All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Mark Knoller is a White House correspondent for CBS News.

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Press Secretary Dana Perino said President Bush was in the Oval Office at 6:55 a.m. this morning.

He made some phone calls, talked to National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and took a call from his former Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Mr. Bush then talk a last walk around the South Lawn, and is now spending his last moments in the White House with his family until the Obamas arrive just before 10 a.m.

Perino herself was in the press room giving out her last supply of M&M's with the presidential seal and Mr. Bush's signature on them.

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Click Here For All Of CBSNews.com's Special Inauguration Coverage

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News. He was one of the small pool of reporters to accompany President Bush on his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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It was President Bush’s last trip to Iraq and Afghanistan – two places in which Americans were still engaged in wars begun on his watch – and a guy throwing his shoes was the big story.

The jokes on Air Force One about that incident Sunday in Baghdad were flying faster than those shoes.

Even the president couldn’t resist – beginning an interview by telling reporters on the flight out of Iraq that he didn’t know what the shoe-hurler was saying – “but I saw his sole.” (Get it? Shoe sole?)

“It was a bizarre moment,” said Mr. Bush, and with mock pride he trumpeted his reflexes in ducking out of the way of the airborne footwear. “So you weren’t a lame duck,” I kidded the president to the moans and groans of his aides and my colleagues.

Back in the press cabin: “I bet they’ll be serving us “shoe-fly pie,” said one reporter.

“We’ll probably have to go shoe-less to the next press conference,” said another.

We wondered if the shoes thrown at the president were “wing tips," and whether the Secret Service would issue agents a new manual on “the taming of the shoe.”

And though President Bush was unscathed from the incident, Press Secretary Dana Perino suffered an injury. She was hit in the face by a heavy metal microphone stand that was swung around at her as security personnel rushed the shoe-hurler. It left her with a dark bruise under her right eye.

“Guess you could call that a shoe shiner,” a reporter said later...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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Want to stay up drinking 'til five in the morning to celebrate the Obama inauguration? It’s okay with the City Council in the nation’s capital.

By a 9-to-4 vote yesterday, the council approved a bill that will let any bar or restaurant with a liquor license serve alcoholic beverages until 5:00 a.m. starting three days before the inauguration and running until the day after the big night. A spokesperson says Mayor Adrian Fenty intends to sign the measure into law.

The council was acting at the behest of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, which sees an opportunity to boost revenue for its members by offering expanded hours of service to the millions of visitors expected to be in Washington for the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president.

The council action was news to Stephanie Cutter, chief spokesperson for the Obama Transition Team, and she thought it best not to ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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You hear it from nearly everyone you meet on Election Day: "Hi. Did you vote?"

Answer no and you’re most likely in for an argument.

"Why not?"

"Don’t you know it’s your duty to vote?"

And my personal favorite: "If you don’t vote, you don’t have a right to complain about the outcome!"

Without revealing whether I voted or not, I can certainly think of reasons a person could choose not to vote ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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It’s a week before America chooses its next president – but the government is already gearing up for Inauguration Day.

Part of the sidewalk in front of the White House has now been fenced off. It’s where they’ll start building the big reviewing stand from which the 44th President of the United States will watch the Inaugural Parade.

Across the street in Lafayette Park, trailers and more fencing have been moved into position. That’s the site where booths for the news media will be constructed along with grandstands for VIPs with special tickets for the parade.

Up at the U.S. Capitol, the Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugural Ceremonies began its preparations last month – holding a ceremony Sept. 24 to mark the driving of the "first nail" in the inaugural platform.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the country must make a big to-do over the inauguration of a new president. All that’s required ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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Memo to the next tenants at the White House: The current tenants have gotten rid of the jogging track.

The quarter-mile loop around the South Lawn has been paved over. It is now an indistinguishable part of the asphalt driveway on which presidential motorcades begin and end.

The White House decided that the four-foot wide rubberized path had deteriorated over the years – and wasn’t worth the cost of replacing it.

It was first installed in 1993 at the behest of the new President Bill Clinton. His morning jogging forays in Washington routinely caused traffic problems and subjected him to shouted questions ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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To hear the White House tell it, one factor in the House vote yesterday against the administration’s bailout plan – was the word "bailout."

"It’s really unfortunate shorthand for a very complicated issue." says White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.

He says the administration plan to rescue the financial markets is "not a bailout for Wall Street" and "certainly not a bailout for Wall Street CEOs."

Okay then – what should we call it?

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.

It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush’s watch.

The bailout plan now pending in Congress could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt – though President Bush said this morning he expects that over time, “much if not all” of the bailout money “will be paid back.”

But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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CRAWFORD, Texas – Maybe you can explain it. I can’t.

In Denver, there are 15,000 members of the media covering the Democrats formally designating their candidate for president. Fair enough. It’s a legitimate story – though a strong argument can be made that it’s being way over-covered.

Meanwhile, 700 miles away here in Crawford, the media count of those covering President Bush is about 30 (of which barely 12 are reporters).

Sure, he’s on vacation – though I’ve stopped using that word with respect to American presidents. The job is always with them. They can never escape ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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If you scoured the hundreds of pages of the Housing bill signed today by Pres. Bush, you’d find that buried deep in its bowels – in the hope few would notice – is this:

SEC. 3083. INCREASE IN STATUTORY LIMIT ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.
Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $10,615,000,000,000.

It’s a provision that allows the U.S. Government to keep on spending money it doesn’t have and has to borrow.

It raises the legal ceiling on the national debt to more than $10.6 trillion. And it’s the sixth time the debt limit has had to be raised on President Bush’s watch.

On the day President Bush took office, the National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion. That's with a "T." ...

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