We figured out where the photos of Katie Couric shaking her lovely lady humps were taken: at the after-party celebrating her debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News. That was the best possible answer.

That's right: Immediately after shaking up the journalistic establishment by filling Dan Rather's seat at the anchor desk, Couric went out to the rooftop of the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and shook something else. Words can't express how happy it makes us to know that Couric celebrated her arrival on on television journalism's hallowed throne by taking to the dance floor and letting the DJ save her life.

UPDATE: Couric's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik writes, "Katie had a good time dancing with her daughters—they choreographed the dance and had fun doing it." They also put it on Facebook—the photos came to us from a tipster via the Facebook page of Ellie Monahan, Couric's 18-year-old daughter, who can be seen here and here showing mommy how to throw down.

Several tipsters reported to us that the photos were taken at the after-party for her first night on the air, held on the rooftop of Manhattan's Hudson Hotel on September 5, 2006. Indeed, the New York Post reported at the time that "after the broadcast, Couric retreated to the Hudson Hotel for a party with 150 friends who had gathered there to watch the CBS Evening News."

Here's some more evidence that the photos came from that party:

This is a screenshot of her historic broadcast, in which she seems to be wearing the same grey top and black skirt she has on in the dancing photos under a white blazer. Her choice of attire received much attention in the reviews next day, as critics picked over whether she had shown too much sex appeal. For example, here's the Boston Herald:

She's got great legs and CBS knows how to use them - but women scholars are divided on whether Katie Couric should keep her sexy stems behind the anchor desk.

Wearing stilettos and a skirt, Couric's toned and taut legs made their first appearance before the first commercial break Tuesday evening during Couric's CBS Evening News debut.

This photograph was taken as Couric left the CBS News studios after her first broadcast. As you can see, she's wearing that she is wearing the same outfit, the same watch and, if you look closely at photo No. 3, the same stiletto heels.

And here's a shot (inset) of the Hudson's rooftop party space, which features the same ivy and floor pattern that can be seen behind Couric's gyrating rear-end in the party photos. You can also see in some of the party photos the mounted wide-screen televisions that Couric's friends watched the newscast on.

So that settles it for us. What makes these photos so wonderfully appropriate is that in the days after Couric became the Face of CBS News and everyone was ginning up an opinion about what her ascendance to news anchor meant for our sexual politics and the culture of journalism, she was unleashing those legs and letting them do their thing.