By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Take a look at Sarah Palin's hand here, on which she apparently wrote notes on in anticipation of being asked at the Tea Party convention what the priorities of a Republican congress should be. Her hand read: "Energy ... Tax cuts ... Lift American spirit." A few thoughts:

If she had written "bread ... milk ... eggs" on her hand, or even a phone number, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. And if, say, a congressman had written "pay the electric bill," we would have thought it was charming, like Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life tying strings on his fingers to remember to make the bank deposit. We're all forgetful, we all have a million things to do, and sometimes we write reminders on our hands. I understand that.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Palin didn't write down a reminder for an everyday errand. Instead she felt she had to write down basic political priorities, core issues for the GOP. That's the problem. Imagine if President Obama were at a similar Q&A session and the camera caught the words "Hope ... Change" on his hand.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The tea party movement is not being very well served by the "Tea Party Convention" being held in Nashville this weekend, for a number of reasons. First, the tea partiers I know who gathered last summer barely had enough money to pay for a microphone and a sound system, much less afford tickets to a fancy hotel with a lobster-and-steak dinner. But they cared deeply about where our country is heading, the tax-and-spend massive federal budget, and the growing nanny state, and so they made home-made signs and stood on the steps of their State Capitol. I think the organizers of this expensive convention misjudged the audience.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog 

In the spirit of Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook," let me just say, "I am not a prude." And the other women I have talked to about this are not prudes, either. What we're talking about are some of the proposed Superbowl ads: commercials for mancrunch.com, a website for men who want to date other men, and a godaddy.com ad that features a lingerie designer and scantily clad women. According to ABC News, CBS decided to reject the mancrunch.com ad by saying, "Our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot," which shows two men making out for what seems like a very long time. According to an ABC News source, CBS rejected the godaddy.com lingerie-themed ad for its "stereotypical tone." 

Both seem like very vague reasons for rejecting the ads. It seems like they decide to reject or accept ads on a case-by-case, moving-target, I-know-it-when-I-see-it set of rules. Maybe network executives should have a well-publicized set of criteria for accepting ads and stick to it. It would have come in handy with these two ads, which are just the tip of the iceberg.

By Mary Kate Cary Thomas Jefferson Street blog 

Think about what's happened in American pop culture over the last 17 years, when "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" first was voted into law by Congress --from Ellen DeGeneres coming out of the closet, to the success of the series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; to the films Milk and Brokeback Mountain each winning multiple Oscars. I know in my own life, I've seen a sea change in the way friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are gay are treated by society. Everyone I know in my suburban, carpooling existence has at least one friend or a loved one who is gay--something that wasn't necessarily true 20 years ago. 

In his State of the Union address, the President announced that he would work with Congress to repeal the ban on openly gay Americans serving in the military, as the Canadians, British, French, South Africans and Israelis have done. At yesterday's hearing on the matter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the question is not whether the U.S. military will enact the change, but rather how it will. (His proposal: a high-level working group to make recommendations and move to implement a new policy within the next year, pending Congressional approval.) 

As good as Gates was, it was the Bush-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, who stunned the crowd: "Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do ... No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me personally, it comes down to integrity--theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

My old friend and fellow Bush #41 speechwriter Dan McGroarty recalled in the New York Times this weekend what it was like to write the President's first State of the Union address in 1990, and the lesson for Obama staffers today:

What we didn't see then from the high ground of Year One were any of the signal events of Year Two. The ill-fated deficit summit meeting at Andrews Air Force Base--a closed-door exercise that yielded the too-clever-by-180-I.Q.-points "tax revenue enhancements" as a substitute for the president's "read my lips" no-new-taxes pledge--was three months away. In six months, Saddam Hussein would roll tanks into Kuwait. In eight months, we would hit what economists would later pinpoint as the beginning of a recession, at roughly the time the White House national security team was focused on reuniting East and West Germany. Working in the White House was a daily lesson in politics and policy, and the critical difference between the two.

Seen through the lens of 20 years' time, what's telling now is the capriciousness of what we took to be the issues that would define a presidency.

As the dust settles on the State of the Union address, I can't stop thinking about the one memorable part of the evening. My mouth dropped open when the president looked the justices of the Supreme Court in the eye and criticized their recent decision on campaign finance law. Here's the video of what the president said and Justice Alito's reaction. Vice President Biden piled on the next day, telling ABC News, "The President didn't question the integrity of the court. He questioned the judgment of it." The decision was "dead wrong," and an "outrageous decision," he said. "Not outrageous in the fact that these guys are bad guys, but outrageous in the way you read the Constitution." Leave it to Biden to tell us what the president really thinks: the justices are "dead wrong" in reading the Constitution and he questions their judgment as "outrageous." Now opinions are flying on both sides. On scotusblog.com, there's a round-up of the commentary with links to interesting articles, but I'm going to leave the legal analysis to the lawyers and just say I thought the President and Vice President were disrespectful.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Here's the real story on the State of the Union address: As a speech, it's no big deal. The press today is in complete overdrive building up President Obama's need to hit it out of the ballpark tonight: He's at "the crossroads of his Presidency," says the New York Times; it's the "speech of his life," writes Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic; the morning shows were full of analysis along the lines of "the chips are down" and "the pressure is on"--that Obama needs to do well tonight to survive politically.

And while everyone in official Washington watches the State of the Union address, how many people in the rest of the country sit down for the entire hour long laundry list of legislative proposals? Not many, I bet. Most catch a video clip or two afterward on the 11 o'clock news or read about it in the paper the next day. It seems like every year the speech gets longer and longer, and the analysis from the talking heads does, too.