Briefs

• Full house for Boise speech

BOISE - Tickets for President Barack Obama's Wednesday appearance at Boise State University were distributed to the general public Monday afternoon after students and faculty got theirs earlier in the day.

One hour later, they were gone.

At 3:45 p.m., the ticket line snaked for half a mile around Boise State's Albertsons Stadium, practically encircling it. The box office began distributing tickets shortly before 4 p.m.

An estimated 5,000 tickets were distributed for what will be a standing-room-only event in BSU's Caven-Williams Sports Complex.

There were still several hundred people in line when the tickets ran out shortly before 5.

- The Idaho Statesman

• 'Year of Action' fell short for Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama used his last State of the Union to declare 2014 a "Year of Action," and he can claim credit for accomplishing several of the goals he set. The smaller ones.

That's because while he was able to check off most of what he promised to do through executive action in last year's speech, Obama was unable in the bitterly partisan election year to get Congress to go along with the bigger plans he had for the country that required its approval.

As Obama prepares to make that annual trek up Pennsylvania Avenue to address Congress once again, here's a look back a year later at some promises he made.

Immigration: "Let's get immigration reform done this year," Obama declared to a Congress that had long blocked his efforts. And so he did, although it was not the broad plan he envisioned that would have allowed a path to citizenship for more than 11 million immigrants illegally in the United States. Instead, Obama took executive action to make more than 4 million of those immigrants eligible for protection from deportation and eligible for work permits.

Taxes: While most of Obama's proposals last year were positions he had long advocated, one of the few new proposals he offered was extension of the earned-income tax credit, which helps boost the wages of low-income families through tax refunds. The proposal never passed.