Marc Kilstein

With spirited rhetoric about protecting the middle class and enforcing fairness in taxation, president Obama abandoned his normally conciliatory tone about non-partisan politics during last night's State of the Union address and instead highlighted the differences between right and left. Although both parties have had the chance for rebuttal, The Takeaway has assembled their own partisan players to comment on the president's remarks.

Last night the University of South Florida hosted a GOP presidential debate, the first of two scheduled in Florida leading up to the state's January 31 primary. The crowd was silenced by a no-applause policy which seems to have muted the effect of Newt Gingrich, who in the past has received accolades from the audience after partisan broadsides. The debate sets the agenda for the next week as candidates prepare for a primary which may ultimately decide the nominee to challenge President Obama in November.

Joe Paterno, the most successful coach in major college football history, the face of Penn State University, and at one point, among the most admired figures in the entire sporting world, is dead at the age of 85. News of Paterno’s death from lung cancer came early Sunday morning. At the center of one of the worst scandals to ever hit the sports world, what JoePa's legacy will be, once the dust clears, is up to more people than just Lions fans.

Rick Perry is out, Rick Santorum actually won Iowa, and Newt Gingrich's second wife says he asked for an open marriage before he filed for divorce. The four remaining candidates debated in Charleston one last time before this weekend's South Carolina primary. We take a look back at what was arguably the wildest day of the 2012 Presidential campaign thus far.

Friday South Carolina will hold the "First in the South" primary. Since 1980 the victor of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the presidential nomination. But the Palmetto State is sharing the limelight this morning with the Hawkeye State as the miscount in Iowa has skewed the results of the first GOP caucus. Rick Santorum is now declared the winner of the Iowa Caucus by a small margin of 34 votes. But in the end does it really matter?

Three days before the South Carolina Republican primary it seems like time has run out for Mitt Romney’s GOP rivals. The former Massachusetts governor is winning by a large margin in South Carolina polls, and should he go on to win the Palmetto state, he most likely will earn the Republican presidential nomination. But who knows what attacks will be launched, endorsements will be made and what surprises might be in store over the next 72 hours. Chad Connelly, South Carolina's GOP chairman, talks about the political climate in his home state.

Nearly two years ago, a bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled that the American government could not ban political spending by corporations and labor unions during electoral campaigns. The case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overruled important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations and dramatically altered the way campaigns are conducted. 

On Thursday a video showing four U.S. Marines purportedly urinating on the corpses of three dead Taliban fighters went viral on the internet. Defense secretary Leon Panetta called the behavior “utterly deplorable” and Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai decried the video as “completely inhumane.” The video comes at a tense time, as the U.S. tries to foster peace talks between the Taliban and Karzai's government.