democrats trying to ram through health care reform legislation. do you believe that he was pressured at all to leave congress? meredith, i think, like most of your viewers this morning, i think i m a little taken aback and stunned by all of this, and i know that steny joins me in hoping that the ethics committee in congress looks into this adequately and can get to the bottom of all this. but again, to ask you directly, do you believe that he was pressured by the democratic leadership? meredith, i m just getting the news like you are, so again, i don t know the facts of this at all. i know that the american people are sickened by all of this that has gone on, and i think that the best place for this to be resolved is in the ethics committee and let s get to the bottom of it. but for those republicans who have rallied around him, massa used him as sort of a spotlight on what they see as the democrats trying to foist health care reform on this country, do you feel they re making a mistake to use him? well, again, some may want to involve mr. massa or not. i think when we re talking about health care, meredith, we ve got a bill that is going to affect every american, and there s no question that if the bill was a good bill, we d have an up-or-down vote right now. and what we re talking about is a process that really is short-circuiting the rules, that will try and get a bill passed from a very, very tight vote, a very partisan vote. and frankly, i think that there is a better way that we can work together and accomplish something for health care reform. do you think that democrats meredith, can i interject? absolutely. first of all, let me say, i think there were some people who did jump in and try to use this for political purposes. this was a situation that needed to be dealt with immediately. it was. and actually, it has been taken and the member s now not in congress. with respect to the health care bill, it s clear and mr. massa indicates that, although his statements, as you point out in the opening, are confusing and contradictory he nevertheless points out that he wasn t pressured, that he made this decision himself, that there was inappropriate behavior and that he took that action. on the health care bill, let us remember, this bill passed consistent with the rules with 60 votes through the united states senate. it passed with a majority in the house of representatives. we re now resolving differences. we have differences, mr. canter and i, as to the merits of the bill. we believe it is an excellent piece of legislation that will bring costs down, will give transparent markets available to individuals so they can get the kind of insurance that they need and want. quickly, congressman hoyer and also congressman canter, yes or no, will this bill be voted on before the president leaves for asia on march 18th? congressman hoyer, yes or no? that s our objective. and congressman canter? meredith, all i can say meredith, let me recall that is if it was a good bill, we d be voting on it now, wouldn t have to be talking about circumventing the rules. and really, we ll end up circumventing the will of the american people and that s what we ought to be focused on right now, meredith, positive health care reform i ll let you have the last word, quickly. there is no circumventing of the rules and mr. canter knows there s no circumventing of the rules. and when i said the 18th, we hope to have this vote before we break for the easter break. all right, house majority leader steny hoyer, house minority whip eric cantor. thank you both. to be continued. it is now 7:12 and here s matt. meredith, thank you. there is another claim this morning that yet another toyota prius accelerated out of control on its own, this time in new york. we re also hearing the panicked 911 call made on monday by the california driver who says his prius did the very same thing. cnbc s phil lebeau covers the auto industry. phil, good morning. reporter: good morning, matt. these two incidents raise more questions about the safety and reliability of toyotas. let s talk about this incident in harrison, new york. a woman was pulling out of her driveway in her 2005 prius when she says it suddenly accelerated, shot across the street, ran into a brick wall, left boulders and smashed in the front end of her prius. she suffered nonlife-threatening injuries. interesting thing about this case, the floor mats in her vehicle had already been tied to the seat, so they were not involved in the car suddenly speeding up. this comes one day after a runaway prius in california played out before people watching on tv, and the call from the driver calling for help. listen to what he had to say as he was calling 911. it was a terrifying ride. the man behind the wheel of this 2008 prius says his car went out of control along a san diego freeway. james sikes says he was trying to pass another vehicle when his prius began accelerating out of control, whipping in and out of traffic at a speed of 94 miles an hour. he called 911. hello, this is 911. do you have an emergency? my car can t slow down. you can t slow it down? no. sikes sounded panicked as he tried to bring the prius under control. is there a way you can put the car in neutral, sir? no. no? have you tried to put it in neutral? i m trying to control the car. sir, if you can hear me, we have help on the way. my brakes are burned. reporter: in the 23-minute 911 call, you can hear sikes dodging vehicles. ahh [ bleep ]. reporter: finally, a highway patrol officer was able to pull alongside. through his loud speaker, he relayed information to sikes to put pressure on the brake and to use the emergency brake to try to slow the car down. okay, i got the highway patrol around me. we re doing over 90. you re over 90? yeah, hold on. okay. he was, what we d say standing on the brake pedal. i mean, he had both hands on the wheel. i could tell his body was lifting up in the seat, indicating he was giving all the brake application he could. reporter: with the officer s help, after a 30-mile, harrowing ride, the prius slowed down and coasted to safety. you have to be there. you really have to be there. i mean, when you re doing 94 miles an hour and you re going around curves and you re missing cars, it s not a play thing. reporter: sikes now says he received a recall slip from toyota three weeks ago and took his prius to the dealership, but mechanics told him his make and model were not part of a recall. in fact, his prius is among 5.3 million toyotas recalled because the automaker says it has a loose floor mat that can force the gas pedal down and cause the car to speed up unintentionally. still, toyota has yet to finalize the exact modification for the 08 prius sikes was driving. the car is now back at the very same dealership, as toyota engineers and federal investigators begin looking for what sent sikes car on its wild ride. there are now two investigators from the national highway traffic safety administration along with engineers from toyota looking at that prius in california. there will also be investigators checking out the prius that was involved in this unintended acceleration accident in harrison, new york. matt? all right, phil lebeau. phil, thank you very much. now let s get a check of the rest of the morning s top stories from ann curry at the news desk. good morning to you, ann. nice to have you back, meredith. thank you. good morning, matt. good morning, everybody. in the news this morning, in addition, the christian humanitarian organization was attacked in northwest pakistan this morning named world vision. suspected militants used grenades and bullets in the attack, which killed at least six employees of world vision. the u.s.