All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

The two sides of the wall were like twins who had been separated...and raised in very different environments. To the west, colorful graffiti art, tourists walking up and touching it. To the east, stark white concrete...and armed guards.

But the faces on either side were the same.

On November 9th, 1989, East Germany's communist leaders...under pressure to ease travel restrictions...sent a spokesman to brief reporters on a new policy...allowing travel between East and West in the future. He mistakenly announced the new rules would take effect immediately. Hundreds of thousands descended on the border crossings. And the overwhelmed guards simply lifted the gates.

It would take months for the wall to be demolished...and years for the former soviet republics to build new governments.

But for those reunited with lost brothers, parents and cousins on the other side...it only took a moment to realize no one could build a wall around their hearts.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Forty years ago this week, the place to be was the Woodstock festival in upstate New York.

It wasn't the first rock festival or the biggest ever.

But as more than one historian has said, for a moment, it was the center of pop culture.

And the real star was the audience - half a million young people jammed into a farmer's field-- during one of the most turbulent times in our nation's history.

It could have been a disaster. The food ran out. There weren't enough bathrooms, and it poured rain, turning Yasgur's farm into a giant mud pit.

But for the most part, the event lived up to its billing: 3 days of revelry without any major mishaps. And that's truly remarkable.

Yes, the "Woodstock Generation" is approaching Social Security age and the summer of '69 is long gone.

But, just as suede French clothing is now making a comeback, there's a youthful innocence that's still alive in all of us wishing for a little peace, love, and rock 'n roll.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

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Like Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the High Court itself had humble beginnings in New York City.

It was the nation's capital when Chief Justice John Jay convened the first session in 1790.

While the Constitution created the Court, it left the organizational details to Congress.

The Court first exercised the power to declare a law unconstitutional in 1803 in Marbury versus Madison.

While the Senate has the power to confirm or reject Supreme Court nominees, it didn't hold the first hearing until 1916, when Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice. And while some nominees testified at their hearings, that wasn't the norm until 1955.

The Court is constant but it is not static. It evolves and continues to bring those "firsts" that indicate - as one law professor so eloquently stated - even "if it's not in touch with the weather of the day, it's in touch with the climate of the age."

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

On August 19, 1965, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite became the first regularly-scheduled news program to broadcast in color.

Tonight, we'll reach another milestone. We're broadcasting for the first time in High Definition.

If you're not much of a techy, a trip to an electronics store can be a confusing jumble of abbreviations. HD (for high-definition), SD (for standard definition), LCD. For all that, I need a Ph.D!

About 30 percent of U.S. households now have HDTVs. If you already have one, you'll notice a difference tonight.

I'll try to make sure there's no lipstick on my teeth ... if I do, you will notice!

My Notebook today is on ushering in the new era. You've just read part of it, but you can watch the rest below.

My chat with Bob Schieffer last night got some props from the National Journal’s Hotline today – as its quote of the day.

The quote? "That phrase was invented here at CBS between 1962 and 1964."

The phrase? “Too close to call.”

At first it sounds like something out of a horse race – a literal one, not the political races in Iowa or New Hampshire. Curious if that was the case, I asked Couric & Co. to check it out. Sure enough, language guru William Safire had pondered the same thing in one of his “On Language” columns back in 1996. Safire writes:

Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio remembers the phrase from the early days of television, and directed me to Martin Plissner of CBS, a pioneer of electronic election coverage.

"That phrase was invented at CBS between 1962 and 1964," says Plissner with the confidence never shared by lexicographers. "During that period, instead of using the exit polling we have today, we used a model we had devised for predicting or calling elections based on certain reported-precinct results. That gave us a sample to which we could apply mathematical formulae to determine a call. When we had a situation in which all the votes were reported but there was no clear winner, we called that election too close to call."

A little poking around inside CBS News today revealed more: that Lou Harris, who worked for CBS News in the ‘60s, is said to have first uttered those words on air when reporting on a tight race for governor of Massachusetts in 1962.

Maybe it’ll come in handy this year.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Mitt Romney would give a much-debated "religion speech" later this week. As CBSNews.com's Vaughn Ververs noted:

Romney's Mormon faith has been an underlying theme of his presidential candidacy but, until today, it has been an area he and his campaign have shied away from addressing directly.

"This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor's own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden in a statement released this evening.

Throughout this campaign year, Romney has frequently been asked whether he would address his faith directly. Many evangelical Christians view the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, critically. And voters in general have expressed hesitance about voting for a presidential candidate who subscribes to that faith. Last June, 43 percent of registered voters in a CBS News poll said they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon.

Romney has frequently been asked whether he would consider delivering a speech about his faith along the lines of the address John F. Kennedy gave when his Catholic faith provoked a similar discussion in the 1960 presidential campaign.

When asked about the possibility of giving such a speech by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer last month, Romney replied, "I probably could never do something that would compare to what John F. Kennedy did - his was a masterpiece in American political history."

Anyone curious about that can check out the Boston Globe, which has helpfully reprinted Kennedy's historic remarks.

And this website, devoted to American rhetoric, has audio and video links to Kennedy's speech and the Q&A which followed.

Fascinating stuff. And a fascinating window into a different time and place.

Greg Kandra is the editor of "Couric & Co."

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A decade ago, I found myself working on a cable documentary about a little girl who fell down a well. In the late 1980's, it was a story that had gripped the world in the days before we were all being riveted by the likes of O.J., Paris, and Britney.

I was astonished to read this morning that the girl who fell down the well, a.k.a. "Baby Jessica," is now 21 -- and a lot has changed:

The 18-month old girl pulled from a backyard well in the U.S. two decades ago is now a young wife and mother - one waiting to collect donations given to her during her ordeal that are expected to total $1 million or more.

The anniversary of Jessica McClure's rescue passed Tuesday like almost every other day in the 21-year-old's life, with no public comment from her about the event that once captivated viewers around the world.

The young wife and mother is living quietly in this West Texas city, the same one where she fell into the backyard well.

"Jessica's just been a wonderful, wonderful mother," said her father, Chip McClure. "That's always been Jessica's dream, to be a stay-at-home mom..."

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started looking into the lucrative, $85 billion college loan industry shortly after his election in November. What began as a probe into possible kickbacks to school officials for steering students to preferred lenders has widened to envelop a federal education official and the chancellor of New York's state university system.

CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn has been reporting on the probe and has the latest developments here.

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We have another hat in the ring today.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney formally announced he's running for the Republican nomination for president.

If you're wondering -- like I am -- where the "Mitt" of Mitt Romney comes from, the always-reliable Vaughn Ververs, Senior Political Editor for CBSNews.com provides this tantalizing detail, from an AP snapshot:

His first name is Willard. He was named for his father's friend J. Willard Marriott. Mitt, his middle name, comes from a relative who played football for the Chicago Bears - Milton Romney. The governor went by 'Billy' in kindergarten.

Now you know. Could the next President of the United States be named Willard Milton Romney?