The State of the Union address is a stuffy affair to watch — unless one is lucky enough to be sitting in the gallery (which I did one year when Bill Clinton was President).

State of the Union Excerpts — 28 January 2008 President George W. Bush — The White House As Prepared for Delivery “The actions of the 110th Congress will affect the security and prosperity of our Nation long after this session has ended.

I went off of my computer for just a day and a half while up in Montreal — and tons of stuff breaks, including Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama. This is quite significant but for reasons that may not seem as obvious as the press is promoting.

Mark Goldberg and I had a chat about the Law of the Sea Convention and treaty politics in general over at Bloggingheads. There are lots of moving parts right now regarding the Law of the Sea, some of which I hope to report on later.

photo illustration by Kevin Van Aelst; reprinted with permission from the New York Times My New America Foundation colleague Parag Khanna has a vital article out today in the New York Times Magazine titled “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony.

The only thing I can tell definitively after the South Carolina Democratic primary is that John Edwards is out, but I thought that before. But not winning in the state of his birth pretty much seals the deal that Edwards will not live in the White House, at least not next year.

My friend and New America Foundation colleague Peter Bergen will always be remembered as the guy who found Osama bin Laden and arranged a famous CNN interview of him when the CIA couldn’t find him.

I’m off to Montreal today to check in with McGill University’s big Model UN exercise for students from around the United States and Canada. Will comment on South Carolina later.

One of the more amusing twists in the Obama-Clinton battle at the moment is how they are both trying to campaign in Florida without technically doing so. While watching the Democratic debates the other night in South Carolina from Washington, DC, I saw my first Obama TV ads.

There’s a story that would be less disturbing if not true that George H.W. Bush asked a number of close advisers to send him their lists of who should be on his ticket as VP. Dan Quayle — for whom Bill Kristol was chief of staff — was No. 2 on most of these lists….