-based aid group, which has been in pakistan helping victims of the 2005 earthquake, has now suspended its pakistan operations indefinitely. an american woman is being accused of trying to help terrorists overseas. an indictment unsealed on tuesday says that colleen larose, who called herself jihad jane online, is charged with using the internet to recruit people to help terrorists. she has been in custody since october. trying to bring peace in the middle east, vice president biden met this morning with palestinian president mahmoud abbas, and the palestinians and the u.s. are both upset with israel s plans to expand jewish settlements in east jerusalem. an old probation report is raising new questions about a convicted sex offender charged with killing california teenager chelsea king. we get more now from nbc s janet shamlian. reporter: the probation report on john gardner now seems like an eerie prediction of the future. it was prepared almost ten years ago when gardner, then 21, was about to be sentenced for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor. the psychiatrist said he gardner is simply a bad guy who is inordinately interested in young girls, recommending gardner be kept in prison for as long as possible. despite that dire warning, a probation officer recommended less than the maximum sentence because gardner had no prior record. he served just five years. the defense psychiatrist says he s obsessed with these crimes against these girls, and apparently, nobody did anything about it. reporter: now 30, gardner is charged with the murder of 17-year-old chelsea king, who disappeared during a jog in a san diego park two weeks ago. he s pleaded not guilty and is now also a suspect in the death of 14-year-old amber dubois, who went missing last year. her remains were found saturday. the doctor who issued that warning isn t talking now, but a colleague says he didn t want there to be any question about just how dangerous gardner was. meanwhile, the california department of corrections is under fire for destroying gardner s parole report. the agency keeps no electronic backup and says it would be overwhelmed by records if it didn t shred them quickly. janet shamlian, nbc news, los angeles. police in norwalk, california, are looking for three suspects in a home invasion on tuesday, and they re hailing a 7-year-old boy who called 911 as he hid in the bathroom with his sister as the armed robbers were threatening his parents. can you tell me what happened? they come. they come. they open and ring the door and they have guns! can you come really fast? and bring soldiers, too. listen to me. where are you at in the house? inside the bathroom. you re in the bathroom? yes. who s with you? my sister. how old is she? 6 years old. can you come really fast? hurry up! yes. stay on the line with me. don t hang up. listen to me. we re coming to help you, but listen to me, okay? okay. when you were in the house, tell me exactly what happened, okay? just stay where you are and don t hang up, whatever you do. okay. the guys, they have [ screaming ] the boy told the intruders he had called police and the suspects then fled. no one was hurt, nothing was taken and police say if not for the boy s brave actions, the home invasion could have ended tragically. it is now 7:19. let s go back to matt, meredith and al. harrowing to hear that. 7 years old. so powerful. i have an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old and you can t imagine the trauma that kid was going through in that bathroom. that he was able the weather is going to be fairly quiet today. that might change little this week. but today there is a slight chance for a couple of rain showers, a mixture of clouds and sunshine. and that s your latest weather. meredith? al, thank you. and just ahead, david letterman speaks out about the sudden and surprising admission of guilt by the man attempting to blackmail him over affairs with female staffers. what letterman said on just ahead, some new help being offered to millions of u.s. homeowners whose houses are now worth less than they owe on the mortgage. how to tell if you qualify. plus, lindsay lohan versus lindsay the milk holik e-trade baby. the magic s in the mix. my favorite part? eating it. honey bunches of oats. taste the joy we put in every spoonful. honey bunches of oats. we call the bunches in honey bunches of oats the prize in the box. well, now there s a prize inside the prize. pecans! pecans! baked into crunchy oat bunches. taste the delicious surprise in every spoonful. honey bunches of oats with pecan bunches. beautiful. parents magazine and edmunds.com called it one of the best family cars of 2009. the insurance institute for highway safety calls it a 2010 top safety pick. consumers digest has called it a best buy two years in a row. and with a 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. we call it.peace of mind. chevy malibu. now, qualified lessees get a low mileage lease on this 2010 malibu ls for around $199 a month. call for details. see your local chevy dealer. why not? 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we re going to get into that in just a while. it s a funny commercial, and i ve never thought of lindsay lohan when i see that commercial, now i do every time. and if you heard about the bank bailouts and said what about me, well, now there is a new program designed to bail out homeowners in risk of foreclosure. we ll get the details on that, coming up. let us begin this half hour with that guilty plea in the blackmail plot against david letterman. nbc s jeff rossen was inside the courtroom when it happened yesterday. jeff, good morning to you. reporter: hey, matt, good morning to you. yeah, what a big turn-around here, right? and out of the blue, as well. it was a surprise move, to say the very least. in the very beginning, you ll remember joe halderman was saying this is just a giant misunderstanding, that he was never trying to shake david letterman down. but now he admits, yes, he is guilty, it was extortion, and he is going to jail. it s the late show with david letterman ! reporter: on the late show tuesday night six months ago, i found myself in some legal trouble. reporter: a serious sigh of relief. in a surprise move tuesday, david letterman s extortionist came clean. former cbs news producer joe halderman. he pled guilty in open court to a felony, attempted grand larceny by extortion, raising his right hand and telling the judge, i understand that my attempt to extort $2 million from david letterman violated his and his family s privacy. i ve never been involved in anything like this all my life and i was concerned and full of anxiety and nervous and worried, and the people in the district attorney s office said this will be handled professionally, this will be handled skillfully and appropriately. well, the matter was resolved today and they were exactly right. reporter: as part of the plea deal, halderman will serve six months in jail, followed by 4 1/2 years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service, including tutoring former prisoners and the homeless. just wanted to say that, again, i apologize to mr. letterman, his family, to stephanie birkitt, her family, and certainly to my friends and family. there we go. reporter: stephanie birkitt, halderman s ex-girlfriend. she worked for letterman and reportedly slept with him. halderman threatened to write a tell-all screenplay, exposing letterman s affairs and tried to sell that screenplay to letterman for millions, butlerman didn t pay. instead, he turned the tables. remember this? i have had sex with women who work for me on this show. reporter: he went public and went to police. halderman was arrested for blackmail. at the time, halderman claimed it was just a normal business transaction. his lawyers vowed to take letterman down right here on today. the prosecution s case in so many ways makes no sense. i look forward to cross examining david letterman. reporter: but now in his plea deal, halderman has completely changed his tune, saying this so-called treatment was just a thinly-veiled threat to ruin mr. letterman if he did not pay me a lot of money. joe halderman had to plead guilty. he had no choice. had he gone to trial, he surely would have been convicted and his sentence would have been much harsher than this plea deal. for david letterman, a trial would have been a nightmare. this plea deal spares him the humiliation of a trial. reporter: as letterman praised new york police and prosecutors tuesday night thank you all for your help. we ll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. thanks for your help. you re welcome. reporter: joe halderman begins his new life as a convicted felon. i will not be doing any interviews and i thank you all for your patience. reporter: in fact, as part of his plea deal, joe halderman has agreed not to write about this case, not to make a movie about this case or anything involving david letterman. that means, matt, he can t profit at all from all of this. all right, jeff rossen. jeff, thank you very much. dan abrams is nbc s chief legal analyst. janice minute is t is former ed us weekly. he says he won t be doing any interviews. he can t do any interviews about this. in the early stages of this, we haerld gerald shargel, the lawyer saying i m going to take this to trial, put letterman on the stand, grill him about his personal life. what happened to the tough talk? well, it was in the end just talk. shargel will claim we had a novel defense, et cetera, et cetera. but the bottom line is there is something unfortunate about everything that transpired here, put aside the actual incident. but the fact that