All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Mandy Clark is a CBS News Digital Journalist based in Afghanistan. In this blog, she previews her story for the CBS Evening News.

Nine young boys were tricked into delivering a bomb for the Taliban. It is the story of Eidullah and his friends. I came across the story on a military base in Khost, Eastern Afghanistan when a few of the boys had come for a check up. Military doctors saved their lives.

The boys were asked to deliver a fruit basket to a local commander working with U.S. forces. What they didn’t know was hidden in the basket was a bomb. It exploded early and injuring the boys. Two lost legs, one went blind, all their lives changed in a flash.

Using children is new terror tactic that is growing in Afghanistan. Doctors at the combat hospital say they are seeing child bombers more frequently.
Eidullah was one of the boys who lost his leg. When I met him, his face was etched with worry. He used to run his father’s shop in his village. His father is blind and as the oldest son it’s up to him to take care of his mother and 6 siblings. He doubts he can. It is hard to believe such responsibility for an 11-year-old.

Nine year old Mohammad’s father begged doctors not to amputate his leg, but the blast took out his sciatic nerve. His right leg is now dead. He has no feeling and no control over it. It will need to be removed in the future but the doctors respected the father’s wishes.

Even when it is amputated, it’s unlikely Eidullah or Mohammad will ever get a prosthetic leg, they are simply too poor to afford it. They will join the 50 thousand other Afghan civilians amputated by 30 years of continuous war.
Despite the agony from their injuries, not one of the boys complained. They were near stoic with their new reality given to them by a terrorist.

The bombing that changed the lives of these boys happened on September 11th. A terrible reminder of how it always seems to be their lives of the innocence that are torn apart by terrorism and war.

Christine Delargy is a CBS News researcher based in Washington, D.C.

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CBS News confirmed today that President Bush’s former spokesman Scott McClellan will accept an invitation to testify on Capitol Hill next week about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity.

McClellan tells CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante, “I have accepted. I am happy to share what I know.”

House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich, asked McClellan to testify after he claimed in his new book: “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” that he was mislead about Scooter Libby’s role in the leak by Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush Administration.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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Sen. Barack Obama stepped into a swarm of superdelegates this morning when he visited the House of Representatives in the middle of a vote. Obama stayed on the floor for almost half an hour visiting with both Democrats and Republicans who looked completely star struck.

Even Speaker Nancy Pelosi left her weekly press briefing and made a beeline for the House floor to say hello. And the Capitol Hill press corps surrounded the House Chamber to catch him on his way out and fire questions about such an unusual move for a presidential candidate, even if he is a senator.

"I wasn't campaigning, I was just saying hello to everybody," Obama said.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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World Leaders, lawmakers and the rock star/activist Bono filled Statuary Hall this morning in the nation's Capitol to pay tribute to Congressman Tom Lantos. The only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, the California Democrat from Hungary was an inspiration to his fellow lawmakers and clearly his family as well. His wife, children and grandchildren filled the front row and many spoke of his legacy.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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At 6:30 this morning, baseball fans and critics started lining up for an ugly moment in baseball history.

Potential hall-of-famer Roger Clemens and former trainer-turned-foe Brian McNamee were both due at the congressional hearing room at 10 a.m. to answer lawmakers' questions about Clemens' alleged steroid use … with the help of McNamee.

The public wanted to witness this event. The line went all the way from one end of a long hallway to the other. Some wore Clemens shirts to show their support.

When Clemens finally walked past, surrounded by police, the crowd's reaction was staid and quiet.

McNamee slipped into the hearing through a side entrance.

Two teenagers from Arlington, Va., waited in line for four hours. They said they are both big baseball fans – but think Clemens is a cheater. After 20 minutes in the hearing, both teens said the wait was completely worthwhile. They had gotten brief access to two of the handful of seats available for the public to rotate in to watch just a few minutes of the hearing.

It was their first congressional hearing – and they said they had witnessed history.

