The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, will take to the lecturn in the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives tonight to deliver his final State of the Union address. Mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, the President will speak to the joint session of Congress about the current state of affairs in the United States. Tonight’s speech will be this President’s seventh and final State of the Union.

At 9:01:30, the President will address a Congress, and a nation, rattled by troubling economic news, against the backdrop of a bitter struggle to be his replacement. Senators Clinton and Obama will be in the gallery - no doubt the cameras will fixate on them at some point during the evening, before they predictably make their way out of the Chamber and into the post-speech coverage in which they will beat up the President for his proposals.

Connecticut will be represented in the First Lady’s box tonight as Senior Airman Diane Lopes, of Danbury, will be seated near First Lady Laura Bush. After joining the U.S. Army in 1991, and then the Air Force Reserves in January 2003, Senior Airman Lopes was deployed to Iraq in August 2007 where she worked as a member of a base security force team. In September 2007, she was wounded in a rocket attack at Kirkuk Air Force Base. She is currently undergoing physical therapy treatment on an outpatient basis at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.