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.

Another month has passed since Sean Hannity offered to undergo waterboarding for charity - on April 22, 2009!

Ann Coulter actually sounded reasonable on Fox & Friends yesterday as she lit into Newt Gingrich and his right-wing talk-radio style of campaigning that won him the South Carolina primary the night before. “South Carolinians would rather have the emotional satisfaction of a snotty remark toward the president than to beat Obama in the fall,” Coulter said. It’s nice to see Coulter – a Romney supporter – talking up the importance of tamping down the heated rhetoric. But it’s hard to take her seriously given that that’s exactly the kind of rhetoric that is her stock in trade. However, it was a point that seemed to completely escape any of the Fox & Friends hosts.

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Steve Doocy usually has a vacuous grin on this face while he's promoting right wing propaganda. But today, he was uncharacteristically snarling as he got almost histrionic over the Obama HHS decision to give religious organizations an extra year to figure out how they will be able to comply with the HHS decision requiring them to provide free birth control to their employees - a victory for women's reproductive rights. This Fox enabled "outrage" against the Obama administration policy, as a way to foment anti-Obama sentiment in the Catholic electorate, began in November with the super Catholic Maltese Knight, Peter Johnson, Jr's. promotion of the talking points of his liege lords in the US Council of Catholic Bishops to his fellow Catholic, the head bobbing Steve Doocy. Yesterday, in his weekly sermonette, Foxpriest Fr. Jonathan Morris vehemently opined that the HHS policy is "offensive." And this morning, Doocy and Johnson were back to do some more pimping of the bishops positions - the womens' position not so much - in fact not at all as far as I can tell. As the "church lady" would say, "isn't that special."