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The Pledge: Grover Norquist's hold on the GOP

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft - Nov. 22 (Special Report) - As head of Americans for Tax Reform since 1986, Grover Norquist has transformed a single issue - preventing tax hikes - into one of the key platforms of the Republican Party. As Steve Kroft reports, his biggest coup was getting more than 270 members of Congress, and nearly all of the 2012 Republican presidential primary candidates, to sign a pledge promising never to vote to raise taxes. But some opponents say the pledge may be hindering a solution to America's debt crisis.

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Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Sun, 16 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

60 Minutes - By Scott Pelley - May. 16 (Investigative Report) - The gusher unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew crude oil. There are no reliable estimates of how much oil is pouring into the gulf. But it comes to many millions of gallons since the catastrophic blowout. Eleven men were killed in the explosions that sank one of the most sophisticated drilling rigs in the world, the "Deepwater Horizon." This week Congress continues its investigation, but Capitol Hill has not heard from the man "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley met: Mike Williams, one of the last crewmembers to escape the inferno.

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The All-American Canal

Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - By Scott Pelley - May. 02 (Special Report) - The most dangerous body of water in the U.S. is a deep canal on the Mexican border with California where over 550 people, mostly illegal immigrants, have drowned.

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The Tragedy of Haiti

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Byron Pitts - Jan. 17 (Special Report) - Five days after the earthquake in Haiti, the enormity of the bare numbers seems too much to comprehend. Some 140,000 lie dead -- tens of thousands of bodies are still entombed beneath the rubble. And an ever-dwindling handful of survivors lie with them, trapped alive, awaiting either rescue or death. In Port-Au-Prince, 300,000 citizens have no home but the streets. More than three-and-a-half million Haitians, according to the Red Cross, find their lives turned inside out by the quake and its aftermath.

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Drones: America's New Air Force

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

60 Minutes - By Lara Logan - May. 10 (Special Report) - Every so often in the history of war, a new weapon comes along that fundamentally rewrites the rules of battle. This is a story about a revolution in unmanned aviation that is doing just that.

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Cold Fusion Is Hot Again

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

60 Minutes - By Scott Pelley - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - Twenty years ago it appeared, for a moment, that all our energy problems could be solved. It was the announcement of cold fusion - nuclear energy like that which powers the sun - but at room temperature on a table top. It promised to be cheap, limitless and clean. Cold fusion would end our dependence on the Middle East and stop those greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It would change everything. But then, just as quickly as it was announced, it was discredited. So thoroughly, that cold fusion became a catch phrase for junk science. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion - for many scientists today, cold fusion is hot again.

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Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

60 Minutes - By Scott Pelley, Ben Bernanke - Mar. 16 (Special Report) - In a rare interview with a sitting Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke tells Scott Pelley what went wrong with America's financial system, how it caused the economic crisis, what the Fed is doing to help fix it and when he expects the recession to end.

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Could "Buy American" Rule Spark Trade War?

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - Feb. 13 (Special Report) - Steel - the so called "backbone of America" - is suffering. The credit crisis has hit the industry hard. Steel plants across the country are hanging on until the new stimulus package kicks in with its over $100 billion for building things like highways, bridges, and power grids, and its promise to get workers back into their hard hats. The package Congress passed this week includes a "buy American" clause that the steel industry fought hard for. It says any infrastructure project paid for with stimulus dollars must use steel made in the U.S.A., and not cheaper imports.

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Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Bob Simon - Jan. 25 (Investigative Report) - (VIDEO - 13:09) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state. It’s known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.

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Economic Storm Batters Ohio Town

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Scott Pelley - Jan. 25 (Special Report) - (VIDEO - 13:23) When President Obama spoke of "the winter of our hardship" in his inaugural address, no one in America understood that better than the folks 60 Minutes met in Wilmington, Ohio. They're people in the grip of a brutal series of layoffs at DHL, the shipping company. Their experience was part of the news this past week that new claims for unemployment benefits are the highest in 26 years. Since the economic crash of 2008, taxpayers have committed to more than $1 trillion in various bailouts of Wall Street. But not much of that is reaching families in crisis. On kitchen tables, headlines from Washington and New York lie beside unpaid tuition bills and foreclosure notices. After all the speeches and parties of Inauguration Day, what were the families in Wilmington asking?