the defense attorney goes out and blasts letterman on a personal level, and then he made comparisons to the tiger woods situation, and that s what we kept hearing again and again from the defense. in the end, they didn t have much of a legal defense. but the tough talk was designed for a specific purpose. to get letterman not to want to testify. even though it was really up to the prosecution. but take me behind the scenes. how much input does a david letterman, who would not want to get up on that witness stand and talk about his personal life, how much input does he have with the prosecution in a case like this to get a plea deal? yeah, a lot. in the end, the decision is the prosecutors , meaning they could say, thank you, mr. letterman, for your input, we appreciate it, we ve made another decision. with that said, in this kind of case, where there s a very specific victim and in this case, it s david letterman they re going to want his input. they re going to want to know how much do you not want to testify? how much of a deal should we cut? and i think that in this case, letterman was probably very involved. so, halderman gets prison time, probation, community service, all that. he can t write or talk about this. so, clearly, letterman is the legal winner. how did he do public relationswise, janice? you know, in the beginning, when he came on air and said he had done creepy things, i thought he handled it really well, that he addressed it head-on, was very honest about it, but i think he loses and there s this lingering creep factor. he used the word himself, that sticks to him. and when you re inviting people to watch you when they re at home late at night, maybe in bed, you kind of don t obviously, a large but it hasn t seemed to hurt him. it hasn t seemed to hurt him, but i think in terms of legacy, i think this is a guy who is a perfectionist, and i don t think he wants to have this little asterisk by, you know, in his biography forever. there is also another part, we don t know what his home life is like, you know? we know what he s like on air, late night, but we don t know whether, you know, this is fractured his relationship at home. i think what merrill markoe said in her statement before, for years i thought i was the only one dave had cheated on. you know, it seems clear that, you know, that regina lasko, his wife, probably knew this was kind of the relationship he was having. both merrill markoe had said regina had had an overlap with him for two years. so, obviously, it s incredibly humiliating and you can t get over that part. i think this is in the end one of the reasons people tend to dislike lawyers, right? is you have a lawyer who s representing, going out and blasting letterman and saying we re going to defend this case, et cetera, and then they come back and they say i m guilty. and it makes people say, wait i m not saying it s not unethical, it leads people to ask themselves, can we trust these people? you re a lawyer, right? i am, and people ask me that all the time. i m pointing it out because it s me. separation. thanks. thanks janice as well. up next, let s get a check of the weather from al. dan, try being a weatherman. see how that goes. hey, we ve got some nice cheerleaders here from notre dame. you re in town for a big game tonight? the big east tournament? yeah. who s going to win? notre dame! all right, case closed. let s check your weather, see what s happening. it is going to be awfully warm through the midwest into the northeast. st. louis, 15 degrees above normal, same in san antonio, 9 above in boston, raleigh, high of 67, up to 56 in chicago, al peta, michigan, 51 degrees. rest of the country, you can see the temperatures stay on the chilly side back through the plains, where they re looking at snow, rain ahead of it with 70s in the gulf, 40s in the pacific northwest, and we ve got 80-degree readin expect a mixture of clouds and a little bit of sunshine as we had through wednesday, and a slight chance for a few light rain showers and sprinkles. another mild day. very cute family here. you know that if you need to check your weather, you can go to weather channel on cable or weather.com online. did you know that? yes. you see? there you go, another satisfied customer, matt. all right, al, thank you very much. coming up next, your own personal bailout if you owe more on your he than it s worth right now. we ll talk about that after these messages. a little encouragement changes everything. molly es muy muy intelligente. and right now, hallmark s got a whole new way to do it. new gifts and cards to cheer on kids of all ages. come in and pick up a free card today. nine to choose from. only at your hallmark gold crown store. day after day, allergy season drags on. oh, how many days are you going to suffer? 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this is a program, it s a second alternative for people who have tried to get a loan modification but either haven t been able to or which was the other program. didn t succeed. right, that s the h.a.m.p. program people talk about. this is h.a.f.a. we re just full of little aabbreviations. and essentially, it s offering a formulaic short sale. so, if you want to be able to sell your home for less than the amount you owe on the mortgage, this is a sort of systemic way to do it. explain short sale, because i m not sure people really understand what that is. right. as i said, it s where the lender, where the bank allows you to actually sell your home for less than you owe the mortgage, and the bank basically says we re going to just write off the rest of that bad debt. and right now you don t even have to pay taxes on that difference. and how does it work? what are the incentives? the incentives, the reason that people are going to come to the table and do this is because there s some cash available. homeowners themselves are going to get $1,500 in what they re calling a relocation allowance. there s $1,000 for the holder of the primary mortgage the lender of the primary mortgage and also $1,000 for any sort of a second mortgage. and there are other incentives as well. i mean, this is sort of good for all parties because if you re the homeowner, you ll get out with a cleaner credit rating than if you were foreclosed upon, and if you re the lender, you don t have to foreclose, and that s a really expensive process. it can cost $20,000 to $40,000 to foreclose on a single ho homeown homeowner. it s good for neighborhoods, so people are hoping this will work. what about people who do not qualify for this, what options do they have then? well, essentially, it s a hierarchy. when you are unable to pay your mortgage, the first thing you re going to look at is refinancing and seeing if you can refinance in the regular way, which 4 million people did last year. then you look at that s the modification program well, no, that s just a plain vanilla refi. you go back to your lender, say can i refinance into an adjustable rate loan and lower my monthly payments? then you look at the modification. if you don t qualify for the modification or if you get into a trial and you re unable to make your payments there, then you look at this new hafa program and look at short selling or even deeding your home back to the bank, which is essentially just handing over the deed, the title, and walking away. you talked to someone from the treasury department the other day and they said not to confuse this. this is not a solution to the foreclosure program. right. as i said, this is a second-tier alternative, and the treasury department thinks this has been a little blown out of proportion, but it s still something good to have in your arsenal. you want to know this is available so you can bring it up when you make that call to your lender, which again, is the first step and so important for people to do. if you can t pay your bills, you pick up the phone, you call the lender. all right. jean chatzky, thank you so much. sure. and up next, is there any merit to lindsay lohan s $100 million lawsuit against the e-trade babies? 