President's Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed  —  In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush presented an arguably misleading and often flawed description of "the enemy" that the United States faces overseas, lumping together disparate groups with opposing ideologies …

Kerry won't run for president in '08  —  WASHINGTON —Senator John F. Kerry plans to announce today that he will not run in the 2008 presidential race, and will instead remain in Congress and seek reelection to his Senate seat next year, according to senior Democratic officials.

Former Duke Prosecutor Faces New Ethics Charges  —  Nifong Accused of Withholding DNA Evidence From Defense, Making Misrepresentations to Judge  —  ABC Law & Justice Unit  —  Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong has been charged with new ethics violations for his conduct on the Duke lacrosse sex assault case.

The Knee-Jerk Opposition  —  If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad.  Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase — a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less — Democrats still howl.

A Powerful Response  —  Jim Webb tore up his party's playbook—and helped point the Democrats in a new direction.  —  Something unprecedented happened tonight, beyond the doorkeeper announcing, "Madame Speaker."  For the first time ever, the response to the State of the Union Message overshadowed the president's big speech.

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE NEW YORK MONEY PEOPLE:  —  I've admired Wes Clark for a long time.  But his comments to Ariana Huffington about wealthy Jews pushing the country toward war with Iran strike me as nutty and disturbing.  Either I seriously misjudged the man, or his comments were misquoted or taken wildly out of context.

SOTU: MCCAIN — LACK OF SELF-CONTROL?  AN EXPRESSION OF CONTEMPT?  EMBARRASSING IN ANY CASE.  —  By Tucker Carlson  —  "We advance our own interests by helping reformers and advocates for democracy"?  That was Bush's position on the Middle East immediately after 9-11 and, remarkably, it remains his position.

MN congresswoman can't keep her hand off President  —  Newly-elected Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann got quite a bit of face time with President Bush after his State of the Union Speech Tuesday night.  —  While the President was signing autographs for members of Congress after the speech …

Iraq Parliament Finds a Quorum Hard to Come By  —  Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, read a roll call of the 275 elected members with a goal of shaming the no-shows.  —  Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister?  Absent, living in Amman and London.  Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian statesman?

Getting a Read On the Speech Makes for Quite A Snapshot  —  George W. Bush flirted with eloquence only at the end of his so-so, nuts-and-bolts State of the Union speech last night: "The state of our union is strong," he said, "our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on."

Libby Defense Portrays Client as a Scapegoat  —  I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president's former chief of staff, was made a scapegoat by White House officials to protect the president's longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, Mr. Libby's lawyer asserted in his opening statement on Tuesday.

Watching the SOTU Speech on ABC  —  Did they really need to drag World News anchor Charles Gibson all the way down from New York just to do a stand-up intro with the Capitol dome over his shoulder?  George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz were in separate locations, so it wasn't as though he was joining them in the studio.

Rivals CNN and Fox News Spar Over Obama Report  —  A disputed report on the Web site of a conservative magazine about Senator Barack Obama's childhood schooling kicked off a pointed exchange this week between the rival cable news networks CNN and Fox News, when CNN seemed to make an overt effort …