News Digest, 1/29/08: (Re-)State of the Union

Bush presented his final State of the Union address yesterday. No, you didn't miss anything.

Predictably, Bush didn't want to talk about the economy much — he covered the economic stimulus plan, pointing out that it was a "growth" plan (as opposed to a "help us avoid recession" plan, I suppose), and otherwise mentioned that we have plenty of reason to have a positive outlook on the economy, but unsurprisingly didn't bother going into detail as to how that is. Instead, he stuck to his "all terror, all the time" talking points for most of the rest of the speech. It was remarkably like all of his other State of the Union addresses, covering similar policy points that we'll likely never see enacted during his administration because of an inability to play nice with others.

The Democratic response from Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, by contrast, was a rejection of the sort of hyperpartisan division that Bush has been pushing for eight years, and was still pushing for in his address — "we should work in a bipartisan fashion to pass all the bills I like and no others." Sebelius' response called for real compromise with the Democratic congressional majority, so that we wouldn't have to wait for a new president to effect positive change in the country.

Today is the big day for Giuliani — it's the Florida primary that Giuliani forewent all the earlier contests to focus on. We'll have news on that throughout the day, but I don't know if Giuliani is all that excited about the primary, as recent polls show that he has dropped to fourth place in the state, behind McCain, Romney, and Huckabee. So it is likely that the campaign will not last much longer than today.

On our side of the aisle, Clinton has been getting a little flak from the press for "campaigning" in Florida, ostensibly in breach of the pledge she signed with the Democratic party not to campaign in any states that broke rules as far as how early they can hold primaries. Not surprisingly, the press is wrong, as I note in the article: Clinton is not campaigning, at least not by the DNC's definition nor by the definition clearly stated in the pledge card she signed. My guess? Somebody didn't expect the news day to be so slow and needed something to write about.

In state news, Republican State Senator Kyle Janek will be retiring in a little over a month. Governor Rick Perry will be calling a special election to fill the seat, possibly as early as May.

And lastly today, Chris Bell reflects on ex-Harris County DA Johnny Holmes from the time he spent covering him as a journalist for KTRH, and how times have changed.