[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by mg1942

ok... I heard someone messed up; who is it???

Chief Justice John Roberts misremembered the Oath of Office. It took a moment for he and Obama to agree on what the President-elect was supposed to say.

The Oath isn't just some text that was legislated or has been handed down over the years. The specific text appears in Article II, Section I, of the Constitution itself. During the deliberations over the Constitution, the words "to the best of my Ability" replaced the phrase "to the best of my Judgement" because the Framers wanted to enforce the notion that the President is bound by law, not that he or she may use "Judgement" to decide what's best.

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

After all the anticipation, I must say I'm slightly disappointed by Obama's inaugural speech as the 44th President of the United States — it felt too dry, too rehearsed, not as monumental nor as uplifting as his convention speech had been.

I thought it was a rather B+ speech. It lacked the soaring rhetoric of some of Obama's best performances (2004 Democratic Convention, 2008 Philadelphia), but it also conveyed the serious business that faces our nation and, indeed, the world. I thought one of the best parts of the speech was his warnings about America's willingness to resist coercion by foreign extremists. This section probably resounded well among people who cast votes for his opponent, not to mention the military over whom he is now Commander-in-Chief.

The other major strain in this speech was his implicit rejection of the Administration whose President sat just to Obama's left. What other conclusion can we draw from lines like, "But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

Originally Posted by Narona

Random stuff: The song that was sung by Aretha Franklin reminded me God save the Queen.

That's because we stole the melody for "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" from the Brits. Our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was originally a British drinking song.

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Why are Americans so excited?

Originally Posted by klowny

It sounds like a national holiday, maybe they are just happy that Bush is not president anymore.

For those of us who can still remember dogs and firehoses being used to thwart efforts at racial integration in the 1950's and 1960's, the idea that we could be installing an African-American as President of the United States forty years or so after the Civil Rights Act is just mind-boggling. It's hard even for young Americans today, who live in a much less racially-polarized world than the one I grew up in, to understand what an enormous accomplishment this event represents. I'm not especially "patriotic" in the rah-rah sense, and I recognize that my country has a lot of faults, but it's hard not to be proud of America today.

I happily waved good-bye to George when the helicopter went up, too, but that's hardly the most important aspect of today's events. Oh, and Bush didn't end up issuing any last-minute pardons for his cronies either (though he commuted Libby's sentence). I give him credit for that.