It makes sense that Oliver North would take time to bash the SOTU speech by the President. He's a Republican on a Republican news station, so he has to tow the party line and not give credit to the President for anything. It was a bit curious that he criticized the President for not talking about the Seal Team rescue of hostages and for letting out later about the Seal Team rescue mission. It's so incredibly stupid looking at the article where he said many details were given about the mission, which essentially was they parachuted into the area. He claimed this was leaking operational secrets. No it would be giving away secrets if they came in by a Star Trek teleporter, or used a Romulan cloaking device or if they were X-Men mutants and phased in by Kitty Pryde.

The real curious issue he brought up was that the SOTU speech was too long. He said there is an unwritten rule that a SOTU speech should be no more than 30 minutes. I never heard about this, so I did what any responsible reader would do; I went to Google and looked up what had been the length of SOTU speeches. Looking at the numbers, if you consider the unofficial rule being based on Ford, Reagan and Nixon, yes, that would give you an average around 30-45 minutes. In fact, since the time of Johnson, Republicans speeches, except for George W. Bush, are closer to 45 minutes. George W. Bush and Obama are pretty close in time, with Bush averaging 53 minutes and Obama at 1:05. Clinton was a talker, averaging 1:15 but Jimmy Carter was closer to Nixon on brevity, with Nixon at 35 minutes and Carter at 36.

Essentially, as time has gone on, the SOTU speeches have gotten longer, both with Republicans and Democrats.