2013 was not kind to the President.

There were revelations about the NSA surveillance programs, dithering on military action in Syria, and the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

The annual State of the Union address last night served as an opportunity for the president to refocus his message and persuade Congress and the American people to support his proposals.

Early in the speech, President Obama expressed his belief that 2014 can be a “breakthrough year” for America. He then outlined actions, many familiar, to boost employment and growth, reduce income and opportunity inequality, and secure American interests abroad.

But the question on our minds here at USDemocrazy is this: with a divided Congress that has struggled to even keep the federal government open for business, can we expect any major action from Washington this year?

Whether on bipartisan priorities like overhauling the tax code or reforming immigration, or more contentious issues like raising the minimum wage, Republicans in the House have shown little enthusiasm for acting on the president’s proposals.

And Senate Democrats have been unwilling to consider Republican ideas on reforming Medicare and constraining welfare spending.

Sounds like a formula for inaction to us.

Such gridlock likely fueled the president’s pledges last night to take unilateral executive action where possible to advance his administration’s priorities.

But in the end, President Obama’s greatest power may be the “Bully Pulpit”… the country stops to listen to him when he speaks.

Though major policy changes are unlikely in this Congress, the president’s highlighting of the important issue of income inequality will hopefully shape the national debate this year and influence the agenda of future Congresses and the next president.

But don’t expect many of the president’s ideas to be adopted this year. His record from last year’s address was underwhelming to say the least.

Check out the full speech, or read over the transcript. 

5. On diplomacy with Iran: “If John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today. …  But let me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it. “

4. On climate change: “… the debate is settled.  Climate change is a fact.  And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”

3. On equal pay for equal work: “Today, women make up about half our workforce.  But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.  That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. … It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a “Mad Men” episode.  This year, let’s all come together … to give every woman the opportunity she deserves.  Because I firmly believe when women succeed, America succeeds.”

2. On unemployment insurance: “[T]his Congress needs to restore the unemployment insurance you just let expire for 1.6 million people. Let me tell you why. Misty DeMars is a mother of two young boys… In May, she and her husband used their life savings to buy their first home.  A week later, budget cuts claimed the job she loved.  Last month, when their unemployment insurance was cut off, she sat down and wrote me a letter – the kind I get every day.  ’We are the face of the unemployment crisis,” she wrote.  “I am not dependent on the government. Our country depends on people like us who build careers, contribute to society, care about our neighbors. I am confident that in time I will find a job. I will pay my taxes, and we will raise our children in their own home in the community we love.  Please give us this chance.’ Congress, give these hardworking, responsible Americans that chance.”

1. After introducing us to Sergeant Cory Remsburg, a personal friend of the president going through a difficult recovery after nearly being killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, President Obama finished his address with touching words on the American spirit: “My fellow Americans, men and women like Cory remind us that America has never come easy.  Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy.  Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged.  But for more than two hundred years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress – to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice, and fairness, and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen.  …  But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow – I know it’s within our reach. Believe it.”

 Check out the full speech, or read over the transcript. 

A new approach to encryption beats attackers by presenting them with fake data.

Ari Juels, an independent researcher who was previously chief scientist at computer security company RSA, thinks something important is missing from the cryptography protecting our sensitive data: trickery.

The jQuery team has released new versions of both divisions of jQuery.

by Ganesh Mysore and Valerie Parks

The spring semester has officially kicked off, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have the students back on campus! We wish them well as they had back into the classroom and spend their evenings studying in the library. May will be here before you know it!

Want to join in on the fun this spring? Check out these cool happenings:

• Alumni events
• Campus events

The discussion over HTML5 vs. hybrid or native apps has been a much debated topic for mobile app developers for the last few years with HTML5 being tagged as incomplete and incapable of standing up native tools, in walks Telerik with an answer. 

A lecture by History Associate Professor Anne Rubin in her Civil War and Reconstruction class recently aired on C-SPAN3. The class was taped by C-SPAN as part of a series on Civil War Memory and “The Lost Cause.”

Rubin’s lecture analyzed how the Civil War was remembered in the decades after the conflict with a focus on the former Confederate states. In the lecture, Rubin talks about the Southern Historical Society’s contributions to The Lost Cause myth which idealized how the pre-war South was perceived. She also analyzes cemeteries and monuments that honor the Confederate dead among other topics.

The class aired on C-SPAN 3 Saturday, January 25. You can watch the lecture in its entirety here.

Anne Rubin is author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. 

Jasmine makes it possible to test that a given DOM event occurred and what the results of the event were. In today's article, Rob Gravelle demonstrates how to write tests for the button click event using Jasmine 2.0, jQuery, and an additional third-party library called jasmine-jquery.