* Links to the full text of both the SOTU and the Democratic response are at the bottom.

8:09 The President of the United States makes his way to the podium. Anonymous handshaker's comment: "Mr. President, I am saying a prayer for your success." At least the applause is loud. Sounds like Keith Olbermann caught that quote too -- he just commented on it. (That, or he's reading our liveblog.)

In case you missed it, by the way, I did a quick prequel to the SOTU, with some comments on the press briefing earlier this morning. Read that if you want to know what to expect.

After watching the President's address on the Iraq War a couple of weeks ago, I would imagine most folks are expecting a more-of-the-same performance with the State of the Union address tonight. But the pre-SOTU press briefing put out by the White House points to a couple of potential surprises this evening which just may make it worth watching.

Managing editors sometimes get into the habit of managing in the background and letting their publication's star writers shine. For better or for worse, I've pretty much done that for the week or so that The Texas Blue has been up. But I feel I have to note one small thing, to perhaps balance some invective being leveled in the blogosphere:

Intentionally running (funding, supporting) a primary opponent against an incumbent Democrat which holds a seat in an area which is at best only marginally blue (which would apply to far too many of our Democrats in the state legislature) is, put simply, political suicide.

6:06
Tom Craddick is now officially the Speaker of the House. Bonus points to Rep. Richard Raymond, who had the guts to speak out against Craddick and his scare tactics in his objection to an otherwise uncontested election. That's it for the Speaker's race, so that's it for me. Thanks for following along, everybody.

5:59
The passing of HR 34 and 35 took a few hours to get through. In about 45 seconds, those two house resolutions were just wiped away. There's a certain irony in that.

5:45