Plus, their parents let them skip school.

Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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The Senate successfully put its stamp on the House economic stimulus package by adding seniors living on Social Security and 250,000 disabled veterans to the rebate-recipient list.

After the Senate and House agreed to the modified package yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner and even Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave a last-minute press conference. They touted their great accomplishment and praised themselves for showing they can put political differences aside and put the American people first.

The group of unlikely cohorts standing side by side in front of American flags made a pretty picture. Reid said it was "an example of how government is supposed to work."

The lesson of the last two weeks, though, is that the road to bipartisan agreement can be smooth, but it can also be treacherous.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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At 10 a.m., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried in vain to leave the posh Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., after a speech on healthcare.

Reporters swarmed around the speaker in the lobby wanting confirmation that House Democrats, Republicans and the White House finally reached a deal on an economic stimulus package to give the economy a boost and avoid recession.

But Speaker Pelosi would not confirm.

Would she classify it as a tentative deal?

She would not.

Pelosi said when they're ready on a deal, she'd meet with the Democratic caucus. Presumably to get the Party on the same page and ease opponent's fears.

She said they were close and that she was hopeful when she finally reached the exit.

Then, Pelosi managed to break away from the pack, hopped into her black SUV and sped away.

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Sharyl Attkisson is the Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News.

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I was with a group of Senators last night who SUPPORT the immigration bill. They divided up names of Republican fence-sitters and called them on the phone hoping to get their commitment to a "yes" vote today to proceed on immigration.

"It's the most fluid of fluid situations," said one Republican Senator. "Everyone is terrified" about what the immigration bill will do to them at home...because so many constituents are against it.

Last night, according to Senate sources, President Bush personally called five Republican Senators. "The White House is in overdrive and is burning the midnight oil," a source told me. This, despite President Bush's prediction earlier this week that immigration would pass.

Some Republicans are disappointed in what they consider "lack of leadership" from their Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Democrats called McConnell "missing in action" during the push for the vote, while the Democrat leader Senator Harry Reid has been out front.

Sharyl Attkisson is the Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News.

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Post-9/11, it doesn't take much to get security riled up on Capitol Hill.

This morning, it was a parachutist.

The parachutist (later described by police as a "blimp", though I saw a man hanging from a glider type parachute) was floating silently toward the Capitol building where Capitol police went on alert.

Was it a bird? A plane? Would he fly over the Capitol? Would he try to land on the grounds? Would he try to light on the Capitol building itself?
What was he carrying? Could he be dangerous?

Sharp shooters who are perpetually stationed at the Capitol would've been ready...if it was necessary.

But it wasn't.

Police determined he may have been powering his floater with a small fan, that he may have been carrying a camera, and that he may have been trying to take aerial photos of nearby RFK stadium.

The whole thing blew over.

This did bring up another topic of discussion, though.

Will police ever be able to really avert a terrorist attack before it happens? If the parachutist had come too close to the Capitol, if police weren't able to determine who he was, what he was doing and whether he was dangerous...should they shoot?

They probably wouldn't.

And if he turned out to be strapped with a hidden bomb, we'd all just be out of luck.

But if they did shoot and he just turned out to be a nut, or somebody off course, the fall-out would be unimaginable.

The Capitol police sometimes feel as though they're between a rock and a hard place. When split seconds count and tough decisions have to be made, which decisions will really be made?

I have a habit of asking what I like to call not-so-stupid questions around here. So when I saw conflicting testimony from the Alberto Gonzales-U.S. Attorney firing hearings I wanted to know what the procedure is for bringing perjury charges against a person for bearing false witness to Congress. I asked my colleague CBS News legal consultant Andrew Cohen for help, and after several inquiries, we got an answer from a Democratic staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The staffer says there is no statutory process to bring perjury charges; a committee member or members can refer the issue to the Department of Justice, or the DOJ can start an inquiry on its own.

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