The Politics of Evasion  —  If you were a visitor from Mars, watching tonight's State of the Union address and Paul Ryan's Republican response, you would have no reason to think that the looming insolvency of our entitlement system lies at the heart of the economic challenges facing the United States over the next two decades.

Poll: High Marks for Obama's State of the Union Speech  —  An overwhelming majority of Americans approved of President Obama's overall message in his State of the Union on Tuesday night, according to a CBS News Poll of speech watchers.  —  According to the poll, which was conducted online …

Bachmann calls for full repeal of ‘Obamacare’  —  Washington (CNN) — Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, responded to President Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night from the Tea Party Express headquarters.  Here is a transcript of Bachmann's speech.  —  Bachmann: Good evening.

BUDGET AND ECONOMIC OUTLOOK: FISCAL YEARS 2011 THROUGH 2021  —  Text-only.  —  The United States faces daunting economic and budgetary challenges.  The economy has struggled to recover from the recent recession, which was triggered by a large decline in house prices and a financial crisis …

EXCLUSIVE: Obama to Declare ‘The Rules Have Changed’  —  Full text of speech draft obtained by National Journal  —  President Obama speaks to both houses of Congress during his first State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on January 27, 2010.  —  Insisting bipartisanship …

Good News From the Middle East (Really)  —  IT has lately become the accepted wisdom that the Middle East peace process is dead, finished, kaput.  This belief has been reinforced by Al Jazeera's release this week of some 1,600 documents that are said to describe the inside workings of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2008.

Fact Checking Rep. Bachmann's “Tea Party Response” To The State Of The Union  —  Insisting that she was not upstaging the official GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) offered a combative and highly misleading speech of her own following the president's address.

Game-changer!  Arizona to pass 2012 eligibility law  —  Obama will have to produce birth certificate to run again  —  It could be a game-changer.  —  A plan in Arizona to require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility to occupy the Oval Office is approaching critical mass, even though it has just been introduced.

Rep. Broun to Obama: ‘You believe in socialism’  —  GOP Rep. Paul Broun (Ga.) rebuked President Obama using perhaps the sharpest language among his Republican colleagues following the State of the Union address Tuesday night.  —  Broun took to Twitter during the address, accusing the president of believing in socialism.

Dear commenters, Steve Doocy is reading  —  One of the themes of the Esquire profile of Roger Ailes, with which Ailes cooperated, is that Ailes reads ever word written about him.  —  You might think that was an exaggeration.  But apparently he does, or someone over on Sixth Avenue does.

Gov. Rick Scott stalls new voter-approved redistricting standards  —  TALLAHASSEE — Two voter-approved constitutional amendments requiring the Legislature to draw political districts along nonpartisan standards could be jeopardized by one of Gov. Rick Scott's first acts.

Get A Better Metaphor  —  A reader writes: … The problem here is imagining that war analogies map onto public discourse.  In a war, the object is to kill the people on the other side.  So bringing a knife to a bazooka fight isn't very effective.  But in politics, the object is to persuade …

Egypt president's son, family flee to Britain  —  CAIRO: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's son, who is considered as his successor, has fled to Britain along with his family, a US-based Arabic website reported.  —  The plane with Gamal Mubarak, his wife and daughter on board left …