(2014-01-27) — Ignoring more than 220 years of tradition, President Obama has, reportedly, already delivered the State of the Union address privately in the Oval Office rather than to a joint session of Congress, where he won’t be appearing Tuesday as scheduled. White House sources say the president told them “we can’t wait” for members of Congress to come together.

“As he has mentioned, President Obama has a pen, so he wrote the speech,” said an unnamed administration source, “and then he stood up from his desk and delivered the stirring address to a handful of White House aides, Secret Service agents and a cleaning crew late Sunday night.”

Under the Constitution, the president is not required to give a speech, but merely to report to Congress from time to time on “the State of Union” and to recommend any measures he thinks appropriate.

“Although the president is naturally reluctant to take a literalist view of the Constitution,” the source said, “in this case, it suits his personal objectives in dealing with this do-nothing Congress. Why bother with all the ceremony and the humiliating prospect of asking them to pass laws, when he can just seize the moment and get stuff done.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner called Obama’s failure to deliver a lengthy speech before the joint session of Congress “highly unusual,” but acknowledged that Obama “just saved me about three nicotine patches.”