it s also ground zero for american presidential politics. do you have any idea which state votes first when it comes to picking a president? i have to be honest, i do not. i thought it was iowa. you re right. don t doubt yourself. iowa goes first because of a scheduling accident. in june 1972, hotel rooms were booked up in des moines when democrats would normally nominate a candidate so the process was just moved earlier. both parties liked being first so much they wrote it into state law. this year, iowa s caucus, february 1 that s why everywhere you look here, there are already presidential candidates. we had rand paul. we saw the trump bus. ben carson. iowa s slogans have included both life changing and fields of opportunity, but they don t hold up when it comes to presidential candidates. since iowa moved to first, only three nonincumbent candidates have won the caucus and the presidency. one thing iowa has done a great
you take a map of the united states and fold it in half this way and this way, and it s iowa. where else would you want to be besides in the middle of everything? reporter: how come iowa gets to go first? i have no idea, to be honest. reporter: you want to know? i would love to. reporter: iowa goes first because of a scheduling accident. in june 1972, hotel rooms were booked up in des moines when democrats would normally nominate a candidate so the process was just moved earlier. both parties like the idea of being first so much, they wrote it into state law. this year, iowans caucus, their version of a primary election, february 1st. that s why everywhere you look here, there are already presidential candidates. we had rand paul. the trump bus. carson. reporter: lot of pressure on iowa because you guys got to go first voting. you feel stressed about that? no. not at all. hopefully the rest of the nation follows that. reporter: iowa slogans have included both
of epic proportions. wolf blitzer is off today. i m candy crowley and you re in the situation room. all eyes on the supreme court and congress with a potentially historic day on tap tomorrow. one that could be especially bad for president obama. we re expecting the justices long awaited ruling on health care reform. the president s flagship issue in one that impacts virtually every american. at the same time, eric holder could become the first sitting u.s. attorney general ever held in contempt of congress. the planned house votes stems from accusations the justice department is withholding documents on a failed operation that put guns in the hands of mexican drug cartels. president obama and his staff are bracing for all the possibilities. cnn white house correspondent, dan lothian, has details. dan, what are you picking up there as they do sort of brace for two really important decisions tomorrow? reporter: they really do. and on health care they do still believe and
in june 1972, just three days after the watergate break-in? we know most of what they said because in the investigation of the watergate scandal the tapes from the oval office recording system were made public. most of them were. in the recordings that were made public there was an 18 1/2-minute gap. the president s secretary, rosemary woods, claimed she accidentally erased those 18 1/2 minutes one day when she just happened to hit the foot pedal on the tape recorder while stretching out to reach for her phone. for 18 1/2 minutes. yeah, i don t buy that one either. so far nobody has been able to recover the sound from that gap, that 18 1/2-minute gap in those erased tapes. but back if november 2009 the national archives got a tip from an amateur historian that there were also some pages missing, some pages missing from the careful, detailed notes that the chief of staff, bob haldeman, had taken during that meeting with nixon. notes written in ballpoint pen on a pad of yellow lined pape
members turned out to protest a deal between governor chris christies and democratic leaders to require state workers to cover more of the cost for health insurance and pensions. and high-tech forensic work has failed to solve a puzzle from the watergate scandal. scientists hired by the national archives have been examining two pages of notes from a june 1972 white house meeting between former president nixon and h.r. haldeman and they are looking for clues for what was said in a 8 1/2-minute gap in the recording and they said today that the effort unfortunately did not unravel that mystery. martin, back to you. and the mystery continues. page. and our next colonel jack jacobs returns to a spot where as a young man he earned his nation s highest honor. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans,