Pendleton was reportedly in a nearby park with her friends after having been dismissed early from school; reports indicate that members of a gang were also at the park that afternoon when a gunman ran in and shot Pendleton. A 16-year-old boy , Lawrence Sellers, was also shot; he is wounded and in critical condition.

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I am writing in response to your attack on American poetry in your Washington Post blog today.  Throughout your piece, you forward assumptions based on your own lack of exposure and allow these to stand as truth. I know it is just an opinion blog, but people have been convinced by less, and despite your “blog voice,” I sense you might really believe what you are saying. I will also assume you are sincere in stating: “I hate to type this and I hope that I am wrong.” So I am glad to let you know that poetry is fine. In fact, it is thriving. Let’s look at your charges:

“You can tell that a medium is still vital by posing the question: Can it change anything?”

Your generalization does not specify what kind of “change” you mean. Literal political change? That’s what you go on to suggest. Along with “revolution.”

Be serious. Congress can barely do that. Look what hell the president has to go through to do anything. But you attack American poets. You name none of them except the one you happened to see on TV, and you suggest his whole career is irrelevant to everyone because it is irrelevant to you. And apparently it is irrelevant to you because he does not live up to some high school ideal.

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Beyoncé closed yesterday's inauguration ceremony with one of the most impressive performances of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in memory -- comparable both in quality and in context to Whitney Houston's Gulf War-era Super Bowl performance.

But the Washingtonian reports that Beyoncé was lip-syncing the anthem. The pop singer even posted an Instagram photo of herself in a recording studio with the Marine Corps Band.

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With its elegant rendering of the liberal agenda before the eyes of the American people, President Barack Obama's second inaugural address was music to the ears of many a progressive. But to the ears of Tea Partiers and the Republican right, this inauguration speech, as well as the ceremony that surrounded it, was war -- not just a war of words, but a war of prayer, a war of poetry and even, perhaps, a war of song.

Driving the message home were the hands of the Fates, who conspired to see the second inauguration of the nation’s first African American president fall on Martin Luther King Day, the national holiday whose very creation was opposed by so many who still today comprise the Republican Party’s right wing.

Here we recount a dozen ways in which the president brought his fight to the right, in no uncertain terms, at his second inauguration.

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The parties are a January tradition, where high-powered lobbying shops and law firms open up their offices for clients, legislators and officials, affording opportunities to renew ties and lay the groundwork for lobbying and deal-making. The gatherings in K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue suites offered catered buffets and even balcony views as the commander in chief's caravan rolled by, venues supplemented by high-priced hotel rooms, gala balls and invitation-only parties.

As the A-listers streamed in Monday, Washington's political world had already adapted to a scaled-back version of the festivities of four years ago, when more than 1.5 million people packed the National Mall. Lobbying shops got fewer ticket requests from corporate clients and office parties shrank to appeal to smaller crowds.

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A grandiose ceremony like an inauguration is about visibility as much as it is about repeating foundational rhetoric. Barack Obama's second inauguration explicitly made the argument that not only did all those citizens -- female and queer and brown and immigrant and belonging to different generations -- belong there, but that they had come there through a necessary struggle to make all of America what it promised to be.

The most important line in Obama's speech, to my mind, was, "For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing." Closing the gap between the country's pledge of liberty and equality and the lived reality of the centuries didn't just happen. First there were radical struggles, the ones Obama invoked when he said that the self-evident truth of equality "is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." Yes, that's right: Our forebears. Our country. It's a vision that recognizes separate experiences yet suggests they are not forces for division, but for a more honest unity.

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Reuters reports:

David Plouffe, a senior adviser, said Obama would call on both parties to come together to resolve daunting second-term challenges like the budget, the need to raise the nation's borrowing limit and the Democrat's push for tighter gun laws and a legal path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The president views the inauguration speech and the State of the Union speech to Congress on February 12 as "a package," Plouffe said, and would save details of his second-term agenda for the later speech.

And from the AP:

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But a second inaugural address differs from the first in one important way, for it must respond to recent history. A newly installed president, without any real responsibility for the larger events that saw his election, can indulge in hopeful prophecy, but a re-elected president owns the immediate past. It, and not his address, is prologue to a second term, and so, especially in troubled times, his speech must take shape around present challenges.

