I spoke briefly with Tebow after the breakfast who was friendly but was whisked away for a meeting. I also passed South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford in the hallway but could not interview him in time before the breakfast.

Below I've posted Obama's remarks as released by the White House.

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are," Obama said to shouts and applause. "It's the right thing to do." He also praised the hate crimes law passed last year.

Obama made a similar pledge while speaking to the nation's largest gay advocacy group in October.

In 1993, President Clinton signed the the law, that says if openly gay military personnel will be discharged.

The Hill reported on Monday that the White House asked Sen. Carl Levin to postpone announcing a hearing that would explore repealing the law. The hearing had been expected at the end of January, and now the target date is expected to be February 11, Roxana Tiron reports.

Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates in a recent report that 66,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexuals (about 2 percent) are serving in the military, according to the Washington Post.

Although President Obama's top domestic policy aides insist that the president is committed to an equality agenda for gays and lesbians, many liberal and gay rights groups are unhappy that the administration has failed to act on Obama's campaign pledge to end "don't ask, don't tell."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that the issue has been "a point of discussion" among top White House aides.

Towards the end of the speech, Obama also mentioned his cooperation with Muslims. "We are working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science, education and innovation," he said.

Update: Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell gave the Republican rebuttal, citing Scripture.

Top-down one-size fits all decision making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market, nor undermine the proper role of state and local governments in our system of federalism. As our Founders clearly stated, and we Governors understand, government closest to the people governs best.

And no government program can replace the actions of caring Americans freely choosing to help one another. The Scriptures say "To whom much is given, much will be required." As the most generous and prosperous nation on Earth, it is heartwarming to see Americans giving much time and money to the people of Haiti. Thank you for your ongoing compassion.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the majority opinion. "When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves."

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that "the court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

"The distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant," Stevens said, especially when talking about elections. "Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. … Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

"This is sophistry," Kennedy responded in the majority opinion. "The authorized spokesman of a corporation is a human being, who speaks on behalf of the human beings who have formed that association—just as the spokesman of an unincorporated association speaks on behalf of its members. The power to publish thoughts, no less than the power to speak thoughts, belongs only to human beings, but the dissent sees no problem with a corporation's enjoying the freedom of the press."

Christian political organizations, some of which have recently been arguing against extending definitions of personhood to include some marine life, side with Kennedy in seeing corporations as people with speech rights.

"This is a win for free political speech and the right of corporate citizens to join the political process," said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. "Had the court not acted as it did today, the United States would have continued down the road of ever increasing restrictions and impediments to the expression of political speech."

Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Young Nance agreed. "The government should not be limiting political speech because someone is rich or poor, or because they disagree with a particular point of view.

Indeed, as Focus on the Family Action spokesman Tim Goeglein indicated, groups like his speak frequently as institutional voices that may be stronger than any single personality. "Organizations like Focus on the Family Action, the family policy councils, all of our allies— this [Supreme Court decision] will give us an incredible voice in the great issues of our time."

Actually, said Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, the ruling "will give a huge boost to the special interests that already exercise a stranglehold on our political system, allowing them to tighten their grip and further prevent any meaningful change. … At a time when financial reform is at the forefront of people's concerns, giving big banks and corporations a green light to even further influence our political process is an outrage and an assault to democracy."

At First Things, Hadley Arkes is one of the few to discuss the corporate personhood issue:

It is curious that the dissenters do not appreciate this axiomatic point: that a corporation is simply another form of an association of "human persons." The question was raised in the first case eliciting a set of opinions from the Court (Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793) … On what ground could a state be obliged to honor its promises and contracts? On the same ground that a person can be obliged to honor his promise, for he has made people vulnerable to the prospect that the promise will be kept. But if that holds true for the ordinary human person, why would it not hold true for an organization that is simply an association of human persons? It made the most profound difference that one understood "the State," in America, as an association of free persons, who have a claim to be ruled only with their consent.

The Republican candidate in Massachusetts has taken Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in an surprise victory today. With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Scott Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Martha Coakley’s 47 percent.

Brown's victory strips the Democrats' 60-seat Senate supermajority needed to overcome Republican filibusters. Senate Democrats used all 60 votes in their caucus to pass the health care bill, and Democratic leadership was scrambling today to save health care reform, The Hill reports.

Democratic aides say that senior White House officials would prefer the House pass the Senate healthcare bill without changes, which would obviate the need for a second Senate vote on the legislation.

The problem is that many liberal lawmakers in the House don’t like the Senate bill.

To compensate for this opposition, there is a proposal that the House would then pass a second measure making changes to the Senate bill. That measure could then pass through the upper chamber at a later date under special budgetary rules known as reconciliation, which allow legislation to pass with a simple majority.

Although Brown is pro-choice, abortion became a point of attack between the two candidates. Brown is a member of the Christian Reformed Church of America, The Boston Globe reported in a story in November.

The family worships at New England Chapel in Franklin, a member of the Christian Reformed Church of America, a Protestant denomination, but has developed a special relationship with an order of Cistercian Catholic nuns at Mt. St. Mary’s Abbey in Wrentham.

Many of the 48 nuns are from other countries, and Brown’s first contact was in response to their request for help on an immigration matter.

“It has turned into a beautiful friendship,’’ said Sister Katie McNamara, the monastery’s nurse.

Brown raised money to buy a special golf cart to transport elderly sisters, and, with his wife, has assisted efforts to raise $5.5 million needed to replace the order’s 50-year-old candy factory with an environmentally friendly plant, complete with solar panels and a wind turbine. The order is self-sustaining through sale of its candies and fudges.

"Folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm," he said at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, a historic congregation that was visited by King. "I have a confession to make here. ... There are times when it feels like all these efforts are for naught, and change is so painfully slow in coming, and I have to confront my own doubts. But let me tell you during those times, it's faith that keeps me calm. It's faith that gives me peace."

The president spoke for almost half an hour in the usual spot for the sermon on the church's program, addressing about 500 people gathered in the Family Life Center of the congregation founded by freed slaves in 1866. At times he spoke like a preacher, opening his speech with "Good morning. Praise be to God," and concluding with "through God all things are possible."

He spoke of holding the kind of "faith that breaks the silence of an earthquake's wake with the sound of prayer and hymns sung by the Haitian community," as the congregation applauded in agreement.

King visited the church in 1956, Obama noted, "as a 27-year-old preacher to speak on what he called the challenge of a new age."

At the time of King's visit the Supreme Court had ruled that the desegregated bus system in Montgomery, Ala., he opposed was unconstitutional. The high court had also ruled in Brown v. Board of Education against school segregation but schools and states had "ignored it with impunity," Obama recalled.

"Here we are more than half a century later, once again facing the challenges of a new age," he said. Even with "fits and starts," he said there has been progress over bigotry and prejudice.

"It's that progress that made it possible for me to be here today, for the good people of this country to elect an African-American the 44th president of the United States of America."

He said the civil rights movement in particular and the country in general have been successful when all Americans are responsible and work hard.

"In this country, there's no substitute for hard work," Obama said. "No substitute for a job well done, no substitute for being responsible stewards of God's blessings."

The conscience clause, where health care workers workers can opt out of offering services like contraception if the workers are morally against it, has become a contentious issue in the campaign.

In a recent interview, Coakley suggested to radio host Ken Pittman that Catholics should not work in emergency rooms.