Word: penned
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After more than a year of bitter political debate and seemingly inescapable congressional deadlock, President Obama sat down in the White House East Room on March 23 and signed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law with a stroke of his pen. And then another pen. And another. Obama used 22 pens to sign the landmark $938 billion health care bill. It would seem that either the President has an undiagnosed case of OCD or the White House needs better office supplies. (See pictures of Obama signing the bill...
...rationale is fairly simple. The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often engraves the pens, which are then given as keepsakes to key proponents or supporters of the newly signed legislation. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he reportedly used more than 75 pens (video footage can be found here, although camera cutaways make it hard to keep track) and gave one of the first...
Once they're given away, some pens wind up in museums; others are displayed proudly in recipients' offices or homes. But they sometimes pop up again, like in the 2008 presidential campaign, when John McCain vowed to use the same pen given to him by President Reagan to cut pork from the federal budget...
...every President goes for the multipen signature, however. President George W. Bush preferred signing bills with only one pen and then offering several unused "gift" pens as souvenirs. Even a piece of legislation as famous as the Homeland Security Act got only one line of ink. When it was over, the President is rumored to have pocketed...
...highest-rated programs. The negotations, which had been vigorous, became frantic. Finally, "we found something that was in line with what we pay other programmers," says Charles Schueler, Cablevision EVP. Minutes after the show started, Bob Iger reportedly gave his OK from the red carpet, just in time for Penélope Cruz to glide onto the screens of Cablevision customers in the New York City area to present the award for Best Supporting Actor. Reports of the agreed-upon price between ABC and Cablevision varied widely but were not above 60 cents. In other words, the whole dispute...