The financial crisis cast a long shadow over President Obama’s first term.  Yet in his battle to deliver the economy from a steep financial downturn, he stumbled into a war of sorts over how capitalism works. This is a conflict the president would no doubt have rather avoided—the presidency is challenging enough without having to convince a substantial portion of the electorate that your aim is not to subvert capitalism but to save it from itself. However, the deep disagreement over how the crisis came about, much less how it might be resolved, made an ideological debate over the very nature of capitalism all but unavoidable.

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The company behind this marketing behemoth — as it was during the 2012 campaign, when at times it appeared the Obama team was running a big-box store rather than a presidential race — is Financial Innovations, Inc., which also happens to be one of a handful of corporations donating money to underwrite this year’s inaugural celebration. Its owner, Democratic fundraiser Mark Weiner, was an Obama bundler, raising as much as half a million dollars for the president’s reelection. According to Matea Gold at the Los Angeles Times, analyzing data from the Federal Election Commission, Financial Innovations “was paid more than $15.7 million by two Obama campaign committees to produce and mail campaign merchandise.”

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Eldon Bell, a retired Air Force officer, said: “This inauguration is a mistake and those who permit it to happen will have to live with their own consciences." He added: “Whether I watch depends on who’s being inaugurated. If it’s this guy, probably not, because I don’t pay much attention to illegitimate things.”

The Washington Post reports:

At this late date, Bell and his fellow believers in the notion that Obama was born overseas or is otherwise ineligible to be president still expect some court somewhere to buy into one of their theories. After more than 100 court cases, no judge has.

Even after Obama convincingly won reelection despite four years of low popularity ratings, a sluggish economy and a highly motivated opposition, advocates of various counterfactual theories about the president — he’s a foreigner, he’s a Marxist, he’s a Muslim — say they’re sticking to their fight.

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Ahead of the presidential inauguration in Washington Monday, an NSSE that will draw 3,000 law enforcement officers and some 13,000 military troops to the area, the National Lawyers Guild has released  a report based on last year's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., highlighting First and Fourth Amendment violations imported with this sort of event policing. The report notes:

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Giglio, like Rev. Rick Warren before him, was chosen as a token of good will to conservative Christian evangelicals, but the inauguration gives Obama a chance to elevate someone from the progressive faith movement, which often gets overshadowed by its conservative counterpart. There are plenty of good progressive faith leaders to choose from, but here are just a few names whose worldview likely align more closely with Obama's than Giglio, in no particular order:

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A spokesman for Giglio issued the following statement to ThinkProgress:

I am honored to be invited by the President to give the benediction at the upcoming inaugural on January 21. Though the President and I do not agree on every issue, we have fashioned a friendship around common goals and ideals, most notably, ending slavery in all its forms.

Due to a message of mine that has surfaced from 15-20 years ago, it is likely that my participation, and the prayer I would offer, will be dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration. Clearly, speaking on this issue has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years. Instead, my aim has been to call people to ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ.

Neither I, nor our team, feel it best serves the core message and goals we are seeking to accomplish to be in a fight on an issue not of our choosing, thus I respectfully withdraw my acceptance of the President’s invitation. I will continue to pray regularly for the President, and urge the nation to do so. I will most certainly pray for him on Inauguration Day.

Our nation is deeply divided and hurting, and more than ever need God’s grace and mercy in our time of need.

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The inaugural committee’s spokeswoman Addie Whisenant told the New York Times that Obama selected Blanco because the poet’s “deeply personal poems are rooted in the idea of what it means to be an American.” Blanco similarly expressed a kinship with the President, saying that the two see America in similar ways. Talking to the Times via phone, Blanco said,“Since the beginning of the campaign, I totally related to his life story and the way he speaks of his family, and of course his multicultural background," adding, “There has always been a spiritual connection in that sense. I feel in some ways that when I’m writing about my family, I’m writing about him.”

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Lobbyists, political action committees and foreign entities, however, will still be banned from underwriting the costs of the gala events, spokeswoman Addie Whisenant said. The committee also will reject donations from companies that haven't paid back loans from the 2008 federal bailout of Wall Street, as well as corporate sponsorship deals.

"Our goal is to make sure that we will meet the fundraising requirements for this civic event after the most expensive presidential campaign in history," she said in a statement. "To ensure continued transparency, all names of donors will be posted to a regularly updated website."

Obama's second term automatically begins at noon on Jan. 20 under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. Since that's a Sunday, a private swearing-in will be held at the White House, followed the next day — the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday — by a public oath-taking and a series of scaled-back events.

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