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A Second Mortgage Disaster On The Horizon?

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - Dec. 12 (Special Report) - The trouble now is that the insanity didn't end with sub-primes. There were two other kinds of exotic mortgages that became popular, called "Alt-A" and "option ARM." The option ARMs, in particular, lured borrowers in with low initial interest rates - so-called teaser rates - sometimes as low as one percent. But after two, three or five years those rates "reset." They went up. And so did the monthly payment. A mortgage of $800 dollars a month could easily jump to $1,500. Now the Alt-A and option ARM loans made back in the heyday are starting to reset, causing the mortgage payments to go up and homeowners to default.

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Obama On Economic Crisis, Transition, Also Discusses National Security, Iraq, And His Cabinet

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft - Nov. 17 (Interview) - Since Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States 12 days ago, he has largely remained out of sight, getting high-level government briefings and conferring with his transition team. But he surfaced on Friday afternoon in Chicago, alongside his wife Michelle to give 60 Minutes his first post-election interview.

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Obama's Inner Circle Shares Inside Story

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, Anita Dunn - Nov. 10 (Special Report) - (VIDEO - 13:14) When Barack Obama began thinking of running for president two years ago, he turned to a small inner circle of political advisors from his 2004 Senate campaign. Like Obama, they were talented, laid back and idealistic with limited exposure on the national stage. But with the candidate's help, they orchestrated what some consider one of the most improbable and effective campaigns in American political history. They took a little-known senator with a foreign sounding name and almost no national experience and got him elected as the 44th president of the United States. They did it by recruiting and vesting millions of volunteers in the outcome, by raising more money than any campaign in history, and by largely ignoring that their candidate happed to be a black man.

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What's Wrong With The Bees?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - honeybees are the unsung heroes of the food chain, crucial to the production of one third of the foods we eat. So when billions of bees began to mysteriously disappear last year, there was plenty of concern and no shortage of theories, blaming everything from cell phones to divine rapture. None of the usual explanations seemed to fit. Some of the nation's top scientists are trying to understand this phenomenon, but no one is more immersed in the mystery than the man who is widely credited with discovering it.

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Hillary Clinton's Run For The White House

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - Feb. 11 (Interview) - "... I have been active on behalf of a lot of controversial causes like universal healthcare, like a woman's right to choose for many, many years. And that is who I am," Clinton said. "Unity for the sake of unity is not my goal. I want to unify the country around meeting big goals like dealing with our energy crisis. I want to call the country to action around global warming. I want to set some, you know, really big vision that young people can buy into. That's the best way to unify the country."

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What If Every Child Had A Laptop?

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:13:19 -0800

CBS News - By Lesley Stahl - Dec. 04 (Special Report) - (VIDEO) There's a new laptop on the market that's being snapped up by parents looking for a unique holiday gift for their kids. It's only $200, and it isn't like any computer you've ever seen. But there's a catch: in order to buy one for your child, you also have to buy one for a child in a poor country. And that was the whole point behind these new laptops: to get them to kids in the most impoverished places, so they can become educated and part of the modern world. As correspondent Lesley Stahl first reported last spring, the laptop, called the XO, was the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at MIT. Two years ago he founded a non-profit organization called "One Laptop Per Child," through which he recruited a cadre of geeks to design a low-cost computer specifically for poor children. Negroponte had a dream, a big one: that every child on the planet have a laptop, and along with it, the possibility of a better future.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 60 Minutes

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:51:14 -0700

CBS News - By Scott Pelley - Sep. 24 (Interview) - (VIDEO) Scott Pelley interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Thursday. Ahmadinejad talks about his visit to New York, Iran's nuclear ambitions and his controversial views on Israel.

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Under The Influence - Drug Lobbyists' Role in Passing Bill That Keeps Drug Prices High

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:48:28 -0700

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft, Ira Rosen - Jul. 30 (Special Report) - If you have ever wondered why the cost of prescription drugs in the United States are the highest in the world or why it's illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico, you need look no further than the pharmaceutical lobby and its influence in Washington, D.C. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, congressmen are outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly $100 million a year in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits. One reason those profits have exceeded Wall Street expectations is the Medicare prescription drug bill. It was passed more than three-and-a-half years ago, but as 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft reports, its effects are still reverberating through the halls of Congress, providing a window into how the lobby works.