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[ female announcer ] splenda®. america s favorite no calorie sweetener. we re back now at 7:49. e-trade s latest talking baby ad was one of the most popular commercials during this year s super bowl. actress lindz yaey lohan saw it, and now she s filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming the ad hurts and defames her. nbc s lee cowan explains. reporter: of all the words used to describe lindsay lohan over the words, big fat baby have never come up. but in court documents, the 23-year-old actress herself is now suggesting that she is a baby, wrongly portrayed in a tv commercial. and that milk-a-holic lindsay wasn t over? lindsay? milk-a-what? reporter: freeze it right there. lindsay lohan says that fictitious chubby-cheeked lindsay created for e-trade was actually modeled after the real lindsay lohan, that is. milk-a-what? reporter: in fact, she thinks that is so obviously her that lohan is now suing e-trade for $100 million and wants all the ads pulled for good. lindsay! lindsay! reporter: lohan s attorneys wouldn t comment, but in court papers, they argue even by itself, lindsay is a name so linked with lohan that e-trade is violating her right to privacy by using it without her consent. lindsay? if lindsay had a unique name like madonna or cher or maybe oprah, then i could see maybe there s a lawsuit there, but otherwise, it just seems kind of silly. hoooo! there is no way in the world i would ever let one of my clients file a lawsuit like this. reporter: e-trade says it s reviewing the lawsuit and had no comment. neither did the production company who put the spot together. but we did some checking, and it turns out, at least according to one website, anyway, that there are 98,805 people with the first name lindsay living in this country right now. turns out, it s not amy or sue, but nevertheless, it s still pretty common. even if you could assume that was lindsay lohan that they were talking about, to call her a milk-a-holic hillk-a-what? how damaging is that to lindsay lohan? reporter: she s certainly been accused of worse, in court, actually. still, the wheels of justice don t always have a sense of humor, even if it is out of the mouths of babes. milk-a-what? reporter: for today, lee cowan, nbc news, los angeles. we ve asked our legal analyst dan abrams to weigh in. to stick around. help us out here. there s not a lot of law to discuss here. i don t really see what laws they re applying. bottom line is, even if you became convinced that it was about her, it s still parody. it s still a joke. if you re making fun of something, you re protected legally. so, in every front, this lawsuit seems like it s it sounds like a lawsuit that someone said, we ve got to sue over this! we ve got to sue! and no one actually stood back and said yeah, a scientific poll how many people have seen the ad before this morning? yeah. and how many people thought when they saw the ad of lindsay lohan not one. really? did you really? i did. she does have a lawsuit! exactly. ann curry is a witness! i assure you in the new legal papers it s going to say even ann curry, of the today show. but you know what, she s suing 98,000 other people, too. exactly. they re going to throw it out, right? yeah. their be dismissed. my guess is after the public ridicule, they ll probably pull the lawsuit and someone will say, you know what, this probably is not a good idea because you re not going to win. not a particularly good lawsuit. how about the names meredith or ann. subpoena for you, by the way. 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n let s go back to the left. waffling is back at dunkin donuts. for a short time only, enjoy the return of the delicious oven-toasted waffle breakfast sandwich. america runs on dunkin . 8:00 now on a wednesday morning. it s the 10th day of march 2010. we stepped outside to enjoy some really pretty spring weather here in new york, although it s not all that warm. it s only 44 degrees. we ve got a blue sky and nice people on the plaza. it will warm up later, though. good. it s not terrible. no. a little breezy. i m matt lauer along with meredith vieira and al roker, making their new york city return after their trip out to the west coast. it s always nice to have you guys back. thank you. we start this half hour on a very serious note. and very sad note. a man has been sentenced to life after admitting to murdering a teenage girl that he friended on facebook by pretending to be a teenager himself. we ll get the latest in a moment. also we ll talk about the case with a noted internet safety expert who will advise us how you can protect your children. also ahead, matt damon stops by. he s got a brand new movie opening this week, green zone. we ll talk to him about that and also ask him if he plans to make another bourne movie and we ll talk about some recent talk that he is slated to play robert kennedy oh, wow! in an upcoming movie. how do you think he would do at that? fantastic. terrific. he s a terrific actor. absolutely. we ll talk to matt damon in a couple minutes. and it almost sounds like something from the future, the ability to control your home, literally, with your cell phone open locks, turn off lights, lower the blinds, change the temperatures. but is it smart to invest in smart home technology? and what happens if you have a dropped call? yeah. i don t know. you re not i m not into it. you re not down with that? no. are you? some of it sounds good, but a lot of it sounds complicated to me. anyway, we ll figure it out. let s go inside first to ann curry, standing by at the news desk with a check of the headlines. ann? i do. thanks a lot, matt. good morning once again, everybody. in the news, a pennsylvania woman is being accused of being a homegrown terrorist, and if convicted, that could get her life in prison. 46-year-old colleen rene larose, known as jihad jane online, is being accused of plotting to raise money for terrorists and also traveling to europe to commit murder. larose was convicted in october but the indictment was unsealed on monday. militants in pakistck stage deadly attack on the world vision humanitarian organization. six workers were killed and seven wounded, all pakistanis. the organization, which was helping earthquake survivors, suspended all work in pakistan indefinitely. iranian president ahmadinejad arrived for talks with hamid karzai and ahmadinejad accused the u.s. of fighting the same militants it once supported in the battle against soviet invaders. president obama is discussing earthquake recovery and rebuilding in haiti today with its president, rene preval. after the white house meeting, president obama travels to st. louis to highlight a new antifraud plan as part of his push for health care reform. overseas markets are mostly higher this morning, and on wall street, cnbc s melissa francis is at the new york stock exchange with more. hey, melissa. there is some new concern about the economy. reporter: that s true. the voice of doom, as we call him, economist nuri al roubini, who is among the latest to call this latest recession, is now saying the likelihood of a double-dip recession is increasing because of the crisis going on in greece right now that could spread to europe. he s pegging that likelihood at about 20%, although he does say the most likely scenario is a slow, protracted recovery. also, bank of america doing away with overdraft fees on debit cards as of this summer. your card will just get declined. ann, back to you. all right. melissa francis, thanks. and how s this for a card trick? today in macao, a harvard-trained architect broke his own guinness record for building the world s largest free-standing house of cards. his replica of the venetian casino in macao used over 4,000 decks of playing cards. i would have liked to have been the one that pushed it down. it is now 8:03. let s go back outside. that s all i could think of, i wanted to knock it down. look, go, ah, ah, ah! quite a thing, though. it s one of those days in the spring, al, where you say, okay, it s kind of warm, but not really. well, in the shade it s a little cooler. yeah. you get out in the sunshine, much nicer. well, that makes sense. of course. of course, that s why we re in the shade. we ve got some nice folks and your sister is 50. you re the sister. what s your name? karen forbes. your name? kathy bonafe. my dad s birthday and he s in florida. happy birthday to your dad. pick city of the day, wilmington, delaware, nbc 10, 50 degrees. on the radar we have heavy showers and thunderstorms working through the gulf coast, some snow back through the plains. more rain and snow moving into the pacific northwest, risk of strong storms from the gulf coast into the mid-mississippi river valley. east coast looks fabulous, plenty of sunshine. finally warming up for the spring breakers in florida. windy from west texas all the way to the southwest, snow showers throughout the four corners and on into the rockies. and some showers in the pacific northwest. what s your name, young man? it should be a fairly quiet day. a little more cloud cover than yesterday. 