Union Address

Members of Maryland's congressional delegation endorsed the president's call Tuesday night to work across party lines to improve education, facilitate innovation and reduce the deficit. "Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress — Democrats and Republicans — to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future," Obama said in his State of the Union address before the 112th Congress, with House Speaker John Boehner and Vice President Joe Biden behind him. "He challenged all of us to come together as Americans," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Baltimore County Democrat, mentioning how the president opened his speech talking about the need for a bipartisan effort following the shootings in Tucson, which kept Rep. Gabrielle Giffords from attending the speech.

Paul Dickson, a Garrett Park resident, loves the origins of words and is a compiler of word books and dictionaries. So imagine my delight and pleasure when my friend, Mary Garson, who is also fascinated with etymology, gave me a copy of Dickson's recently published book, "Words from the White House," a dictionary of presidential utterances that have become a part of the American vernacular. The next time you use "iffy," you might be surprised to learn that the word goes back to the New Deal.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, fellow citizens:  Fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this Chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress…It is my task,” he said, “to report the State of the Union - to improve it is the task of us all.”  Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report.  After a decade...

One of the great things about American politics is its capacity for punishing hubris. For the ancient Greeks, hubris didn't merely describe god-like arrogance. It was a crime, usually defined as taking too much pleasure in the humiliation of your foes. In its modern usage it usually means the pride that comes before the fall. In the wake of Barack Obama's State of the Union address, both connotations seem at least a little apt. We are well into our fourth month of epidemic thumb-suckery over the question, "Are the Republicans doomed?"

North County High School student Jack Andraka was slated to be a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday night at the State of the Union address in Washington. Jack Andraka, of Crownsville, was invited to sit in the box with the First Lady and also Dr. Jill Biden during President Barack Obama's address at the U.S. Capitol, according to a release from the White House. In 2012 Andraka, a sophomore at North County, was awarded first place in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his discovery of a method to detect pancreatic cancer.

One hundred and thirteen years had elapsed since the last oral State of the Union address when President Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress in 1913, reviving a tradition that began with George Washington in 1790. The last president to do so before Wilson was John Adams, who read his 1,372-word State of the Union message before members of both houses of Congress in 1800. From 1801 until the administration of President William Howard Taft, State of the Union addresses were written and sent to congressional members by messenger for reading at their leisure.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will stand before the Congress and the nation tonight, sharing his views about the state of a union gripped by recession and embroiled in war.He is expected to dedicate most of his annual State of the Union address to a discussion of the latter, spending the rest of his time trying to ease the public's fear by minimizing the significance of the former.Beyond that, White House officials indicated that tonight's speech would be long on generalities and short on explicit prescriptions for the nation's economic ills.

When President Clinton strides toward the podium tonight to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress and the country, don't be surprised if he gives a great speech.He always does. Especially when he's under pressure.In February 1993, after a shaky start as president, he spent an entire day rewriting his address to a joint session of Congress presenting his economic plan -- and, then, he improvised, anyway.Seven months later, his TelePrompTer displayed the wrong speech when he presented his health-reform plan to another joint session.

PRESIDENT Clinton should deliver the State of the Union address to Congress on time Jan. 19. If members are too embarrassed to invite Mr. Clinton to the Capitol, he can send it on paper as did 19th century presidents. Then there's nothing to stop him from addressing the American public on television.The worst idea yet came from senators of both parties who said Mr. Clinton should delay his speech, so as not to mingle with them while under impeachment.Nonsense. President Clinton has been good about carrying out duties while under a cloud.

PRESIDENT CLINTON's State of the Union address tonight, and the reception it is likely to receive from Republicans, may usher in an era of political accommodation unlike anything Washington has seen since Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn made it their business to get along in the 1950s. If this is so, if the harsh partisanship of the Clinton first term is behind us, chalk it up to the collective wisdom of the American people.Even before voters went to the polls last November to elect a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, they had made it clear that their preference for divided government did not mean they were in favor of deadlock, shutdown and ideological shouting matches.

The first State of the Union address of President Barack Obama's second term offered a list of new initiatives if not new ideas. Mr. Obama focused on improving the economic lot of the middle class, reforming the nation's immigration system, addressing climate change and finding a balanced approach to solving our budget problems. Aside from gun control - an issue thrust on the president's agenda by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre - and a new, ominous nuclear test in North Korea, all of the themes from the speech could have had a home in any of President Obama's previous State of the Union addresses.

President Barack Obama used the first State of the Union address of his second term to try to breathe new life into his economic agenda, reviving modest measures to spur growth and trying to create fresh momentum in the all-but-stagnant talks over deficit reduction. Entering his fifth year presiding over a flagging economy, the president on Tuesday declared the restoration of a strong middle class "our unfinished task" and called on a deeply divided Congress to find "reasonable compromise" to solve the nation's lingering fiscal ills.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, fellow citizens:  Fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this Chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress…It is my task,” he said, “to report the State of the Union - to improve it is the task of us all.”  Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report.  After a decade...

North County High School student Jack Andraka was slated to be a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday night at the State of the Union address in Washington. Jack Andraka, of Crownsville, was invited to sit in the box with the First Lady and also Dr. Jill Biden during President Barack Obama's address at the U.S. Capitol, according to a release from the White House. In 2012 Andraka, a sophomore at North County, was awarded first place in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his discovery of a method to detect pancreatic cancer.

News Roundup •••• Adam Sessler, host of G4TV's gaming flagship “X-Play,” has left the network and the long-running show. Sessler was a fixture on the network's previous incarnations, ZDTV and TechTV, having co-hosted “X-Play” with Morgan Webb for nearly a decade. [ Kotaku ] •••• A new study has found that playing “Tetris” can ease the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It can also get you kicked out of math class if you play it too conspicuously on your TI-86 calculator.

Summertime is usually when TV networks air repeats of shows we've already seen. In his State of the Union Address this week, the president got a five-month jump on the summer season by re-running a class-envy video he has broadcast more times than local stations have shown episodes of "The Andy GriffithShow. " Instead of a credible assessment of the state of the union, which is not good, the president delivered a slightly toned-down campaign speech. We heard more of the same about how "the rich" aren't paying their "fair share" in taxes.

WASHINGTON -- Maryland's congressional delegation, for the most part, responded positively to President Clinton's State of the Union address last night. Which wasn't too surprising since 8 of its 12 members are Democrats.But the reaction to Mr. Clinton's blueprint for the future of his administration -- his pledges of new tax cuts, continued reduction of the deficit and the federal work force, his call for more bipartisanship -- did not cleave to the lines drawn through the state by political parties.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has exhorted the new Republican Congress to put aside "partisanship, pettiness and pride" and rekindle a public spirit of community and civic virtue."

President Barack Obama gave a great State of the Union Address, full of hope for future greatness and fairness ("State of the campaign," Jan. 25). Truly, the president is a giant in a field of Pygmies. Jack Kinstlinger, Baltimore

Was that a State of the Union address or was it President Barack Obama's first big campaign speech of 2012? It certainly sounded like the latter, but given the state of Washington, what else could we expect? His opening lines, a tribute to the soldiers who returned home from Iraq, was a reminder of a promise kept from his first campaign - and it was followed by a reference to the killing of Osama bin Laden under his watch, and that by a dig at how little has been accomplished by a deeply divided Congress.