State of the Union Address Tonight at 9pm

Posted January 24, 2012, 7:30 a.m.

President Barack Obama (D) is scheduled to give the annual State of the Union address tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST before a joint session of Congress. The address will be followed by a Republican Response to be delivered by Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN).

As I do every year, I encourage all of my readers to watch both the State of the Union address and the opposition response. I recommend the unfettered and uninterrupted coverage from C-SPAN, but the addresses will also be available on most broadcast channels and cable news networks.

The Constitution requires that the president report to Congress annually on the state of the union, but does not specify the method or form of this report (Article II, Section 3). The in-person State of the Union address has been a tradition since 1913. Transcripts of all 1945-2011 addresses before joint sessions of Congress, including each State of the Union, are available from C-SPAN.

Off on a Tangent will not be providing a live blog of this year’s addresses (due to a scheduling conflict), however I will post a review some time in the following days.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Among us there is no place for the lukewarm. Humble yourself, and Christ will kindle in you again the fire of love.

Josemaría Escrivá

You might think a topic is too complicated to master for your use, but you might learn otherwise in less than a minute if you bother to check.

Scott Adams

There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. . . .

Holy Bible

In recent years a false compassion has developed among some who hold that suffering is incompatible with human dignity. Clearly this is at odds with the Christian faith, which sees in suffering a redemptive and transformative dimension.

Charles Pope

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen’s constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters in his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

William O. Douglas

If science is to progress and to benefit the human race, it must return to the protective mantle that Christian thought provided it when it was born.

Stacy Trasancos

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.

Hannah Arendt

One thing a computer can do that most humans can’t is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse.

Jack Handey

The nation [without a free press] ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and . . . compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Do what we can and God will do the rest. What seems so impossible to nature is quite easy to grace.

Elizabeth Ann Seton

If the Constitution, intelligently and reasonably construed, stands in the way of desirable legislation, the blame must rest upon that instrument, and not upon the court for enforcing it according to its terms. The remedy in that situation—and the only true remedy—is to amend the Constitution.

George Sutherland

A constitution is a compact of a people with their rulers; if the rulers break the compact, the people have a right and ought to remove them and do themselves justice.

Anonymous

Science is not a monolithic body of doctrine. Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing.

Freeman Dyson

Experience says it must be and love says let it be.

Elizabeth Ann Seton

Said he, ‘We never fight the people we trade with.’ I thought to myself, ‘Well, we certainly had to fight Japan in spite of all the oil and scrap iron we sold her just before World War II.’ It did not seem possible that this famous international banker would have forgotten such an elementary lesson so quickly.

W. Cleon Skousen

Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

G.K. Chesterton

It is a mistake to aim at an unattainable precision. It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.

Carveth Read

We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think there is always a need in any struggle for sensationalists. They get the headlines, they get the ear of the public, they take the race horse chances.

Maya Angelou

For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. . . .

Paul the Apostle