20% or 30% chance of rain and that s your latest weather. matt? all right, al, thank you very much. coming up, a tragic story. a teenager murdered by a man who used a fake facebook profile to meet her. it s a warning for teens and parents. it s a selfish thing to want to protect nature. i never intended to be a businessman. we made the world s best climbing equipment out of here. we realized that putting in and taking out of all these pitons was causing damage to the rock. so, i made these little soft aluminum chalks that you just put in with your fingers. and i m a dam buster. we ve been working for years to take this dam out. the reservoir behind it is only 4 feet deep the water gets real warm, kills a lot of the life in the river. when you take out a dam, that s a real victory. i mean, a concrete victory so to speak! when i get an idea to do something, i like to take the first step. if that feels good, i take another step. to do good, you actually have to do something. no matter what you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer or donate at takepart.com. try the first great-tasting, zero-calorie. natural sweetener borne from the leaves of the stevia plant. truvía. honestly sweet. find it at your grocery store. love to see kids spirits shine. honestly sweet. superstar and mom, martina mcbride and sunnyd shine on sunny taste. sunny spirit. sunny d. lipcolor like you ve never felt before. new revlon colorburst lipstick. impossibly light feel, intensely rich color. together at last. revlon colorburst lipstick. it s love at first swipe. i ve seen the sunrise paint the desert. witnessed snowfall on the first day of spring. watched fireflies dance about the evening sky. but the most beautiful thing i ve ever seen was the image on a screen that helped our doctor see my wife s cancer was treatable. 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[ jazz horns blow ] because expressive is never excessive. i guess some women are destined to wear chico s. chicka boom boom boom, yeah, yeah back at 8:09 with a life sentence in the case of a teenage girl who was murdered by a man she met on facebook, a man who became her friend by pretending to be a 17-year-old boy. nbc s dawna friesen has the story. reporter: 17-year-old ashley hall logged in to facebook last fall and did what millions of young people do, accepted a new friend, a handsome 17-year-old named peter cartwright. she gave him her phone number, agreed to meet him, telling her mother she was going to stay with a friend. she never came home. peter cartwright was, in fact, peter chapman, 33 years old, a convicted sex offender. he raped and suffocated hall, then dumped her body in this farmer s field. while driving off, the police stopped him for a minor traffic offense and were shocked when he made this chilling confession. i killed somebody last night, i need to tell somebody from cid where the body is. reporter: on monday he was convicted of murder. he will serve a minimum of 35 years. hall s mother has a message for parents. please, having your kids on facebook, please ask them to tell you who they re talking to. you just don t know who s behind that. reporter: it s another reminder that predators lurk online. chapman was well known to the police here in the uk. in 1996, he was jailed for seven years for raping two prostitutes at knifepoint. and after that, he was put on a sex offenders list, but somehow, the police lost track of him and he befriended not only his victim online, but about 6,000 other girls and women. the police are being heavily criticized and facebook is under intense pressure to install a panic button that children can click on if they fear they re being targeted. we arrest people all the time on the business of credible information that s delivered to us through this means. reporter: in a statement, facebook says, we hope parents and teachers will encourage education on safe online decisions and the use of facebook s settings that can protect from unwanted online contact. there is, say internet safety experts, no replacement for common sense. what we need to do is teach our children how to use the filter between their ears. you never know who you re meeting offline and you never know how safe you are. reporter: words of wisdom that may have saved one teenage life. dawna friesen, nbc news, london. lori getz is an internet safety expert and contributor to momlogic.com. jeff gardere is a psychologist and today contributor. good morning to you both. good morning. good morning. lori, if i can start with you, what recourse do parents have here? is there any way to protect your children who use these sites? well, it s really important we don t focus on restriction, but education, and parents need to talk to their children about how they re using these social networking sites, that no, we can t stop a predator from maybe reaching out to our child, but we can stop our child from reaching back out. you say that you should talk to your kids about fringe friends, these people that they re talking to are fringe friends. what do you mean by that? they re friends of friends or people they don t know. the truth is, a fringe friend is a stranger. and if you are talking to strangers online, you don t know what you re getting at the other end. that s why it s also important when we speak to our children, it s not just about what they do on the internet, but about fringe friends in real life, a maturational issues they need to deal with in order to learn about relationships in the proper way. jeff, are there certain kids that are more vulnerable? we re finding environmentally, the environment of the kids, kids who are online much more are much more vulnerable. kids who don t have outside interests are much more vulnerable. but psychologically, we find that kids who, perhaps, have sexual history, sexual abuse histories, sexual orientation issues, kids who have been isolated and find their own recourse of friends on the internet, those are the ones who are more at risk. or they feel more popular if they have more friends on their facebook page. right. that s right. it s actually called famo, it s internet fame, and they reaches out to all teenagers. they all want to be famous it plays into every narcissistic impulse that they have. and so, the more friends they collect, the more popular they feel. but the truth is, it just puts a larger target on their back. exactly. when you have little kids,o tell them, starting from the time they re very little, don t talk to strangers. right. you use that word, but then they go on the internet, and the strangers are now referred to as friends. so you re sending kids a mixed message. absolutely we re sending mixed messages, and we need to stop. from the time they re very young, from the time they first logon to the internet, that they understand that a stranger is a stranger. i don t care how cute the little penguin or the webkins looks, if they don t know that person face to face, it s a stranger and r therefore, they don t talk to them online. and that s important because we re seeing a rising statistic of kids under 6 years old getting on the internet and are communicating with strangers all the time. what about this notion dawna mentioned in her piece of a panic button? should facebook and these kinds of sites have panic buttons? well, facebook does have a place where you can report abuse and you can report all kinds of abuse, from cyber bullying to the fact that you re receiving inappropriate content and you think there may be a predator that s trying to reach out to you. so, you can report abuse, and when that abuse is brought to the attention of facebook, they do something about it. of course, in this case, even if that or a panic button wouldn t have helped because she just assumed it was a 17-year-old boy. exactly. it s a decision that they re making themselves. does facebook have a direct line to, you know, the registered sex offenders list? no, but again, in this case, it wouldn t have mattered, because because he used a fake name. exactly. if you re using a pseudo identity, there s no way to match them up. however, last year they did remove several thousand registered sex offenders. so when the information is brought to their attention, they are doing something about it. it s interesting that both of you say information is the key and not restriction. exactly. it s about education and communication. if our kids are able to speak to us, to other friends, physical friends, it makes it much easier for them to spend less time on the internet. we don t want to scare our kids away, because we know if we tell them to do a, they re going to do b. so, it s just important that we grow the communication, that we give them more information, but the relationship that we have with our kids, if it s positive, then there will be less of a tendency for the kids to be victims to these predators. look, bottom line, if it s a stranger, do not friend them under any circumstances. absolutely. absolutely. lori getz, thank you so much, internet safety expert, and jeff gardere, always a pleasure to have you on. thank you. giving your perspective. as a dermatologist, i always hear about products that promise to make my patients look younger. but nothing works like this. 