President Obama Inaugurated to Second Term

Posted January 20, 2013, 12:00 p.m.

President Barack Obama (D) has been sworn-in to a second term as the forty-fourth President of the United States. The Twentieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that the terms of the president and vice president end, and the terms of a new president and vice president begin, at noon on January 20. The transition was recognized with the president taking the oath of office at the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was sworn-in earlier this morning in a private ceremony at his Naval Observatory residence.

Although the transition formally occurs today (per the Constitutional provision), the inaugural celebration and festivities are scheduled for tomorrow because they are traditionally not held on Sundays. Obama and Biden will both be ceremonially re-sworn tomorrow on the Capitol steps.

President Obama is the first biracial president, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother. He is often erroneously identified as simply being ‘African American.’ Vice President Biden is also notable for being the first Catholic vice president. Despite my many political differences with President Obama, I sincerely wish him a safe and successful second term.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.

The wise of heart will heed commandments, but a prating fool will come to ruin.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.

We keep on turning [the kaleidoscope of ideas] and making new combinations . . . ; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

If tyranny is at all feared, the tyranny of the many is to be guarded against more than that of a single person.

Among us there is no place for the lukewarm. Humble yourself, and Christ will kindle in you again the fire of love.

Belief in immortality dies easily in those who live in such a way that they cannot face the prospect of a judgment.

So I’m just sayin’ to BREATHE while you go along in this relationship, because if two people leave each other breathless too long somebody’s gonna lose consciousness.

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today’s intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders, and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world.

I believe more in the goodness of bad people than I do in the badness of good people.

There is no such thing as success in a bad business.

This triangle of truisms, of father, mother[,] and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

We tend to think that humans distinguish themselves from animals by greater knowledge and awareness, but the most typical difference is that, unlike animals, we are almost constantly tormented by a lack of knowledge.

I know that there is nothing better for [men] than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; also that it is God’s gift to man that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.

The good old days are now.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.

The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.