Pre-Bush speech gas mask training

Posted by Frank James at 7:15 pm CST

It's a little less than an hour before the scheduled start of the State of the Union and reporters and photographers are crowded into the House press gallery. Gallery staffers have us watching a Capitol Hill police video that shows us how to put on a protective escape hood--the Quick 2000-- in the event of a terrorist attack employing biological or chemical agents. If we're hit with a radiological attack, we're out of luck, I guess. This is just one of the many things that have changed since 9/11.

Considering how rowdy journalists can be, everyone is fairly quiet during the video though there's laughter when the narrator says something like "It's extremely important that you do not panic."

Now they're showing the video again for journalists who may have missed it the first time.

My plan is to sit inside the chamber during the speech but to leave at certain points to blog. (The laptop won't be permitted inside the House chamber. You can't even have a Blackberry in their if it has a built in phone.) Here's hoping it all works out.

We just received copies of the president's speech, still warm from the photocopier. I'm suspect the wire services have already gotten bits and pieces of it up on the web. The speech says it's embargoed, meaning it can't be posted publicly, at least not by official news outlets until 8:01 pm CST.