Speeches

Many actors are finding easy money in doing voice-over work for radio and television commercials. But it is very unlikely that anyone landed an easier gig than Al Pacino, who didn't lift a finger to get a plum voice-over spot with Chrysler Jeep. The unmistakable voice of Pacino can be heard in the new television commercial touting the Jeep Grand Cherokee. In the spot, Pacino is giving an inspired speech about how life is a "game of inches. " If it sounds familiar, it is. The speech comes from a pivotal scene from the 1999 Oliver Stone movie "Any Given Sunday," which stars Pacino as an aging football coach.

WASHINGTON - Wayne LaPierre, a top official of the National Rifle Assn., lobbed a blistering attack on President Obama's gun proposals Thursday, accusing him of exploiting the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting to roll back gun rights. "It was only a few weeks ago when they were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm. That charade ended at the State of the Union when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions," said LaPierre, addressing the National Wild Turkey Federation convention in Nashville.

It is no wonder Florida Sen. Marco Rubio needed to grab a bottle of water in the middle of delivering the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. The speech he was given to recite was like a hunk of stale, dry sourdough and it surely caught in his throat.  For 30 years, Republican aspirants to the presidency have been giving variations of the same speech. It sounded fresh and bold when Ronald Reagan first spoke the words as a candidate in 1980. At that point, the liberal era that began with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 had pretty much run out of gas. Democrats had grown too comfortable with their seemingly permanent lock on the House of Representatives, while their ideas about the creative use of government had devolved into a system of doling out federal dollars to clamoring interest groups.

#GOPResponse #SOTU #gop #tcot twitter.com/marcorubio/sta… - Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 13, 2013 SAN FRANCISCO -- Twitter runneth over with jokes at the expense of the parched Sen. Marco Rubio who awkwardly broke away to take a desperate sip of water toward the end of his Republican rebuttal to the president's State of the Union speech. Soon the topic was trending on Twitter and hashtags #waterbreak and #watergate threatened to eclipse the "binders full of women" remark from Mitt Romney that lit up Twitter after his presidential debate (and, ahem, water down any serious discussion of the GOP vision to help the middle class that Rubio was trying to outline at the time)

What appears to be the fiery finale to Christopher Dorner's violent rampage across Southern California nearly upstaged President Obama's State of the Union address. As the seconds ticked down to the start of the speech, it seemed as though Anderson Cooper and the folks at CNN were awfully reluctant to break away from the burning cabin near Big Bear where the disgruntled, unhinged ex-cop from the Los Angeles Police Department appeared to be holed up.  Nevertheless, the cable news organizations did their duty and switched from the sensational to the substantial.

President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday, the first of his second term, won't be long remembered. It didn't offer much in the way of new ideas. It was short on memorable lines - except, perhaps, his demand for congressional action on gun control because Gabby Giffords and the families of Newtown "deserve a vote. " But those are all good things. They tell us that after four years in the White House and a hard-won reelection, Obama has recalibrated his ambitions to match the moment.

In his first State of the Union address of his second term, President Obama delivered the most forceful defense of liberal values uttered on this occasion by any president since Lyndon Johnson. Obama argued for progress on the environment, common sense on guns, decency on immigration. On those issues, he has the support of the American people. Yes, there are problems left over from his first four years: high unemployment and slow economic growth. He rightly called on Congress to close the nation's long-term budget gap by reforming entitlements and simplifying the tax code, rather than making across-the-board reductions that only chip away at the deficit.

Bringing to rest days of speculation about the contents of his State of the Union address, President Obama will deliver his speech Tuesday night, leaving room for supporters, opponents and pundits to weigh in on every word. Joining in the commentary will be The Times' Opinion section, tweeting their reactions to Obama's speech as it happens in a stream housed below. Join Jon Healey, Doyle McManus, Jonah Goldberg, Michael McGough and the rest of the opinion crew as they examine the first State of the Union of Obama's second term.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the fresh face Republicans chose to respond to the State of the Union address, sounded familiar party themes Tuesday night, accusing President Obama of stifling economic growth through an overreliance on taxes and spending. The opportunity "to make it to the middle class or beyond, no matter where you start out in life, it isn't bestowed on us from Washington," Rubio said in his nationally broadcast remarks, but comes from "a vibrant economy. " That is something presidents in both parties, from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, have recognized, Rubio said.

WASHINGTON - In the first State of the Union address of his second term, President Obama tried to breathe new life into his economic agenda, offering measures to spur growth and urging Congress to revive stalled talks over deficit reduction. Entering his fifth year presiding over a flagging economy, the president declared the restoration of a strong middle class "our unfinished task" and called on a deeply divided Congress to find "reasonable compromise" to solve the nation's lingering fiscal ills.