Today marks my inaugural experience with live blogging as well as, y’know, the momentous event that this country has waited for not only since the beginning of this presidential race but since Thomas Jefferson declared to King George III that “All men are created equal.”  Since the three-fifths compromise was instituted to prevent former slaves from being counted as full people in governmental representation.  Since Jim Crow laws prevented people of different skin colors from sitting at the same lunch counters, using the same water fountains or waiting rooms, or sitting in the same sections of the city bus.

As I watch two million people sit on the Washington Mall, people stretching all the way from the west front of the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial, I am astutely aware of the significance of this day.  We are not only witnessing change for the next four years here in America.  We are watching change that affects the rest of human history, and around the whole world.  CNN estimates that this will be the most viewed television event of all time.  As it should be: this is something truly wondrous, truly amazing, a moment of true and irrevocable change for the better.