President Obama Takes Oath of Office - 8 News NOW

President Obama Takes Oath of Office

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WASHINGTON, DC -- President Barack Obama is promising to uphold the Constitution in a public swearing in ceremony that signals the beginning of his second term in office.

Placing his hand on two Bibles -- one used by President Abraham Lincoln at his first Inauguration and one used by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Obama took a public oath of office on Monday, after he was sworn in during a private ceremony on Sunday. The Constitution requires presidential terms to begin on Jan. 20.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered Obama's private swearing in on Sunday and the public ceremony Monday. He also swore Obama in during his first inauguration in 2009.

District of Columbia transit officials say they're experiencing a much smaller crowd for the presidential inauguration than four years ago.

Metro says 308,000 train passengers had entered the system as of midday Monday. That's about 60 percent of the number of passengers by the same time in 2009. But officials also say the crowd is larger than expected.

Obama started his second inaugural address with a lot of quotations from -- and invocations of -- the nation's founding documents.

"Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness."

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