All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Harry Smith is co-anchor of The Early Show. This piece appeared on the CBS Evening News.

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Man did Tim Russert love politics.

He ate it, lived it and breathed it. His knowledge of it was organic, internal and genetic. It showed in his every broadcast, in his every debate appearance.

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Tracy Smith is a CBS News correspondent based in New York. She's been reporting on human trafficking for The Early Show -- and continues her investigation on tonight's CBS Evening News. -- Ed.

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I have to admit that before producer Kim Kennedy and I started working on this series, I didn't give much thought to the problem of human trafficking. The Klaas Kids Foundation for missing children calls human trafficking America's "new dirty little secret."

But to me, it seemed like one of those crimes I could distance myself from. Tragic, yes, but far removed from my life here in the United States. It was something that happened overseas, but not here, not in my community, not to U.S. citizens, not to American children.

But when I met Tyamba, all of those assumptions were shattered. Here was a good kid, an American girl with a mom who adores her, who somehow got drawn into the very real world of human trafficking, just miles from where I live.

It started as an all-too-familiar story: Tyamba, a promising, gifted child, started hanging out with the wrong crowd, and ended up running away from home. She met a seemingly kind stranger who promised to take care of her, and ended up forcing her to do things no 13-year-old girl should ever have to contemplate. And as Tyamba was casually traded from pimp to pimp, her mother, who never gave up looking for her, finally tracked her down.

Tyamba is home safe now, still haunted by those months in captivity. As I told her and her mother, no one would blame them if they never wanted to speak of that horrible period in their lives ever again. But instead, they're determined to discuss it, and to wake up people like me, who had no idea that human trafficking could hit so close to home. I'm grateful, and somewhat amazed, by their strength. Tyamba has even told her story to other kids in school.

And there are so many other Tyambas out there...

To read more, continue to The Early Show website.

Tracy Smith is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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I was in Des Moines, Iowa for some political stories when the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed and, like most everyone, I first saw those horrible pictures on TV. A producer, crew and I got in our cars and started driving, and made it there just a little before 1 am Minneapolis time. That night was spent interviewing witnesses, talking to families who were waiting for word on missing loved ones. It seemed everyone we spoke to was grieving or in shock.

Then yesterday I met Martha Roberson. She had all those same emotions in the hours after the collapse. She told me she honestly thought she'd lost her two granddaughters forever.

But by some twist of fate, and with the help of some courageous friends and strangers, Martha was one of the lucky ones. Her granddaughters were on the bus that had just crossed the bridge when it collapsed. The girls -- Samara, who's 6, and 4-year-old Josette -- had a few bumps, but were OK. All of the 61 people on that bus, full of summer campers headed back from a trip to a waterpark, survived.

Jeremy Hernandez, one of the camp counselors who'd helped get the kids to safety was wondering aloud yesterday, trying to figure out not just how but why they narrowly escaped. "Lucky" was how he described it. Another survivor I talked to, Gary Babineau, was also wrestling with that. "I guess it just wasn't my time," he said. He's about to become a new dad: his baby's due in 2 weeks.

I can't explain it. But I sure am grateful I got to tell those stories too.

Tracy Smith is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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The first time I went to Yellowstone was in the mid-90's, for a story on how the federal government was bringing wolves back to the park. I found out then that you don't have to be Little Red Riding Hood to have a strong opinion about wolves. Maybe it's because the wolf is the classic fairy tale villain. He didn't just dress up like grandmama, he also threatened to do unsolicited gut renovations to the homes of the three little pigs. A lot of the ranchers around Yellowstone, who've lost their livestock to wolves, see them that way: as sneaky, vicious killers.

But despite that rep, the wolf is also one of the most common animals honored in art. At the park, I met people who said they were actually spiritually moved by seeing wolves.

I saw wolves when I visited this last time, for a story on how they're poised to come off the endangered species list. With a high-powered scope (all the better to see you with, my dear), I watched a pack of them stalk some bison. I have to admit my elation came more from wanting to get shots of them for our story than from any sort of spiritual awakening.

They did draw a crowd, though. And perhaps more importantly, biologists say that, as predators, wolves have straightened out the park's ecology. So, as even the ranchers told me, wolves are likely here to stay. Now that they're losing federal protections, the trick for states is figuring out how to keep the wolf population strong...but away from the ranchers' door.

Let's hope there can still be a fairy tale ending.

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

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I am dreaming. And in my dream all the poor souls who were covering the Anna Nicole Smith body-disposition hearing instead had been told by their far-sighted and enlightened bosses to travel a tiny way further south along Interstate 95 to cover instead the competency hearing for Jose Padilla, the alleged terror conspirator. In my dream, the millions of people who wasted their lives this week following the saga of the former stripper were instead transfixed by the in-court drama unfolding in Miami, where government agents were finally being forced to disclose some of the ways in which they treat terror suspects—even U.S. citizens.

