All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

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

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It's just two days before Superbowl Sunday, but Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter held a press conference today to rail against National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. Specter is criticizing the NFL's investigation of the New England Patriots after it was discovered early this season that they'd taped the Jets' defensive signals during games.

Goodell did force the Patriots to hand over all their tapes and fined the Patriots $750,000. The number one team also lost a first round draft pick.

But that's not enough for Specter.

The senator's sent two letters to the NFL commissioner since the story broke. The first on November 15th asked if the NFL's investigation of the Patriots stealing Jets' defensive signals revealed whether the team had also done so in the 2005 Super Bowl when the Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles.

His second letter to Goodell was sent December 19, 2007. Specter was outraged over reports in The New York Times that the NFL had destroyed the Patriot's spying tapes and asked if there were still any copies.

Goodell finally wrote Specter back yesterday and said that was the first day he'd seen the senator's letters. The commissioner says the NFL found no evidence of spying at the 2005 Patriots-Eagle Super Bowl and that the tapes were destroyed to make sure no one could gain a competitive advantage in the future with those tapes.

But Specter's not buying any of it. At the press conference, Specter was skeptical that yesterday was really the first time Goodell saw those letters.

The senator is pushing for a meeting with Goodell soon to discuss the destroyed tapes and possibly notes. He also wants the names of individuals who did the taping at those games. Specter says at this point there is no need for a hearing, but would not rule out that possibility in the future.

And instead of watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, Specter says he might just play squash.

Philadelphia is coping with, on average, one murder a day, most committed by young African American men. What can be done about the "urban genocide" in parts of Philadelphia?

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Byron Pitts is National Correspondent for CBS News.

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Is it a war?

That’s what Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson calls it. Community activist Mel Wells agrees, there is a war going on in parts of Philadelphia. Both men are lifetime residents of Philadelphia. Both love their city deeply. One has enforced the law for 43-years. The other has broken the law a few times in his youth, but has since turned his life around and leads a community service organization called One Day At A Time.

Honestly, I rolled my eyes a bit when they first compared the killings and violence in Philadelphia (406 murders in 2006, more than 200 so far in 2007) and in other American cities to a “war zone.” Too often people have thrown around phrases and words like “war zone” and “battlefield.” I’ve scene war up close and there is no mistaking what’s going on in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. War zones have a certain look. A certain feel. There’s even a smell to it.

After spending several days in Philadelphia, I must admit there are striking similarities...

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This week we traveled to Philadelphia to attend the grand opening of the brand new CBS 3 Hi-Def studios there and to do The CBS Evening News atop the famous “Rocky Steps” of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It was a rich full day, and part of the fun was traveling there and back by train. We took the new Acela down and the regular Amtrak back to New York. It’d been a while since I traveled somewhere by train, and I had forgotten what a pleasant way it is to go.

Even at Acela speeds the scenery goes by your window in a way that lets you relate to the countryside in human terms and human scale as opposed to, in a jet, looking down at the patchwork of earth 30,000 feet below.

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Katie Couric is getting some good vibes from the City of Brotherly Love, where the local CBS station KYW is broadcasting in high definition. Katie also manages to work in a preview of her report on how rising malpractice insurance costs and Medicaid reimbursements are forcing maternity wards to close.

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