With sorrow I announce the death of Nancy Anton, an original and founding member of the News Hounds. For most of the time I knew her, starting in early 2004, she suffered from serious health problems. Those problems prevented her from participating in the blog several years ago. But she was an important force in the blog whose presence was felt long after she retired from it.

Nancy Pelosi went on CNN yesterday and said she “knows" Newt Gingrich will never become president. It’s kind of a no-brainer for most people, including conservatives like Ann Coulter. But when Pelosi said it, Fox jumped on it to accuse her of “threaten(ing)” Gingrich with some secret information she had. Later, when Pelosi said she had no secret information, Fox accused her of lying.

As George Costanza once said, "it's not a lie if you believe it." While the folks at Fox might not believe what they're peddling, it's clear that they want their audience to do so. Thus, they provide them with Fox "facts" that are reinforced over a span of shows or sometimes within a show. In an effort to alienate Catholic voters over the Obama administration's new requirement for employer health plans to cover the cost of contraceptives, Fox takes a page from the playbook of the US Council of Catholic Bishops in its reporting,as fact, that this coverage includes abortion drugs. The problem here is that it isn't true; but that hasn't stopped Fox from repeating it four times. On Monday, not only did Megyn Kelly not correct her guest's statement about this; but she presented it, as fact, in a subsequent piece framed by another Fox fact - that Obama is "picking on" Catholics. While Fox is entitled to their opinion, they're not entitled to their facts which, in the case of the abortion pill, is anything but.

The release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns yesterday revealed how, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “the wealthiest candidate to seek the presidency in recent history has benefited from a tax code that lets investors pay taxes at a much lower rate than people who earn wages or salaries.” So faced with questions about whether he can relate to regular people, Romney argued on Hannity last night that his large charitable contributions boosted his tax bracket from 15% to “between about 32 and 42%.” Hilariously - or maybe pathetically - Romney claimed in the same segment that President Obama is out of touch with reality and the middle class.

This is an open thread where you can share thoughts and observations about President Obama's State of the Union speech - and, of course, the media coverage. I think I've got it embedded after the jump. Text of the speech after the jump.

It’s getting difficult to keep track of the Republican infighting over at Fox News. Yesterday brought Sarah Palin’s entertaining attacks on Chris Christie, a Mitt Romney surrogate, for having called Newt Gingrich an “embarrassment” to the party. That happened on The Five and Hannity shows. Meanwhile, on The O’Reilly Factor, there was Ann Coulter, going after Newt Gingrich again!

Add to the litany of "outrages," promoted by Fox News, the new HHS mandate which requires the health plans of religious institutions to cover contraceptives with no co-payment. The US Council of Catholic Bishops, headed by Fox pal, the conservative Archbishop Timothy Dolan, is mighty pissed and if the bishop's ain't happy ain't nobody happy - especially at Fox News where this topic has been the focus of indignation by Fox's professional Catholics - Maltese Knight Peter Johnson Jr, Steve Doocy, and Fr. Jonathan Morris. But being that Megyn Kelly's "America Live" is an official "news" show, I thought that maybe she would bring some sanity to the issue. Turns out, not so much given that she interviewed the Catholic League's Bill Donohue whose connection to sanity is very, very tenuous. Fasten your seatbelts cuz we're in for a bumpy ride!

Fox & Friends ran a couple of segments this morning purporting to preview President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight. One segment was with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and the other was with Obama spokesperson Valerie Jarrett. But there was one common thread – the anti-Obama scorn of the hosts. They even found time to play a new anti-Obama RNC ad being released today. 

While some folks at the "fair & balanced" Fox "news" network complain about the librul media, what other cable news network has a news host who is a partisan former presidential candidate and part of a religiously based political movement that seeks to strip women of their reproductive rights? We don't know, for sure, where the "here" is in family values paragon Bill O'Reilly's comment that "we fight so hard here for the rights of the unborn." But if he's referring to Fox News, he's on point as nobody fights any harder against reproductive rights for women than Mike Huckabee, both in his private life and on his program on the "fair & balanced" Fox "news" channel.  

Sarah Palin has taken to going after Chris Christie for having called Newt Gingrich an “embarrassment” to the party. First, she attacked Christie on The Five, saying he had gotten his “panties in a wad.” Then, on Hannity, she accused Christie of having embarrassed the party when he took a state police helicopter to his son’s ballgame. But in her second segment on Hannity, Palin complained about Mitt Romney not reaching out to the Tea Party enough. That suggests – to me, anyway – that her real beef is about not getting the kind of attention and respect from the Romney campaign she thinks she deserves.