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The Mother Of All Heists

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:02:34 -0700

60 Minutes - By Steve Kroft - Oct. 23 (Special Report) - More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators. Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country. The 60 Minutes investigation also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports on this mother of all heists. "We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the U.K. or any of the surrounding Arab countries,”" says Ali Allawi, who was confronted with the missing funds when he took over as Iraq’s finance minister last year. He thinks he knows why Iraqi investigators have gotten little help. "The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar," says Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year. "And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority," he tells Kroft.

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Iranian Leader Opens Up , Ahmadinejad Speaks Candidly

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:43:49 -0700

CBS News - By Mike Wallace - Aug. 13 (Special Report) - When Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks out candidly — as is his habit — he scares a lot of people. He has said more than once that Israel should be wiped off the map, and that the Holocaust is an overblown fairytale. When correspondent Mike Wallace interviewed him in Tehran last week, it became apparent that he sees the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — a militia Iran has long supported — as part of a larger battle between the U.S. and a militant Islam for control of the Middle East.

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Working 24/7

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:02:00 -0700

CBS News - By Lesley Stahl - Jul. 23 (Special Report) - Americans work longer hours than nearly anyone in the developed world, even the Japanese. For many professionals and corporate managers, the 40-hour work week is history; 60- to 80-hour work weeks are now the norm.

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The Debate Over Plan B

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:35:17 -0700

CBS News - By Lesley Stahl - Jun. 11 (Special Report) - Did Religion Play Role In An FDA Decision? Did the Bush White House pressure the Food and Drug Administration to block the "Morning After Pill," known as Plan B, from being sold over-the-counter at your local drug store? That question is the focus of a hearing in federal court on June 13, where birth control advocates have sued the FDA to make the drug available without a prescription. Millions of women have used Plan B as an emergency contraceptive to prevent a pregnancy in situations like a condom break or a rape. Right now, it's only available by prescription, but because it must be taken within 72 hours, the drug's manufacturer asked FDA for permission to sell Plan B over-the-counter. That was three years ago. And, even though the drug is considered totally safe, the FDA has repeatedly postponed a decision, including taking no action since 60 Minutes aired this story in the Fall of 2005. Plan B's problems began when it was targeted by anti-abortion-rights groups and became part of a wider debate over whether religious beliefs are encroaching on scientific decision-making.

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Dying To Get In

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 03:18:29 -0700

CBS News - By Ed Bradley - Jun. 04 (News Report) - When it comes to illegal immigration, the leaders of both parties haven't found much to agree on – except for one thing. Just about everyone wants to spend billions of dollars to tighten the 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexican border. There is nothing new about this. Since 1993, the U.S. government has tripled the budget for border control, spending a small fortune on fences, high-tech surveillance equipment – not to mention thousands of additional border patrol agents. All of this was supposed to make it harder for illegal immigrants to cross over in cities and towns along the border. And it did.

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Healing The Wounds Of War

Sun, 28 May 2006 03:20:09 -0700

CBS News - By Mike Wallace - May. 28 (News Report) - 60 Minutes takes another look at some young men and women — soldiers — who were severely wounded in action in Iraq. Most fell victim to roadside bombs, those lethal IEDs that battered their brains or blew off their arms and legs. As Mike Wallace reports, many of them would have died in earlier wars. But they survived in Iraq thanks to better battlefield medicine. They also survived because of their remarkable resilience — their inner strength and determination to make the most of a future that's not at all what they'd expected when they signed up.

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The Ethanol Solution

Sun, 07 May 2006 03:22:16 -0700

CBS News - By Dan Rather - May. 07 (Special Report) - Could Corn-Based Fuel Help End America's Dependence On Imported Oil? Gas prices are passing $3 a gallon and climbing, oil companies are making record profits and there is serious concern about this country’s dependence on foreign oil. Those things have sparked a lot of talk about using something else, instead of oil, to fuel our cars. As correspondent Dan Rather reports, Brazil faced similar problems and already has solved most of them. Instead of gasoline, many Brazilians are using ethanol – which can be made from plants into a kind of alcohol – to power their cars. It’s cheaper and cleaner. As a result, Brazil has virtually stopped importing expensive foreign oil.

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