In my dream, all the cable television channels showed continuous updates of the proceedings in Miami and those proceedings, despite being in federal court, were televised to the world. Instead of the jackass of a judge presiding over the Smith hearing in state court in Broward County, millions of people instead followed the decorous proceedings inside the austere courtroom of U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who has bravely refused to be intimidated by the Justice Department into steamrolling Padilla into a conviction. Instead of our legal system earning scorn it earned respect; instead of it being turned into a circus, it turned itself into a cathedral of fairness and justice...

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

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I hope you were doing something else today while a Florida judge conducted a hearing to determine the disposition of Anna Nicole Smith’s body. Florida Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin in the span of a few hours made the infamously pathetic Lance Ito, the O.J. Simpson judge, look like the great Oliver Wendell Holmes. But, truly, should we be surprised that a sordid story that begat a sordid case would be determined by a sordid hearing the details of which ought to shock the conscience of every serious judge and lawyer in the country?

Me? Alas, I was watching Judge Seidlin live from Fort Lauderdale as he failed repeatedly and grandly and with great style to control the lawyers—lord, there were so many lawyers!—before him in a crowded courtroom. His job was a fairly simple one: he was charged with sorting out who as a matter of law ought to have custody of Smith’s body so that it can be buried or disposed of in some way. Smith’s mother wants to bring the body back to Texas. Smith’s sorta hubby Howard K. Stern wants her buried down in the Bahamas. And complicating the matter is the fact that several parties wanted Smith’s body to be again swabbed for D.N.A. in order to help with the next chapter of this silliness- who gets custody of Smith’s little girl.

If you missed Seidlin’s performance, and the performance of the herd of lawyers before him, I can barely do it justice here. He thought he was being funny but wasn’t. The lawyers talked over one another as if they were performing in a Broadway musical. They raised their voices to the judge and to one another and at one point it almost seemed like the judge was flirting—to be fair let’s call it kibitzing—with one of the attorneys. Trust me, folks. This is not what the vast majority of hearings look and feel like. Trust me, folks. This is the exception that proves the rule. Our justice system is much, much better than what you may have seen down in south Florida today.

Do I know what Judge Seidlin was thinking as he conducted himself so carelessly and disrespectfully in a matter involving the disposition of a body? Do I know why he allowed the lawyers to shout at him and each other? Do I know why some judges and lawyers seem to lose their minds when they know the cameras are rolling and the world is watching? Do I know why he made complicated what ought to have been easy? Of course I don’t. All I know is that whatever Anna Nicole Smith was or was not in life she deserved more than this catty, miserable spectacle in death.

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

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Apart from leaving a sorry legacy of conflict, ridicule, scorn, lust and misery, Anna Nicole Smith leaves to posterity one other thing: a Byzantine set of legal conflicts that will probably take years to untangle. In fact, if judges and lawyers ever get together to write a book about how not to handle probate, estate and child custody issues, they will probably use the Anna Nicole Smith story as the backbone for the story.

There are so many unresolved legal issues it is hard to know where to begin, or to end, and besides, by the time you read this some of those issues already may be resolved. So instead of focusing upon the things that Smith and Company did wrong, or upon the hundred or so possible scenarios that could play out over the next few years, I thought I would humbly offer a few suggestions on what other families, other couples, can try to do right when it comes to maneuvering through the shoals of family law...

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I still don’t get it. Why the frenzied, breathless, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it news coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith?

Two days after I questioned the inexplicable, disproportionate magnitude of coverage of the arrested astronaut, came the overblown wall-to-wall treatment of Anna Nicole’s death.

Did she cure cancer when I wasn’t looking?

Had she negotiated peace in the Middle East?

Tell me what about her death warranted the coverage given her on the so-called all-news cable channels?

Did the death of Mother Teresa get this treatment? I don’t think so.

I say I don’t get it, but of course, I do. It’s show biz. It’s pandering for an audience.

But it has less to do with journalism than with drawing a crowd. And that’s a decision made by the executives who run those news channels. They scrubbed all other stories, cancelled commercial breaks, and ordered non-stop coverage of Anna Nicole.

I’ll stipulate that she was a celebrity – of sorts. And her life has been a soap opera on high heels. And her death is news – of sorts. And part of the news audience would be interested to learn about it. And it should be reported.

But the level of coverage accorded her death was – to say the least – over-the-top.

Of course I understand what’s going on. But I know I’m not alone in deeming it an embarassment and in stating it does not reflect the reasons many of us got into the news business.