In this age of word-counting and laughter-tabulating for clicks, there are worse things you could do than assess the reading level of a president’s State of the Union address. Politico is pushing a study that shows that President Obama’s three SOTU speeches were written at an 8th-9th grade reading level, based on the Flesch-Kincaid standard. Aside from deciding what conclusions to draw from this, is this measure any less arbitrary than word-counting?

In an interview with Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos Wednesday morning, Vice President Joe Biden passed on an opportunity to call former House Speaker Newt Gingrich out over his overtly racial politicking. Asked if Gingrich is playing racial politics with references to President Obama as the “Food Stamp President,” Biden responded, “It’s hard to tell. I’m not being facetious. It’s hard to tell what Newt means. He says a lot.”

Appearing on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, The Dally Caller‘s Tucker Carlson argued with Alan Colmes about President Obama’s State of the Union address, with Carlson blasting it for many of its pro-government themes.

While President Obama‘s State of the Union speech received a predictably mixed response divided among partisan lines, most people tended to agree the most cringe-inducing moment of the night came during a milk joke that went over like a lead balloon. “I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense…We got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain a spill – because milk was somehow classified as an oil. With a rule like that, I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk.” Obama’s crack drew some nervous laughter.

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain enthusiastically tore into President Obama and his State of the Union address Tuesday night, calling the economy “anemic.” “With all due respect Mr. President, some of us are not stupid,” Cain exclaimed. “The state of the union is not good!”

Following the State Of The Union address, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer commended President Obama for delivering a speech “that struck the right tone.” “It was less partisan than I would have expected,” Krauthammer observed.

During a SOTU preview segment on Tuesday evening’s Hardball, MSNBC contributor Howard Fineman made an observation about a rankling trend among certain opponents of President Obama, the tendency not to address him by his hard-won title. Framing it in the context of those who question the President’s legitimacy, Fineman noted “I have never heard Newt Gingrich call President Obama ‘President Obama.’”

I thought I’d put Fineman’s claim to the test, using last night’s debate. The results were surprising.

During President Obama’s January State of the Union address, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA 10) tweeted “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.”

Broun became embroiled in another controversy when, at a Tuesday town hall meeting, he was asked “who is going to shoot Obama?” and responded with stunning nonchalance.

During Wednesday night’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin delivered a nonsensical rebuttal to President Obama‘s State of the Union address that has been a topic of conversation on cable news all week. While there are legitimate reasons to mock Palin’s response, the claim that she said the Soviet Union “won the space race,” repeated again on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher, just isn’t true.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin offered her thoughts on President Obama‘s State of the Union address to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Wednesday night, and while she cleverly zeroed in on the unfortunate abbreviation of the speech’s “Win The Future” theme, Palin’s analysis quickly went rogue with reality. Despite her proximity to its launch site, Palin displayed ignorance of Sputnik 1‘s significance (both in the speech, and in Soviet history), and offered a bizarre non-prescription for America involving something called “Spudnuts.”

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA 10) became the closest thing to a “You lie!” moment, tweeting during the address “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.” Shortly thereafter, I asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if he had a reaction to the [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann made history tonight–not just for being the first representative of the Tea Party to give a State of the Union response, but also for flatly refusing to look America in the eye. Bachmann, who came equipped with charts and Iwo Jima photos, began her speech looking slightly off camera. As Bachmann spoke, viewers–including the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann–took to Twitter to ask a simple question: “what’s she looking at?”

The White House has taken more care than usual that President Obama’s State of the Union address not leak to the press early, advising reporters that their advance copies of the text would be sent out very close to the speech’s scheduled start. Those efforts appear to be for naught, however, as The National Journal has obtained a copy of the SOTU from a Hill staffer, and posted the entire thing online.

At Monday’s White House briefing, The Blade‘s Chris Johnson asked Gibbs about a 1996 questionnaire that indicated Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, and I followed up by asking if the President was any closer to revealing his “evolved” personal beliefs on the subject. Gibbs pointed to previous remarks by the President, and said it’s an issue that he “thinks a lot about,” but there are no immediate plans for him to address the issue.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing, Robert Gibbs fielded several questions about the status of the repeal of DOMA (The Defense of Marriage Act), which he said, “given the current makeup of the Congress,” would be “inordinately challenging.”

Given President Obama’s recent remarks about his “evolving” opinion on same-sex marriage, and the fact that he used last year’s State of the Union address to promise the repeal of DADT, I asked Gibbs if the President might address the DOMA repeal, and his personal views on gay marriage, at this year’s SOTU.

On Studio B today, Shep Smith discussed Chief Justice Roberts’ response to President Obama’s SOTU with Judge Andrew Napolitano, who took a rather hard line…against Roberts. Saying, basically, that while it’s nothing new for the President to criticize SCOTUS (at all), it is not okay for any member of the Supreme Court to publicly reply. At all. It’s “unheard of” for the court to reply, says Napolitano.

The Founding Bloggers? Or an Internet tea party? Take your pick. This morning news broke that a group of “politically diverse group of [high profile] bloggers” were so impressed with last week’s question and answer session between President Obama and the House Republicans that they have banded together to call on the president and the Congress to make it a regular thing.

On Meet the Press yesterday, David Axlerod had this to say about Justice Alito’s SOTU response: “Well, I–look, we–in this weird political season, we’ve become accustomed to unusual outbursts in the chamber during these speeches, so.” Meaning that between the town halls and Joe Wilson, being heckled by a Supreme Court Justice is pretty much par for the course.

After Keith Olbermann‘s post-SOTU j’accuse of a bevy of conservative talking heads, in which he equated their cries of “arrogance” with the racially inflammatory “uppity,” many thought Keith was overreaching at best. Be that as it may, both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report covered a case of the pot calling the kettle “arrogant,” as they reported on the unprecedented bit of reverse-place-putting that was the Republicans’ Mini-me SOTU. It’s not that Obama is “uppity,” it’s that the Republicans have been too “downity.”

A lot of people have been screaming for transparency on a number of issues of late and today both the GOP and President Obama complied…did they ever. The President met with Congressional Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore to lead what the New York Times described as “a rare, sustained and unscripted exchange over the best way to address the nation’s ills.” Without question it makes for riveting watching.

Glenn Beck made a good point on last night’s show about the state of Obama’s majority in Congress, how the Dem supermajority (also known as the Republicans “under my Grandma’s sink”) has been useless thus far, and the tyranny of the filibuster. And he did it with magnets.

This ain’t no Joe Wilson moment. When you’re a Supreme Court justice and you quietly mouth back to a President during his first official State of the Union address the result is a lot of intellectual heavy weights using to oped pages to wrestle over the role of SCOTUS (does everybody now want to be a cable news talking head at heart?) and the appropriateness of the President challenging (threatening?) them in a one-sided public forum.

Sarah Palin has weighed in on her Facebook on President Obama’s State of the Union. It’s sort of an extended version of the remarks she made on Fox News last night. And then there’s this interesting little aside which sounds a lot like sour grapes…and rightly so!

Did President Obama give the media a subtle smackdown last night? In the last fiery quarter of his speech (which began with a SCOTUS dress down and ended with Obama weirdly chanting USA) this admonishment to Congress was particularly notable.

President Obama has a lot to talk about during his State of the Union address last night. Perhaps most notably he didn’t get around to talking about health care until more than 30 minutes into the address. Also, he didn’t get heckled this time around…technically speaking. Here’s a look at some of the reactions from across the board.