State of the Union? The second greatest American president, Andrew Jackson, refused to give  the speeches, seeing only the posturing of the French courts and the royalist tendencies of the Colonials.

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.

President Obama will deliver the annual State of the Union address on Tuesday. But no matter what he says, the event will be badly tarnished.

There’s already one turd in the punch bowl: Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) has invited Ted Nugent to attend as his guest.

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss theology, but I want to offer a standing ovation to Pope Benedict on the matter of his resigning the papacy and putting the interests of his church, his faith and his parishioners above his own position and status.

Tonight, we will hear President Obama give a defense of big-government liberalism and make an argument that growing government is good for America. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Almost 1 in 6 Americans depends upon the government for food assistance. To put the enormity of this dependency into perspective, the number of people on food stamps is more than the combined populations of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Or in political terms, the astonishing number of food stamp recipients equates to 74 electoral votes.

HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) are an extremely good idea, for they place responsibility for an individual's health in that individual's hand.

The money that is placed in the HSA stays there and can only be used for the legitimate medical purpose.  It can accumulate over a lifetime, and you should be able to transfer your entire account at the time of death.

Rick Perry will not be reelected governor of Texas. Odds are 60 percent he does not run for reelection, 60 percent he is defeated in a primary if he runs, and 50 percent he is defeated by a Democratic nominee if Perry wins a primary and Texas Democrats choose a strong candidate. 

Meanwhile, the speech by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) answering President Obama means nothing politically, while his conduct in the coming immigration debate means everything, which brings me to the GOP retoot. Contrary to assertions from many there is no GOP "reboot," which implies the machine is turned off and turned back on with defects removed. Instead we have a GOP "retoot," a slight change of tone masking an underlying blood war within the GOP as Karl Rove declares war against the right and Roger Ailes glides towards the center.

I was intrigued with Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins University Dr. Ben Carson's perspective on tithing and our tax system during his recent address at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The reason that tithing is such a fair way to tax people is because it's proportional.  As soon as you move away from proportional taxing, ideology takes over.  As a result, ideology is, quite frankly, arbitrary and depends upon the flavor of the month.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Connie Mariano — the former White House doctor who now lives in Arizona and popped in the news last week when she offered a long-distance diagnosis of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — was also the first person to see Bill Clinton on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998, when The Washington Post broke the Monica Lewinsky story. (Mariano served in the Clinton White House for eight years and briefly in the White Houses of both Bushes.)

Bill Clinton, according to an insider I interviewed for my book on Bill Clinton’s post presidency, saw Mariano as a wise, sympathetic ear. (She apparently served him well and counseled him successfully on losing weight.)