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[ cellphones ringing, vibrating ] [ computer beeps ] get started at bank of america. one of matt damon s more popular roles is that of jason bourne, a government assassin trying to figure out his real identity, but in green zone, it s the truth he s after. damon plays army chief roy miller, who s hunting for weapons of mass destruction in iraq, but when he begins to question the very intelligence that started the war, he ends up in a hunt for answers. two or three west of here, there s a meeting taking place right here, possible high-value targets involved. so i want to move on it. in the first car, i want the iraqi guy, freddie. keating, you re going to drive. i ll ride shotgun. potts, you re in the back covering freddie. the rest are going to roll in the pickup truck. any questions? hey, chief, how do we know this guy s leading an ambush? we don t. get your game face on. hey, matt. welcome back. thanks, matt. good to see you. so, the director of this movie says this is not a movie about the war in iraq. it s a thriller set in iraq, and that s a very different proposition. but when people go to see this, are they going to have a difficult time separating the two? no, i don t think so. i mean, well, the idea was, paul greengrass, who directed this movie, directed the last two bourne movies, and so, he also directed united 93 and a movie called bloody sunday, and those movies felt like, you know, you were a fly on the wall watching reality. reality. and so, the kind of proposition for us was could we fuse those two things and make a big action conspiracy thriller, but set it in the real world and make a popcorn movie. people are going to note the thriller aspects. i think the new york times called this bourne in baghdad. there s a lot of action in this movie. right. but the movie also does not shy away from some hot political and social subjects, does it? no. well, i mean, it starts with it starts with a character who s based on a real guy who is one of the first guys in, and we actually had these things called mobile exploitation teams, m.e.t. teams. and these teams were comprised of people from artillery, some scientists and explosives guys to go in and exploit these weapons sites. and so, they went in there with these intel packets and basically were told there was, you know, weapons in these places, and they went careening in there and were confronted with a totally different reality. so, it s kind of they were the first people to go on the journey that we all went on, basically, which is we went in with one set of expectations and then were confronted with a different reality, and then the logical question from there is, okay, well, what happened? and that s what kind of kicks off and you want the viewer to ask those questions. you want people to ask questions about interrogation versus torture and weapons of mass destruction. even the rohri ireporting of th there s a character in this movie, played by amy ryan, based on it s a wall street journal reporter in the move yeep in the movie, yeah. but it can t be loosely, very far based on a reporter from the new york times. right. and she was criticized for her reporting. so, you want people to say, okay, i dig the action here, but it makes me ask some questions about what we ve just lived through. exactly, that s right. that s exactly right. you were surrounded by some guys in the field here, and some of them are not actors. some of them most of them are not actors. most of them actually served in iraq and afghanistan. right. how does that change the dynamic on the set? well, it changed everything. that s something that paul s done in some of his other films. he ll use nonactors. and in this case, he was convinced, and i think rightly so, that the best way to make this movie would be with vets, guys who had just come back from iraq or afghanistan. so, there s one other actor, nicoy banks and me, and everybody else in a military uniform in this movie is just back from a tour in either iraq or afghanistan. does it take extra time to shoot that way because you have to make sure they hit their marks and they re in the right place at the right time or do you not care about that, you just want to capture what happens? no, i think it saves a lot of time. because if you took 30 actors and tried to explain how to hit a house or how to it would take so long to teach us. where if you take a couple of us and we get absorbed into a group of real guys, they can quickly show us exactly what we need to do. and it raises the believability factor immensely. yeah, and that s a big thing, the authenticity and feeling like you re really seeing the real war. i m not going to let you escape without a few questions. bourne movies, will there be a fourth? well, um, my doing it was always contingent on paul directing it, and he s not he so, we re not going to do it now. i think maybe in five or ten years we could do it, but i think the studio will probably do some kind of a prequel or something, and you know, and keep that franchise alive, because it s an important franchise for them. and finally, a lot was written over the last couple weeks about you taking on the role of rfk in the near future. if you take on a role like that, you have to be comfortable convincing people that you are the character. what makes you think you can nail him? well, i don t know that i can. that s part of the challenge. but i m pretty confident that i could do it. you know, it would be a lot of research and a lot of time put in, and look, where i come from, i mean, he s a pretty big person, you know, pretty important person, and it s a lot of responsibility. even my father said, when i told him i was thinking of doing it about six months ago, he said, everything stopped and he said that s a lot of responsibility. you know, so, i get it. when do you get to do that? well, the script s coming in in a few weeks. it s gary ross, a great director and friend of mine. so, we re thinking of it as we re going forward with it, so, we ll see. hopefully, a great script comes in. meanwhile, good luck with green zone. green zone from our sister company universal opens on friday. and we re back in a moment. live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore > good morning. i am mindy basara. let s get a final check on the morning commute with sarah caldwell. actually looking a lot better at their pit things improving on east on i-70, accident cleared at marriottsville road. liberty road at old town road, we have an accident being cleared up there. normal volume-related delays in place around the area. 24 miles per hour at southbound 95. we are looking at delays on the northeast outer loop. southbound 83, approaching the beltway, and the j.f.x. southbound. 37 miles per hour on the west side. west side drive times is 19 minutes. very heavy there. about a 14-minute ride on the outer loop northeast side. c what is going as far as the cameras, easing up a bit at liberty. we will switch over to a live view of traffic at harford, or traffic continues to back down towards providence. good morning, everyone. things are quiet in the weather department. a few sprinkles out there, nothing of any consequence. we will see such a break through the cloud cover. temperatures in the low-to-mid- forties. 