Below The Beltway

A Memorex moment at Tuesday’s Inauguration:
It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.
The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a [...]

It may not have been the 4 million people that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, in a panic, predicted in November, but it’s fairly clear that Tuesday’s Inauguration ceremony saw the biggest crowd in the history of Washington:
Two things are clear about the size of the crowd that gathered downtown for Tuesday’s inauguration:
First, although some experts [...]

Here’s the video:

As I said in my initial assessment, this wasn’t a barn-burner. It won’t go down in history as something memorable the way Kennedy’s speech in 1960 has, or the way Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugural Addresses have, but it was a good speech nonetheless.
And, at the very least, it’s nice to have a [...]

Thanks to some rather obvious verbal gaffes by the Chief Justice of the United States during the Inaugural Ceremony, some experts say it couldn’t hurt:
The presidential oath of office is required of a new president before he can execute his powers, and the Constitution is clear that its 35 words must be spoken exactly.
Which is [...]

Doug Bandow sums up what January 20, 2009 means for those of us who believe in freedom and limited government:
Finally, after eight long years of wasteful spending, unnecessary war, and trashing the Constitution.  Finally!
Now the challenge begins to constrain President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.  Onward and upward.
Exactly.
Now that Bush is out of office, [...]

Shortly after noon today, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States:
Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president of the United States Tuesday, and called on Americans to join him in confronting what he described as an economic crisis caused by greed but also “our collective failure to make hard choices.”
“Today I say [...]