I see a trend here where the President seems to think his job is to count votes and then try to make a deal That's what we in legislatures do. Mr. Obama's job is to travel the country fight for the values that he cares about.

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

Our work is before us. It cannot be passed to future legislatures and must not be passed to future generations. May we boldly seize the moment with singular unity. And may we build a Texas of unlimited possibility.

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges in turn answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors nor even in its newspapers or inventors but always most in the common people.