43 and parkton, 45 in parksville, 46 degrees downtown. mixture of clouds and a little bit of sunshine, 20% to 30% chance of rain shower. much better chance for rain on thursday. thursday mcknew could be a little slow to a height of 57. off and on showers possible. thank you for joining us. another update at 8:55. good morning, i m feeling fine, the sun is shining through the window, better straighten up and get in line 8:30 now on this wednesday morning, march 10th, 2010. this is one of the creative entries we have received for our wizarding world of harry potter at universal orlando resort contest. this is from an elementary school in minnesota and i hope that video will land them a trip to florida later this spring. maybe it will. we just want to tell you, there is still time to enter your child s classroom in this whole thing. all you have to do is tell us why the kids in that classroom are extraordinary and they could win a trip to the grand opening of that attraction coming up in the spring. head to todayshow.com to find out all the details. another big attraction for our show is this guy, willard scott, uncle willie is on the plaza. uncle willie! and besides smucker s, there s another reason why willard is joining us. it s his 30th anniversary here on the today show, today. we are going to walk down memory lane with willard in just a little bit. good thing he talked about smucker s, because he s a smacker. i wonder how many kisses he s given out in 30 years. there you are! uncle willie. we ll talk to him in a little bit. cool. that s fun. also coming up, by the way, do you guys know we have gotten really cool in terms of being online? because now people can join today on twitter, on their cell phones and also facebook and by podcast. if you want information about all of you guys and what s happening, you can go to our website to find out about that. okay. i m always getting asked, is matt on twitter? does he tweet? really? yeah. what do you say? no. i do not tweet. i do not tweet. we will show you how to tweet. okay. there s some people tweeting right now. yeah. you ll never be on twitter. it s not who you are. you re probably right. i m never going to be a tweeter. you re a tweeter. no? it s not who you are? what are you saying? ann s got like a million followers on twitter. i m not like a technology person. oh. i don t do anything like that. it s fun. you might like it. okay, we digress. let s go. how about the weather? all right, let s twitter about the weather and we ll tell you, for today we re looking at a risk of strong storms from the mid-mississippi river valley into the gulf coast, more windy and wet weather in the pacific northwest. high surf advisories along the coast. sunshine up and down the eastern seaboard. tomorrow that heavy rain moves into the southeast mid-atlantic states on up into the gre expect a mixture of clouds and a little bit of sunshine as we had through wednesday, and a slight chance for a few light rain showers and sprinkles. another mild day. and that s your latest weather. now, everybody, let s say hello to willie scott! hey. happy anniversary. oh! willie loves the ladies and the ladies love willie. that make a great song. i laughed. i thought about you yesterday. i came out of, you know, what s it the delicatessen, carnegie! carnegie deli. and there was a guy out there with a can, he was looking for and i gave him half a sandwich. he said, man, i get sandwiches all the time! i want some money! welcome to new york. there you go. got the birthdays? oh, yeah. sylvia levine of bellaire bluffs, florida, attributes her longevity to being an al roker fan. loves him, watches all his shows. she never sleeps. devoted to her family. how about that? i think i m missing one. no, you re good. right here, thelma shives, greenville, ohio, 103 years old! former hairdresser until she was 98. takes pride in having real teeth! there you go. loves playing the wii video game. and she did al s hair. that s right. didn t she do a nice job? david bentman of west covina, california, 100 years old. retired aerospace engineer. wow. and he is some kind of classy guy. there you go. lillian titlebaum from boston, massachusetts. 103. her mom lived to 102. sharp as a tack. edited newspapers until she was 100. fantastic. then we ve got roma wicykowski from baytown, texas. she s 100 years old. has volunteered over 9,000 hours. wow! you get the last one. ralph and dottie richards, slidell, louisiana, 80th anniversary. both in the 90s. fell in love on a carousel ride at a local carnival. their love went round and round. attribute their marital longevity to love. that s awfully sweet. that s nice. i ve got more. you want some? we ll take as many as you have, but stick around, because we re going to do a little celebrating with you and a walk down memory lane in just a couple of minutes. thank you. i d love that. we ll have that, 30 years on the today today s consumer is brought to you by bank of america, bank of opportunity. this morning on today s consumer, smart homes. is it time to get tech-savvy when it comes to your house? consumer correspondent and reader s digest contributor janice lieberman is here to tell us yes or no. janice, good morning. good morning. do you know that smart homes are already a $10 billion industry? it s technology that allows you to basically control cameras, heaters, even window blinds from the touch of your phone. but do you really need it? well, we decided to find out. if he only knew how i hate washing, ironing, vacuuming. reporter: in the 1960s, the tv show the jetsons made life seem so futuristic. and almost 50 years later, this home of the future has quietly become a reality. it s just little more subtle. now, the moment reese enters his code, the lock will send mom a text, a little beep, beep on her end and a smile. reporter: so, what really is a so-called smart home? syndicated tech writer mike saltsman decodes this for us. a smart home helps you better monitor your control your home even when you re not there. this includes the alarm system, locking or unlocking the door, lighting, thermostat, appliances. it s really endless, but it s the ability of giving you the control at your fingertips. reporter: wow, sounds great! with the touch of your cell phone, your thermostat westbound turned down and you can keep an eye on your home when you re aw away. there are some nice conveniences with smart homes, but it s not for everyone. it definitely has to suit your needs and budget. reporter: so, are smart homes only for tech geeks? jonah and shawn durso may both have iphones, but they don t consider themselves technically savvy. i can make phone calls on my iphone and i can shop on the internet and that s probably the extent of it. i m not half bad at some things, but there s a lot of things i struggle with. what do you struggle with? the security system. i have no idea how to turn it on. haven t turned it on in nine years. so, hopefully, this new system i ll be able to figure out. reporter: two companies that sell smart home devices offered the family a trial smart home makeover. they received a $299 system which allows them to control their doors, lights and thermostat from their cell phone and platinum alarm systems added two cameras and some sensors, which runs a couple hundred dollars more. the total amount for the install, $1,000. and the companies each charge a monthly monitoring fee. it s going to cost you $70 a month to maintain. that s a fairly sizable money. we ll have to see if it s worth it in the end. reporter: after setup, we gave the family three months to get used to the system and then checked back. coincidentally, a fugitive accused of breaking and entering and assault was on the loose in the neighborhood the week after we left. my husband had called me. we were out at the mall and he asked me if the house was secure, and i was able to go on my phone and make sure the house was alarmed and do it remotely. reporter: but overall, are you using it as much as you thought you would or no, we re not. we re not using it as much as we expected. reporter: the feature she liked the most? i do get a text message on my phone when the children come home from school and it s really nice to flip on my phone and click on the camera and see them walking in the door. reporter: and as for her husband he probably is a little bit less, but he does like to control the lights with his phone while sitting on the couch. reporter: but in the end, the couple says based on the cost for now, they ll revert back to their not-so-smart home. well, tech experts say the price of outfitting your home with smart features is bound to come down as it becomes more popular. for those building a new home or completely renovating an older home, smart home technology may be a part of their package, meredith. the husband should just get the clapper, right? it s much cheaper to turn the lights on. for a couch potato, yeah. is this a fad like the intercom systems in the 80s? everybody wanted the intercom system in their home. and now they don t work and people are ripping them out. really it got more perfected and the technology s there, so it s cleaner and technology people say it s here to stay. i wouldn t use it. what s the next thing we re going to be seeing, do you know? i think they re going to be using it more for energy-efficient appliances, to turn off tvs when you re not there, turn off lights, thermostats, and for that, it really does make sense. janice lieberman, thank you so much. and up next, we ll hash it out in tod we re back at 8:44. and this morning on how to cook everything today, we re reinventing hash. our good friend mark bittman is here with new ways to enjoy shredded vegetables. mark is a