Nothing actually happened in the news last night, but there was a speech by a guy who likes to make them in lieu of actually governing. A lot of people watched it for whatever reason. The State of the Union address hasn't been a serious exercise in governance for a long time - if it ever was. The Constitution mandates that the president must from time to time report to Congress on the state of the union. It doesn't mandate that he do it in a big made-for-TV political ad for himself. But that's what it's turned into, and in fairness to Barack Obama, this happened long before he arrived on the scene.
