Four Supreme Court justices donned their robes to attend this year's State of the Union, but only one among them could boast a perfect attendance record during the Bush presidency.
Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton and a one-time aide to Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been in the House of Representatives for all seven of Bush's State of the Union speeches.
On three occasions he was the only justice to cross the street from the court to the Capitol. In addition, Breyer also was the only justice at Bush's first speech to Congress in 2001, a couple months after the justices voted 5-4 to stop Florida's ballot recount and ensure Bush's presidency. Breyer had opposed halting the recount.
Breyer was joined Monday by Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy.
Roberts and Alito, Bush's two court appointees, have attended all three speeches since joining the court.
The last time Breyer missed the State of the Union was in 2000, in Clinton's last year in office. He had the flu.
That speech was the only time in recent memory when no justice was present, other than in 1986, when the speech was rescheduled because of the explosion of the Challenger shuttle.
Justices typically have said little about why they do or don't attend the speech. One exception is Justice Antonin Scalia, who hasn't gone in at least nine years.
Scalia, commenting in 2000, said the speech has become increasingly partisan — a potential problem for justices who customarily refrain from applauding anything even remotely political.
"One side will clap for this, and then the other side will clap for that," Scalia said. "And you know, we sit there like bumps on a log."
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Put the second woman on the Supreme Court together with the first woman on Great Britain's highest court and what do you get? A conversation about bathrooms, of course.
"Everybody's got a bathroom story, haven't they?" said Lady Brenda Hale, the first woman Law Lord, at a recent forum at Georgetown University's law school with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ginsburg recalled that when she joined the court in 1993, court workers altered the woman's bathroom adjacent to the room where the justices put on their robes to make it as large as the men's room. But it took a letter from advice columnist Dear Abby to get the court to change its tradition and open public women's bathrooms before 9 a.m., she said.
Sandra Day O'Connor, named to the Supreme Court in 1981, "had taken care of most of the irrationalities before I got there," Ginsburg said.
Hale told her own tale of being informed there was no women's restroom at the Privy Council, the final appeals court for the British empire.
The trailblazing judges also discussed recent changes in England that include renaming the high court the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, moving the court from Parliament to its own building and instituting mandatory retirement at 75.
Hale, also known as the Baroness Hale of Richmond, said the age limit was a response to colleagues "who went on long beyond it was sensible for them to go on, but were not sufficiently incompetent to be removed."
Ginsburg noted with relief that there is no retirement age for U.S. judges. She will turn 75 in March.
Federal judges have lifetime tenure.
"We hold our offices during good behavior," Ginsburg said, citing language from the Constitution. "So all of my colleagues behave very well."
Breyer keeps up Bush speech attendance
Bush seeks to ease Americans' fears over economy
President George W. Bush sought to calm Americans' fears about the economy on Monday while charting a course he hopes will keep him relevant in his final year in office.
With the specter of recession supplanting the Iraq war as the top U.S. concern, Bush acknowledged in his final State of the Union address that growth was slowing but insisted the country's long-term economic fundamentals were sound.
He prodded Congress to act quickly on a $150 billion economic stimulus package laid out last week and resist the temptation to "load up" the plan with additional provisions.
"In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that growth is slowing," Bush said in a globally televised speech to the U.S. Congress.
Politically weakened by the unpopular war in Iraq, eclipsed by the race to choose his successor and scrambling to stave off lame-duck status, Bush presented no bold new ideas.
Bush urged Americans to be patient with the mission in Iraq almost five years after the U.S.-led invasion.
He touted security gains in Iraq he ascribed to a troop buildup ordered last January but gave no hint of any further troop reductions there, asserting that such decisions would depend on his commanders' recommendations.
Calling on Iran to "come clean" on its nuclear program, he issued a stern warning to Tehran, which he had branded part of an "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union speech.
"Above all, know this: America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf," Bush said.
A YEAR TO GO
Bush's seventh State of the Union speech was a chance to set the tone for his waning months in the White House and try to salvage his frayed legacy before he leaves office in January 2009.
Sandwiched between Saturday's Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina and Tuesday's Republican contest in Florida, Bush will struggle to make himself heard above the growing din of the 2008 election campaign.
At the top of his speech agenda was a push for congressional passage of a stimulus package meant to avert recession in an economy suffering from high oil prices and a housing slump.
"At kitchen tables across our country, there is concern about our economic future," Bush said, acknowledging rising food and gas prices and increasing unemployment.
He is trying to head off attempts by some Senate Democrats to expand the plan beyond the tax rebates and business investment incentives agreed with House of Representatives leaders last week.
The impetus for compromise is that no one, least of all an unpopular president nearing the end of his watch, wants to be blamed for an economic meltdown before the November 4 elections.
Some economists say the stimulus measures may buy time but will not be enough to solve the woes that have roiled global financial markets.
"TEMPORARY FIX"
Delivering the Democratic response to Bush, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius called the plan only a "temporary fix" and urged Democrats and Republicans to work together so "we won't have to wait for a new president to restore America's role in the world."
On Iraq, Bush was in a better position than a year ago, when he implored skeptical Americans to embrace his plan to send thousands more troops to Iraq.
"Our enemies in Iraq have been hit hard," he said. "They have not been defeated, and we can still expect tough fighting ahead."
He announced no new troop reductions despite continuing calls from Democrats for a withdrawal timetable, something polls show most Americans want as well.
Taking aim at Iran, Bush pressed Tehran not only on its nuclear program but to "cease your support for terror abroad."
Bush's ability to rally international support against Iran has been diminished by a U.S. intelligence report that Tehran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Bush, a latecomer to the fight against global warming, also committed $2 billion for a new international fund to promote clean energy technologies and combat climate change.
He has faced international criticism for repeatedly rejecting caps on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the world's biggest polluter.
George of Arabia:Better Kiss Your Abe ‘Goodbye’
Bend over, pull out your wallet and kiss your Abe ‘goodbye.’ The Lincolns have got to go - and so do the Hamiltons and Jacksons.
Those bills in your billfold aren’t yours anymore. The landlords of our currency - Citibank, theBush & The King national treasury of China and the House of Saud - are foreclosing and evicting all Americans from the US economy.
It’s mornings like this, when I wake up hung-over to photos of the King of Saudi Arabia festooning our President with gold necklaces, that I reluctantly remember that I am an economist; and one with some responsibility to explain what the hell Bush is doing kissing Abdullah’s camel.
Let’s begin by stating why Bush is not in Saudi Arabia. Bush ain’t there to promote ‘Democracy’ nor peace in Palestine, nor even war in Iran. And, despite what some pinhead from CNN stated, he sure as hell didn’t go to Riyadh to tell the Saudis to cut the price of oil.
What’s really behind Bush’s hajj to Riyadh is that America is in hock up to our knickers. The sub-prime mortgage market implosion, hitting a dozen banks with over $100 billion in losses, is just the tip of the debt-berg
