Image via WhiteHouse.gov/Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

For years, I’ve had a pet peeve with President Obama. I knew he wasn’t as progressive as many Democrats thought he was in 2008. Don’t get me wrong — I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 ad 2012. But many people the first time around thought he was going to be the champion of so many progressive causes that had been swept under the rug during the George W. Bush era.

Maybe he would have been more willing to take on more social issues if he’d had a Congress that was a little less obstructionist, but I’m not convinced he would have taken on the issues that I hoped he would tackle — passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, increasing the minimum wage, doing something to bring people out of poverty and making sure all kids have the same educational start.

I know. I’m a dreamer.

But in the President’s latest State of the Union address, much of what he talked about was political music to my ears. Obama has received a lot of praise for signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law as one of his first official acts. And that was a big deal, but I never appreciated how the administration touted the Ledbetter Act as creating a law that would ensure that women would get equal pay for equal work — it doesn’t, no matter how much the administration has tried to finesse it. And they have. But Ledbetter only gives employees — both men and women — an extended amount of time to sue for back pay and discrimination once it’s discovered; it’s not a guarantee that men and women doing the same job will get the same pay.

As for poverty, I’m sad that it’s taken the President this long to stand up for the importance of the minimum wage — not that $9 an hour is such a wonderful salary, but it’s significantly better than $7.25 that it is now, and has been since 2009. Anyone who knows anything about the story in the book Nickled and Dimed, knows that.

So what’s gotten into President Obama? One obvious factor is that he doesn’t have to worry about re-election anymore, so that frees him up to just put it all out there on the table. I don’t hold any notion that everything he proposed in #SOTU2013, as they called it on Twitter, will become legislation that can make its way though Congress without the Republican leadership throwing more roadblocks into the path of progress.

But as a girl who’s proudly and unabashedly liberal, who feels that the federal government does have some role to play in making sure that people are paid a fair and livable wage, President Obama’s remarks restored a little bit of the faith I had lost in him during his first term.

Realistically, I know some decisions will have to be made about which proposals live and which ones will die on Capitol Hill. But at least the President showed us a little of that liberal he kept in the political closet for the last four years.

Image via WhiteHouse.gov/Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

It had already been announced that the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, the teen who appeared in the recent presidential inauguration parade, and who was shot and killed in Chicago days later, would be seated with the First Lady. But see if you can figure out the Obama Administration’s priorities for his second term from the invitation list, that includes:

1. A lead instructor for the Female Engagement Team that has been deployed to Afghanistan for several years to connect female soldiers with Afghani women in hopes that women helping women could lead to a significant shift in progress, and ultimately withdrawl of armed services, from that part of the world.

2. The student winner of the Intel Intelligence Science and Engineering Fair who created a new method to detect pancreatic cancer.

3. The first Latina mayor of Avondale, Arizona.

4. The secretary at a grocery store chain who was the victim of pay and job discrimination, who was told that the job a salesperson for the company was too dangerous and that she would not be a good mother if she were traveling to meet with customers.

5. The first police officer to arrive at the Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin last August.

6. A first grade teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School.

7. An Affordable Care Act beneficiary who would have lost health insurance coverage at age 21 due to a pre-existing chronic illness.

8. An early childhood educator from Oklahoma who has written curricula for Head Start programs and trained Head Start teachers.

There are others who will be joining Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for the President’s speech. But it doesn’t take a lot of analysis to see how the second term agenda will be focused — fair pay, gun control, early childhood education, STEM education, women in the military, the Latino community, and more.

Who do you think the Obamas should have invited to sit with the First Lady at the State of the Union as an indication of a presidential priority?

Image via WhiteHouse.gov/Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

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Sadly, those rights have been chipped away at so much across America, that while states cannot ban abortions outright, they have instituted laws that make it virtually impossible for women to have access to the procedure (I’m looking at you Mississippi, Texas and Virgina).

Image via iStockphoto/Joel Carillet

Whether you agree with the still controversial ruling, or opinion written by the late Justice Harry Blackmun, that right has been chipped away at over four decades. And while many politicians, especially in the just-finished 2012 election tried to use a lot of smoke and mirrors to mislead Americans, and especially American women, about the facts about who gets abortions in the 21st century, the Guttmacher Institute has prepared a variety of info-graphics, as well as this video, to set the records straight:

In an interview a few years before his death, Blackmun said of Roe:

“It’s a step that had to be taken . . . toward the full emancipation of women.”

Four decades later, women are further from that “full emancipation” than they were in 1973. Want to know more about the real state of abortion access in America and how it impacts women’s health? Stay tuned for an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book Crow after Roe: How “Separate But Equal” Has Become the New Standard In Women’s Health And How We Can Change That, by Robin Marty and Jessica Pieklo.

Video via the Guttmacher Institute

Image of Contemplation of Justice Statue via iStockphoto/Gary Blakeley