new york times columnist and author of how to cook everything. mark, good morning to you. nice to see you. good morning, matt. great to be here. first of all, this is a massive potato pancake, and this is your grandmother s recipe. that s how she did it. she took the whole potato pancake batter and cooked it all at once, and it s great. you can make it in advance. it has terrific crunch and beautiful like creamy interior. this is pure comfort food. the effort-to-love ratio in a dish like that is very high very low! little effort, a lot of love. well, in her day, there was more effort because she grated everything by hand. so you got a little blood in there, some knuckle. you didn t but we don t have to do that! you re leaving? oh, god, okay. you come up with the rest of these recipes because you found a place for your food processor on your counter and you decided that, okay, i m going to grind up some vegetables. what are we making next? well, this is this becomes this, which is a root vegetable hash, essentially. and no grating, all in the food processor. do all root vegetables work for this or some work better than others? you know what? anything will work. beets, parsnips, sweet potato, carrots, rutabaga. and is this purely good for you or do you have to put something in there to bind this together that maybe isn t so good? no. oil or butter and cook it until it s brown and then you get this fantastic mix of sweet flavors. and how is cooking time for root vegetables compared to cooking time for a potato pancake? here you re trying to keep the heat a little low because you want the pancake to come together. here you want the heat higher, it cooks more quickly, you re tossing it. okay. what are we making here? this is really in a way the most interesting thing. this is raw zucchini and you add a little bit of flour, some egg white, some chopped onion. and there are a lot of different ways you can do this, but let me stop you for a second, because when you grate the zucchini, a lot of times it has a little liquid to it. best thing is to put it in a colander and squeeze some of that liquid out. so you want it drier. you want the consistency drier when you re working with it. but once you ve mixed it with just these few things. you ve got the egg and the flour to bind and the onion for flavor, obviously, you can do breadcrumbs in here, you can do egg and parmesan parmesan cheese. yep. you can cook it in butter, you can cook it in olive oil. then you make little pancakes and you wind up with these beautiful and i love the greenness of these. cook these for how long? five minutes perseid. okay. you just want them brown, that s it. are these recently cooked over here? can i take a bite of one? those are good to go, yeah. and i will wager even you will like that. what do you mean? i like all the things you cook. that s very good, actually, really good. all right, so, let s pretend those are cooking away. well, they are cooking, yeah. we ll keep an eye on them. they re fine. now you re going to make a stir-fry. and again, this is all food processor friendly? this is, again i mean, our big thing here is shredded vegetables, and i m just trying to show that with the food processor and just about any vegetable that you can think of that s gratable, you can go in all these different directions. all right. we re going to start with beef? this is really a stir-fry. so, you want to brown the beef. you like to put the meat in the freezer for a while first and then take it out? well, because then you can get these beautiful thin slices without a lot of effort. i mean, if you really froze the beef first, you could slice it in the food processor, for that matter. but anyway, brown the beef. let s just get a couple more pieces in here. you want to just wait until it loses color on both sides, flip to over once? yes, but since we re in a little bit of a hurry right, okay. just to give you an idea, when the beef is brown, these are sweet potatoes, but you could do carrots, you could do rutabaga. you could do anything you want here. then some scallions, and it starts to look like something really great. you use the whole scallion, not just the top part? white and green, okay? peppers. a little jalapeno here and some garlic. and then that thing stirs up. serves here, little rice next to it. we have stir-fried, we have ground vegetables. we have done some egg plant, zucchini. pretty good. different forms, different starts, different finishes. it s a nice situation. thanks for the knuckle story on your grandmother. i appreciate that. i knew you d appreciate it. up next, we ll celebrate 30 years of willard scott here on today. happy anniversary, baby we re all back now at 8:51, all happy to be together to celebrate the anniversary of willard. mr. scott joined the today family 30 years ago today. he began his career here at nbc, get this, 60 years ago this month. oh, my gosh. oh, lord. we asked some of your old friends to share some thoughts and look back at your memorable moments, starting with our introduction to our audience on march 10th, 1980. good morning, all. i m tom brokaw here with jane pauley and the newest member, old uncle willard, the newest member of the today family. we ll be hearing from him later. you ll be doing the weather. i ve got so much weather here. i could do the whole show. when i first met willard scott, he was doing the weather on the local station in washington, but he did a profitable sideline. he was selling eggs from his farm. get a nice shot of this. look it here. these are available at blooby s. basically, weather can be very bland on a day-to-day basis, so what you do is add a little to it. three, two, let the race begin! ah! ba-reba! you don t really wanna hurt me, you don t really wanna make me cry because your kiss, your kiss is on my list thanks! how about that? i ve been kissed by the best! she definitely got the worst of the deal. chimpanzee if we could talk to animals, learn their languages, maybe take an animal food, glorious food would you please try to control yourself? this guy hasn t had a meal in two days. eat your heart out! hi, willard. i congratulate you on your wonderful 30 years here on today. when you get to 100, call me. we ll celebrate over a jar of smucker s. i m a travelin man, made a lot of stops all over the world santo domingo give me a kid with hair, lock long, beautiful hair what do you think? i think the guy, looks to me let s give him a little more. now. willard, people always ask me if you re the same as you are on tv, and i say, no, he only looks like he s having too much fun to keep the money. there s funny things under there. look at that camera. look at that camera. now turn right. now watch this oh, much better! everybody loves my willie go be chilly and love your willie i see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do, they re really saying i love you mahala. what a wonderful world congratulations, willard. congratulations. 30 years. 30 years young. thank you. it s a cliche question has it gone by quickly some. unbelievable! i mean, years, incredible. september 16th, 1950, when i started in washington. he was in the control room when the today show started. that s right. i was the announcer. and they paid me $6 a day. i made $6 for saturday and $6 for sunday. and a week ago, ge cut half the salary [ laughter ] actually just take the cake away. exactly. just a prop. we ve got a cake here for you. happy 30th, happy 60th and happy birthday as well, which you celebrated sunday. 77 76! 76, wow. years young. can you believe it? i can t believe it. when you think of all you ve done, all you ve accomplished greatest thing we did was meet the pope in rome. that was incredible. we ve done some fun, beautiful things, but that was beautiful, yeah. all right, well here s to 30 more. cheers to you. willard. cheers, we love you. and campbells funeral home is just live, local, latebreaking. this is wbal-tv 11 news today in baltimore. good morning. i am mindy basara. water service will soon be restored to some 15,000 customers in baltimore county. crews are preparing to water main that broke in and smells, but it could be weeks until that broke in owings mills, but it could be weak until water returns to normal. now let s look at the forecast with tony pann. today we will see more cloud cover than yesterday, a little sunshine will also come through the clouds. the will be a 20% to the to% chance of a light rain shower. high temperatures in the upper 50s and the 60 s. seven-day forecast, bumuch bettr chance for rain. off and on rainshowers on the forecast through the weekend. high temperatures back into the upper 40 s by the time we get through. another update at 9:25.