**Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse write:**...
>>>**Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse write:**
It was a new day in Congress. Or at least a new night. In a powerful break with tradition, lawmakers crossed party lines to sit Republican and Democrat, side by side, as the president addressed them.
Row by row, many women in bright red, the men in their traditional dark suits, Republicans and Democrats filed onto the House floor and slipped into unfamiliar territory on Tuesday night. There was Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, sitting on the Democratic side of the House aisle between Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Tom Udall, of New Mexico. (Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, was kept close at hand, on an aisle seat.) Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat of Louisiana, buddied up to Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine on the Republican side.
**The excerpts above are taken from, "New Seating Chart, But Same Divides," from the New York Times linked below. So do read about the implications of the seating arrangement for the State of the Union Address.**
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/politics/26scene.html
