All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

The police stormed into their Virginia bedroom one night in 1958, shone flashlights into their eyes, and asked the white man: Who’s this woman you are sleeping with? “I’m his wife,” Mildred Loving replied and the rest, quite literally, became a vital part of American legal history.

The Lovings, Mildred and Richard, were an interracial couple who had married five weeks before the cops came calling that night. At the time, in Virginia and many other places, it was a crime for a white to marry a black or for any other “miscegenation.” Thanks to the Lovings, and a fight that lasted nearly a decade, that all changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court unanimously struck down such laws nationwide.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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When you saw this weekend’s headline from 60 Minutes: “GOP Operative: Rove Tried to Smear Dem” your first reaction is to say: Surely this is not news. [editor's note: Link to full story is now Did Ex-Alabama Governor Get A Raw Deal?] Former White House advisor Karl Rove has made a career out of “smearing” his political opponents. Just ask Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. Indeed, a litany of Rove’s targets would fill up the rest of the column. So why is this smear different from all other smears?

It is different – and perhaps significant – because Rove’s target, Alabama Democrat Don Siegelman, also was a target of the Justice Department during Alberto R. Gonzales’ reign of error there. A bribery case against Siegelman, dismissed in 2004, suddenly came alive again in 2005 thanks to the same political miscreants who later begat the U.S. Attorney scandal. And guess with whom the Congress wants to talk about that scandal? That’s right, Karl Rove.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Thanks to today’s extraordinary hearing on Capitol Hill, Americans now know more about Roger Clemens’ butt than they ever wanted to know. The Congressional hearing into Clemens’ alleged steroid and Human Growth Hormone use fairly quickly morphed into a primer on how buttocks could react when injected with certain kinds of drugs. If there has been a more surreal hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I am not aware of it.

What did we learn? That Brian McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, is sorry for lying before, but swears he isn’t lying now. That McNamee injected Clemens' wife, Debbie, with HGH in the bedroom of Clemens’ house without Clemens being there to supervise the procedure. That McNamee’s recollections are not always perfect. That Clemens' BFF Andy Petitte, the Yankees pitcher, seems to be making it through this scandal with his reputation for candor and honesty intact. Also that, in the end, all Clemens can say is: I’m right and the rest of them are wrong.

Clemens may not have ruined his cause Wednesday, but the hearing clearly did not help his case. And I think Clemens is beginning to appreciate the height of the mountain he will have to climb if he ever wants to regain his reputation and guarantee his liberty.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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The next time you whine about having to take your laptop out of your travel bag when you go through airport security, consider this alternative: Taking your laptop out and either handing it over to the security screeners – or giving those strangers your computer password so they can go through and copy your files and emails.

Don’t laugh – but feel free to cringe. It’s happening – reportedly almost always to people of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South American backgrounds. And on Thursday, two civil liberties groups (neither of which is the American Civil Liberties Union, by the way) filed a lawsuit against the government to require the disclosure, at the very least, of its computer confiscation protocols.

The Washington Post reports that the lawsuit stems from over two dozen incidents where people of color have had electronic equipment – computers, cell phones, digital cameras – seized by officers of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service. One woman, the Post reports, was given the choice of turning over her laptop or not getting onto a flight. She was told she would get her laptop back in 10 to 15 days. That was more than a year ago.

She still hasn’t gotten her computer back.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Here is an example of precisely how Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is making a tangible difference in the kabuki dance between the branches these days over Tapegate, the CIA's controversial destruction of terror interrogation videotapes.

When U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy decided yesterday to hold off on pursuing his own investigation into the legality of the destruction of the tapes (he had ordered tapes protected just a few months before they were destroyed), he did so by expressing confidence in the new criminal investigation initiated a few weeks ago by the Justice Department — the Mukasey Justice Department. One current federal judge (appointed by a Democrat) showing one former federal judge (appointed by a Republican) no small measure of respect and confidence — what a nice thing to see in the cynic-ridden canyons of power these days!

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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It’s not funny anymore and, looking back, it never really was. It is instead a miracle that no one who circles in the orbit of Britney Spears, never mind the dwarfed star herself, has yet been killed or gravely wounded as a result of her mental breakdown. It is a wonder that no cars have been crashed into innocent civilians and that those two poor kids still (technically anyway) have both a mother and a father.

Spears has done nothing to me or my son. She’s not even on our pop radar, unlike, say, whatsherface Hannah Montana. I can sing some of her songs by heart (this happens when they get played over and over again in the car) but I couldn’t name you a Britney song if you put a gun to my head. And after Spears’ latest bizarre episode whatever allure there once may have been to poke fun at her slide into madness has lost its gleam.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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The morning’s big news — a New York Times story, which steers the CIA videotape scandal right into the heart of the White House and the Justice Department — is as important as it is unsurprising.

