State of the Union: President Trump delivered a State of the Union message last night laced with patriotism, self-congratulation, inspirational stories, fear of immigrants and dictators, and some not-so-subtle appeals to his most ardent supporters. “Tonight, I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people,”  he said. He called this “our new American moment.”

Trump appears to have stuck to a carefully crafted script calling for national unity while pitching proposals that have proven divisive.

Touching on immigration and the status of the young illegal immigrants known as “Dreamers,” the President said, “Americans are dreamers, too,” pointedly saying that the 1.8 million immigrants brought to the country as children are not Americans. It was a little like “Blue lives matter.”

Trump delineated his plan for immigration that involves a 12-year path to citizenship for Dreamers, building his southern border wall, and placing tighter restrictions on legal immigration.

The President offered a $1.5 trillion  plan to rebuild the country’s roads and bridges. He also announced that he signed an order to keep operating the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama had pledged to close it.

Columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote for The Washington Post in advance of the speech, “There are two Trumps. The first one can get through a speech in the House chamber or at Davos by sticking to a script written by mainstream conservatives. The second has no interest in policy, no idea how to achieve it, no comprehension of American institutions, and no ability to lead the free world. In other words, we get either an entirely artificial and unrepresentative articulation of his presidency, or a raving, ignorant, race-baiter. The two have nothing to do with one another.”

First Lady Melania Trump, who has not been seen publicly with the President since the publication of a story that he had an affair with a porn star, arrived at the Capital separately, but smiled graciously as she sat among the President’s guests.

At least 27 members of Congress announced they were bringing to the speech immigrants with DACA or Temporary Protected Status as their guests. Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, an immigration toughie, asked the US Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to check the identification of all State of the Union attendees and arrest any illegal immigrants. He said, “Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress.”

House Cleaning: The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating why former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe delayed action for about three weeks before examining a batch of Hillary Clinton emails late in the 2016 campaign. The IG is asking FBI employees why they were slow to investigate emails found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin.

The big question, of course, is whether they planned to help Clinton’s candidacy by delaying until after the Nov. 8 election. The very existence of the investigation feeds claims by President Trump and prominent Republicans that the FBI was biased against Trump and in favor of Clinton.

To Your Health: Health insurance stocks dropped yesterday after three major companies announced that they are banding together to insure their own employees with a non-profit system. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase laid out a plan that’s sketchy on details, but they say will focus on technology to provide, high-quality health care for employees and their families at a reasonable cost to the companies.

Button Man: The employee of Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency who pushed the button on a nuclear attack alert did it intentionally because he thought there was a real missile on the way, the Federal Communications Commission announced. The employee has been fired. Hawaii’s governor said the day after the incident that someone “pressed the wrong button,” which turned out not to be true. The FCC says the worker misinterpreted an order to run a test and thought it was the real thing. The administrator of the agency has resigned.

By the Sword: The co-founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas accidentally killed himself when his gun went off in his face. Hamas says, Imad al-Alami, 62, was “examining his personal weapon in his home” on Jan. 9 when it went off.

The Obit Page: Dennis Peron, a Vietnam veteran turned marijuana dealer who became a prime mover in the effort to legalize medical marijuana, has died at age 71. Peron came back from the war with two pounds of weed and later opened a marijuana supermarket in San Francisco. He was arrested several times and once even shot in the leg by an undercover cop.

For Peron, marijuana had always been recreational, but when a romantic partner was dying of AIDS, Peron was taken with how marijuana eased nausea and pain. — Wendell Castle, a noted woodworker who blended furniture with art, has died at home near Rochester, NY, at age 85. He made big, flowing, modern pieces that looked like sculpture. He’d make a table that looked like it had a table cloth draped over it, but the table cloth was carved from wood. “I thought of the work as sculpture, not furniture,” he told The New York Times in 2010. “The fact that it was useful didn’t add anything to it, for me.”

No, Really: United Airlines recently prevented a woman from boarding a flight in Newark, NJ, with her “emotional support” peacock. Everybody knows peacocks can’t fly.

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