All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Michelle Miller is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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After hearing of her accomplishments, I couldn’t believe how tiny the shy little girl appeared. Not even five feet tall, here was a formidable heroine in her native Yemen, a child whose bold proclamation gave power to women across the world.

I met her outside of Dylan’s Candy Store in New York City’s Upper East Side. It was before she accepted her Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year Award under the glare of the bright lights of Carnegie Hall. She hid quietly under the comforting posture of her lawyer, Shada Nassar, and the interpreter assigned to her for the day. But here was a girl who was strong beyond measure.

Nujood Ali was married at the age of nine to a man three times her age. It’s not an uncommon practice. Roughly half of Yemeni girls are married before 18, some as young as 8 years old. But it’s unusual and unlawful for those marriages to be consummated before the bride turns 15. But in Nujood’s case, her husband didn’t wait. And after enduring several weeks of abuse, Nujood one morning boarded a bus to head off to court in the city of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. There she would wait for a judge to notice her. And there she would tell him, "I want a divorce."

He took her home to shelter her from her family, and then introduced her to Shada Nassar, one of a handful of female lawyers who is a staunch women’s rights advocate. Based on her husband’s own admission that he had slept with her, Nujood was granted a divorce. Since then, she’s inspired ...

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The election of Barack Obama to the presidency is a triumph for civil rights in America. Forty years after the race riots that ripped Chicago apart, men and women took to the streets again – this time, to applaud the victory of a black man.

At the same time, election night brought a setback for another minority in America.
Three states – Arizona, Florida and California – passed bans on same-sex marriage, saying legal union is only for heterosexual couples.

There are sincere arguments to be found on each side of the same-sex marriage debate.
Some say it's just the "M"-word that scares people, and that domestic partnership rights are close enough to the real deal.

But the bans are a sign Americans are still deeply divided on gay rights, even in states as blue as California.

In 1969, there was another riot called Stonewall. Thirty years later, gays and lesbians hope for their moment to return to the streets and cheer.

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

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Remember how the world was going to end depending upon which side in the same-sex marriage debate prevailed in court? Remember all the television coverage – all the shouting and whining – that surrounded the 2003 ruling in Massachusetts that legalized same-sex marriage? Remember the hullabaloo in 2004 caused by San Francisco’s mayor authorizing the issuance of thousands of same-sex marriage licenses until the city was forced to stop?

Well, guess what. The issue and the debate and the story haven’t gone away. All that is missing is the nation’s attention span.

While you were focusing earlier this week upon whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were successfully wooing super-delegates, or whether Mike Huckabee was finally going to come in from the cold on the Republican side, the California Supreme Court Tuesday heard oral argument for three hours in separate cases designed to flesh out the contours of the same-sex marriage debate.

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Wedding bells are in the air for Jenna Bush, but she's not stopping to smell the roses.

There's a rich tradition of White House Rose Garden wedding ceremonies, but Jenna has chosen to have her wedding at the Bush ranch in Crawford.

For more from my Notebook, click the monitor at left.

Is the institution of marriage in trouble? A report by the Census Bureau might make you wonder -- and that's the subject of today's Notebook.

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