President gives Last State of the Union

By Mick Rosenthal, Washington correspondent The Nation, March 31 2008

The president last night presented his last State of the Union to Congress and the American people. In it he discussed what he wishes Congress to pass, such as a nuclear fuel bank bill, which would create a bank for nuclear fuel. He also asked Congress to pass the HEROES Act to honor General David Petraeus for his work in Iraq, a new terrorism bill called The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act that would stop recruitment of terrorists here in the United States by helping in research to stop terrorist activities.

I felt very honored to get to interview him Sunday afternoon and ask him questions about the continuing war in Iraq, the “War on Terror” and how involved he has been in his daughter Jenna’s wedding plans, Jenna Bush gets married in early May. In the interview, he defended the war in Iraq as the right decision (go here: and type in politicsareneat as the username and politics101 as the password to login and then click on the two videos. Although the president defended his decision to go to war with Iraq in the interview as well as in his, he wished to work together with Democrats across the aisle, he said, “Let us show that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate at the same time. Our citizens do not care which side of the aisle we sit on as long as we are willing to cross the aisle when there is work to be done”. President seems to want to work with Congress in order to passing a few more bills before he leaves office.

Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland gave the Democratic response where disagreed with the president on the war in Iraq, but said, “I have faith in the ingenuity of the American people to weather this storm and emerge even stronger”.

Bills were debated and already moved out of committee in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which passed two bills last night. It passed the American HEROES Act, a fast track to citizenship for immigrants who have joined the United States military introduced by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska passed along the Regulating Internet Pharmacies Act where pharmacies must have a toll free number on their web site to call so people buying drugs on the internet know that they are buying from a real pharmacy. Everything seems to be running smoothly, both for Congress and the President and hopefully this will continue.