All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.
How To: Re-Centering Your Carbon Karma
(CBS/John Filo)
Oftentimes, by the hour the CBS Evening News rolls around, a story gets nipped here, tucked there and you're not able to get across everything you wanted to. So, thank goodness for a blog.
Take the phrase that didn't make my story about carbon offsets: "there is no one government or private standard for what carbon neutral means."
That could be a story unto itself.
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Earth Day Dispatch: First, You Pick Up A Shovel ...
Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.
It was a ceremony to mark Earth Day – and nearing the end of their summit - the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico were going to plant a tree.
In Lafayette Square in the city's business district, President Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon walked side-by-side towards a pile of dirt with three shovels standing upright in it - like the Excalibur sword-in-the-stone.
"So what do you want us to do?" asked Mr. Bush – although it seemed obvious.
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(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
It was a ceremony to mark Earth Day – and nearing the end of their summit - the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico were going to plant a tree.
In Lafayette Square in the city's business district, President Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon walked side-by-side towards a pile of dirt with three shovels standing upright in it - like the Excalibur sword-in-the-stone.
"So what do you want us to do?" asked Mr. Bush – although it seemed obvious.
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The Pope Takes The Cake
Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.
From the moment he emerged from the Vatican Embassy this morning, he was beset by wishes of happy birthday.
Children across the street offered congratulations in song. Then, some kid bellowed "Happy Birthday, Pope," Everyone seemed to know it was 81 years ago this day that he was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Bavaria, Germany.
"You've chosen to visit America on your birthday," said President Bush at the start of his remarks formally welcoming Benedict to the White House.
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(CBS)
Children across the street offered congratulations in song. Then, some kid bellowed "Happy Birthday, Pope," Everyone seemed to know it was 81 years ago this day that he was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Bavaria, Germany.
"You've chosen to visit America on your birthday," said President Bush at the start of his remarks formally welcoming Benedict to the White House.
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Finding The Beat Once Again
(CBS)
I've known Pam Quinn for more than ten years. Our sons have been friends since elementary school. We traveled in the same "mom pack," where it's hardly ever about who we are, it's all about the school, the sports, and now that they're in high school, the nights out. So I was surprised to learn a couple of years after we met, that she had Parkinson's disease, a debilitating movement disorder. At the time she was a professional dancer and was moving into a more lucrative career as a personal trainer. So she seemed to be managing the symptoms well. Turns out she was working hard at doing just that.
Pam had spent most of her life as a dancer, and describes the change in her life when diagnosed as "profoundly shattering." She told us, "Dance is how I earned my living, but even more essential it was how I knew myself, and how I viewed myself."
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Bush Never Fixed Tax Code "Mess"
(CBS)
On this final tax filing day of George Bush's presidency, his campaign promise to fix the "complicated mess" that is the U.S. Tax Code remains unfulfilled.
In 2004, he ran for re-election asserting that the American people deserve – and the U.S. economy demands – "a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system."
He used his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that year to decry the tax code as "a complicated mess, filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year."
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The View From The Mountain
(CBS/John Filo)
I was happy about being assigned to cover the annual VA/Disabled American Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass, Colo., for a few reasons. I'm more comfortable outdoors than indoors, (except when foul weather is my reason for being there). I relished the opportunity to get some crisp, clean, low oxygen, reminds-me-how-out-of-shape-I-am air in my system, but the one thing I looked forward to more was an opportunity to be inspired by the veterans.
The event has been going on for 22 years now, and is not limited to the veterans who are on our radar from the current conflicts.
(CBS)
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What Happened In Eldorado And Why We Care
(CBS/John Filo)
No country for young women?
SO country for old men.
That was my email exchange with a new colleague, Brandon Baur, as he came to assist my producer Mark Hooper and me on our coverage of this story. There isn't anything funny about polygamy, but I think the longer you are grinding through a story, especially one with as many emotional landmines that trigger immediate visceral responses in you, the more you try to insulate yourself from the bizarre nature of what you're looking at.
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Exploring The Immigration "Fault Line"
(CBS)
Having spent most of my life in Minnesota, I have to admit that stories about illegal immigration and the border always seemed very far away. They were. My recent trip to Arizona for our "Immigration Nation" piece was an eye-opener. Protestors hurling insults at Mexican day-laborers and calling the people who hire them "traitors."
Arizona has become a real fault line in the debate over illegal immigration. The state has adopted one of the toughest immigration laws in the country. Instead of simply being fined for hiring illegal workers, businesses can now be shut down. By almost all estimates the law is working. Bus loads of illegal and legal workers are streaming out of the state.
However, what's left behind highlights the real complexities of the immigration issue. Will economies in border states suffer if they really crack down on illegal workers? Are there enough Americans willing to work in construction, agricultural, and service industry jobs for low wages? If you kick out an illegal worker, do you also lose the legal one that is a member of their family or their friend?
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McCain, Clinton Steal The Show On Capitol Hill
Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.
General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker returned to Capitol Hill this morning to make the case that despite recent violence in Iraq, political progress and economic progress are on the rise as a result of the troop surge.
But all eyes - and camera lenses - in the packed Armed Services Committee room were on Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Both presidential candidates took time away from the campaign trail to attend the hearing. Sen. Barack Obama is not on the committee, but will hear from Petraeus and Crocker later this afternoon at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. It's a rare opportunity for voters to see the candidates in action, talking war and asking tough questions.
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(AP)
General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker returned to Capitol Hill this morning to make the case that despite recent violence in Iraq, political progress and economic progress are on the rise as a result of the troop surge.
But all eyes - and camera lenses - in the packed Armed Services Committee room were on Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Both presidential candidates took time away from the campaign trail to attend the hearing. Sen. Barack Obama is not on the committee, but will hear from Petraeus and Crocker later this afternoon at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. It's a rare opportunity for voters to see the candidates in action, talking war and asking tough questions.
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Chernobyl's Abandoned City
(CBS)
Bill also visited Pripyat, the abandoned city just about a mile away from the nuclear plant, where the plant's workers lived. When disaster struck in 1986, the town's residents were given 36 hours to evacuate. They never came back, leaving behind an eerie, overgrown landscape of deserted buildings.
Just click the monitor below to check out Bill's Web-exclusive report:
