Rep. Weiner: ‘I just needed a drink’ after GOP response  —  One Democratic congressman says he was ready to hit the bottle after hearing the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union Tuesday night.  —  Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.), who is known for his outspokenness …

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 …

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 …

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 …

THE MISSING DEPTH OF THOUGHT.... I've long considered Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) the Republican version of John Edwards.  After one largely underwhelming term, in which he didn't tackle any noteworthy policy initiatives and failed to distinguished himself as an expert in an area …

Cantor jabs at Reid on Social Security reform  —  Entitlement reform will be tough as long as Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) runs the Senate, the second-ranking House Republican said Wednesday.  —  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) chided Reid, who's increasingly a target …

Against Obligatory Editorials  —  He still loves his wife.  But after 25 years of marriage, he has lost his enthusiasm for sex with her.  Still.  It is Valentine's Day.  And she has been hinting.  So he takes her to a nice dinner, uncharactertistically orders an after-dinner drink …

The Ryan Response  —  ... was as bad as you might expect.  Lots of breast-beating about deficits; you'd never know that no leading Republican, Ryan very much included, has offered a serious proposal to cut the deficit.  Some cooked statistics about federal spending.  And then there was this curious assertion:

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.

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.

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.

Feisty Issa Spars with Committee Members over Procedures in First Oversight Hearing  —  ABC News' Arlette Saenz reports: After last night's show of civility across party lines at the State of the Union, Rep. Darrell Issa's first Oversight Committee hearing on bailouts and the foreclosure crisis started with a bout over procedure.

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.

Loughner researched lethal injection before Tucson shooting, sources say  —  TUCSON — In the weeks and days before the shooting rampage in Tucson, suspect Jared Lee Loughner surfed the Internet on his computer in what investigators believe was an effort to prepare for his alleged assassination attempt …