Remember the stirring words from Barack Obama?s State of the Union address last year?
Liar. Hardly anybody remembers SOTUs (as the press calls them), including, perhaps, the presidents themselves.
Continue ReadingNot that they are casual affairs. The White House is thrown into a state of frenzy ? more so than usual, that is ? before SOTUs, because every branch, department and niche in the vast executive branch wants to add something to the final speech.
Yet Obama?s last address is not remembered much for its soaring rhetoric, though it did contain some: ?The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it?s because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong.?
Instead, if it is remembered at all, it is for its seating chart.
Because of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in Tucson on Jan. 8, a moderate think tank urged members of Congress to abandon the usual divided-by-party seating and all sit together. And about 60 members did commingle.
Noticeable by their absence, however, were three members of the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who were boycotting apparently because Obama had criticized the court ? a rarity ? in his SOTU the previous year.
?Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests ? including foreign corporations ? to spend without limit in our elections,? Obama said, as the black-robed justices looked on uncomfortably from their front-row seats and Alito was caught by the cameras mouthing the words ?not true.?
It is not known who will boycott this year, as not even Obama really has to be there.
The Constitution requires only that the president ?from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.?
George Washington delivered his SOTUs in person and decided ?from time to time? meant once each year. But Thomas Jefferson, our third president, was not a good orator, tended to mumble ? his first inaugural address was inaudible except to those in the front rows ? hated pomp and decided that a president addressing Congress was too much like the British monarch addressing the opening of new parliaments.
So Jefferson wrote out his SOTUs and sent them to Capitol Hill for a clerk to read aloud.
carrie steve wozniak steve wozniak legarrette blount pharrell pharrell silver bullet
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