The Administration

President Obama wants more spending — 29 programs, in fact — but he says it won’t cost a dime. That must mean he wants to raise taxes.

The 2013 State of the Union address was President Obama’s most significant State of the Union speech and his last significant State of the Union Speech.  The moment presented to him, free from facing the voters ever again, newly confident with the support of a majority of American voters, was short.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard sits down with John Feehery and Peter Fenn to discuss President Obama's State of the Union address and his agenda for 2013.

One week from today President Obama will give his fifth State of the Union address, the first of his second term and the most important one of his presidency. Sure, he has four years ahead of him as president, but this year is his last year to secure a legacy, and make progress on critical issues including an economic recovery before the political campaigns begins - for the midterm elections of 2014 and the open presidential election of 2016.

Following his second inaugural address, which surprised members of both parties, the focus on Obama's upcoming SOTU address is more intense than usual. Given a fiscal crisis and several crises overseas, the president's landmark speech on equality, historic as it was, left so much unsaid.

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The Republican Party spent much of the ’60s opposing the Democrats on civil rights legislation, affirmative action legislation and race-based quotas. This gives the Democrats the benefit of the doubt on race-related issues. The Republican Party continues to suffer from the credibility gap to go toe to toe with the Democrats on the race issue. They continue to lose this dramatic battle every time.

Speaker John Boehner is spot-on in concluding that President's Obama ultimate goal is to annihilate the Republican Party. Obama has no intentions of reaching across the aisle and incorrectly assumes that the American people are so misinformed regarding the critical issues that they will gladly support his warped and diabolical agenda. When will the American people stop listening to Obama and his mainstream-media public-relations machine and finally weigh the consequences of his extreme liberal position? This president at every opportunity tries his best to dismantle the idea of American exceptionalism.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard sits down with columnists John Feehery and Peter Fenn to look ahead at President Obama's second term.

President Obama's inaugural address was a fine speech that ignored the most important political issue that will define the next four years of his presidency, which is how to govern in a town of divided government in which the other party is mostly hostile to his presidency and overly influenced by factions that detest the very notion of his presidency. The inaugural address was a hybrid combination of the remnants of a campaign speech, with a bow to the liberal base, and the rhetorical portions of a State of the Union address, minus the policy specifics. Totally ignored was the subject of how this Democratic president will govern with the current Republicans in Congress, a subject that will hopefully be addressed in the State of the Union.

The new TV ad from the NRA proves they have gone off the deep end.
 
They attack President Obama and his children. They intersperse images of guns as they refer to the protection that the president’s daughters receive. They call the president an “elitist hypocrite.”
 
Sick. Disgusting. Repugnant. Terrifying. All words used on “Morning Joe” to describe the ad and the NRA.
 
Watch the ad. Judge for yourself. Can anyone in his or her right mind justify a spot like this?

After President Obama got finished attacking the First Amendment, he’s now on to the Second.

As Mitt Romney predicted during his presidential campaign against this president, Obama might have more “flexibility” in a second term when it comes to deals with Russian dictators, but he will have less need for it when it comes to dealing with people in his own country who don’t happen to share his views. Romney predicted, correctly, that, while Obama was accountable to the people, he would not go after people’s legal guns. But once he’s a lame duck — what a surprise — he attacks our Second Amendment rights.