Naturally, when the touchy subject came up in 2005, the Administration’s top legal officials were called upon to discuss the pros and cons of destroying material evidence about the CIA’s interrogation tactics. Of course, at the center of these discussions were two presidential lackeys, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. And what would a controversial (and ultimately disastrous) executive branch action meeting be without the dark and ruthless presence of David Addington, then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney?

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The big CIA Tapes news that broke over the weekend prompted a lot of buzz in the media. Now our Andrew Cohen has rendered his own opinion over at CourtWatch.

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The Justice Department’s controversial court filing on late Friday night — shhh, while everyone is sleeping! — isn’t worthy of all the media attention it got over the rest of the weekend.

Neither was Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey’s “nuts to you” response to legislators when they asked for updated information about the Department’s investigation into Tapegate, the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of terror interrogation videotapes.

The post-happy-hour filing came in the case of two detainees. The federal judge in this case had ordered the government back in 2005 to protect from destruction “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

The Justice Department told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that he should now inquire no further into Tapegate and that, even if tapes were destroyed by the CIA, they were not at the time subject to his court order because the men in question were not being held at Gitmo.

Check out more of Cohen's commentary here — and let us know what you think.

Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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The guy from the Boston Globe was handing out placards Sunday afternoon at 20th and Blake Street in Lower Downtown, Denver, the site of game four of the 2007 World Series. The placards read: Go Red Sox. “Fold it up and hide it because they aren’t letting them in,” the Globe guy advised me. And, sure enough, the ticket agent at Gate D told me I wasn’t allowed into Coors Field with the sign. “They don’t want them in here,” he said to me. I said: “Who doesn’t want them in?” “They,” he said.

So began my evening of quiet anticipation as a Red Sox fan living in enemy territory. I watched the first six innings or so from the press box in the second deck by the foul pole in right field. It was my first time at a press box at a sporting event. I was struck by how little work members of the media actually do during the game (yes, I know, I wasn’t exactly grinding out copy either last night). I also was struck by the international flavor the media section. There were scores of Japanese reporters on hand to witness their hero, Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, win a World Series. Lots of bowing, trust me.

There were plenty of tech guys waiting patiently for the game to end. No cheering in the press box? Every time the Sox did something good I slammed my fist onto the tables like they do in the Canadian parliament (hear hear!). More importantly, there was free food available to us working journalists. I’m told that the Sox offered lobster rolls and clam chowder to the media for Games 1 and 2. All we got were lame turkey sandwiches. No wonder the Rockies got swept. Memo to Rockies: Want positive coverage? Instead of infringing upon free speech rights of placard holders focus on better catering for journalists. I’m just saying …

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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I spent this 9-11 anniversary in the most unlikely of places—the so-called “Supermax” federal penitentiary complex in Florence, Colorado. I was part of a small group of journalists who were finally allowed by the Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department to tour for about 100 minutes a few areas of a 640-acre compound that houses approximately 3,200 prisoners, including some of the best known and most notorious of our time.

No, we did not see Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols or the so-called “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid or the so-called “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski or the so-called “20th Hijacker” Zacarious Moussaoui. We did not see any dank underground cells or other evidence that the men in the “Administrative Maximum Security” portion of the prison are simply left to rot in their cells. But we didn’t see a shiny happy place either—it is prison, after all, and it happens to house inmates who for one reason or another were kicked out of their “regular” penitentiaries.

We saw an eerily-quiet, sterile portion of the facility, a place where almost every single inmate was polite, if not particularly talkative, and where federal officials could best show us the vast majority of prisoners at this ADX house aren’t big-named convicts or high-profile terrorists—and that they all have a chance to “rehabilitate” themselves enough to warrant being placed back in a prison population somewhere. We saw what they wanted us to see, and only that, in an environment of control that extended to when we were allowed to sit down inside the “briefing room.”

We saw cement desks and bed frames and stainless steel toilets and sinks. We saw cages—straight out of the circus—where inmates who are going along with the warden’s “program” are allowed to “recreate” outside for about 10 hours a week. We saw that the windows in the cells are only a few inches wide and all look inward toward the other windows of other cells. No one has a view of the beautiful Rocky Mountains which surround the facility in the southern portion of Colorado.

We were allowed to tour—the first ever formal media visit we were told—to help prison officials “destroy” some of those public “myths” and many others that have cropped up about the prison since the most-sensitive portion of the place opened in 1994. “Today is about education,” said ADX Warden Ron Wiley, who looks like a cross between Texas Rangers’ manager Ron Washington and comedian Eddie Murphy. “Ninety percent of the ADX mission is inmates taken out of other institutions,” he said, and the “20 or 30 inmates” who we would consider high-profile are “not my major mission...”

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