Declaring that Cuban President Raul Castro wants a better relationship with the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy called Tuesday for a new U.S.-Cuba policy based on what he called "ice cream diplomacy."

The Vermont Democrat, who met with Castro while leading a Congressional delegation to Cuba, said the Cuban leader...

It may seem far-fetched to claim that the meteor that exploded above Siberia last week deserves a footnote in the memoir I'm writing of my late parents, both prominent writers, but it's true.

My paternal grandfather, Joseph Eisele, was born in Bavaria and came to this country as a young...

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the issue it raises of how his successor deals with a living ex-pope has touched off a heated debate among presidential historians about how American presidents deal with their predecessors. Here are some examples.

"Harry Truman said Eisenhower pulled rank on him whenever...

While we wait for Daniel Day-Lewis and Lincoln to win a lion's share of the 2013 Academy Awards on Feb. 24, President Lincoln's birthday is a good time to recall a dramatic example of his political leadership and moral courage that has gone largely unnoticed by historians and movie-makers.

I'm...

It was 40 years to the day since Daniel Inouye had been elected to represent the new state of Hawaii in Congress and he still couldn't believe his good fortune.

"If I had told someone 40 years ago that this is what I'd be doing now, they would have said,...

Teddy White was right.

As Theodore H. White, the late great TIME/Life reporter and author of the Making of the President volumes once counseled me, there are two cardinal rules political reporters should never forget.

The first is "to always resist the thinking of people you see every day,...

When No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 8 Oklahoma face off in Norman, Okla., Saturday, none of the more than 82,000 spectators will be rooting harder for the Sooners, or with a greater sense of the storied rivalry between the two football powerhouses, than Jakie Sandefer.

That's because Sandefer was...

You call that a foreign policy debate?

I call it the Big Bore in Boca Raton. I've seen and heard better debates over America's role in the world at my local Irish bar.

If it was indeed about foreign policy, then our next president, whether it's Barack Obama...

Since I covered Sen. George McGovern for more than a decade as a Washington correspondent for the Aberdeen (S.D.) American News (and other Knight-Ridder newspapers), including his ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign, I feel justified in resurrecting something I wrote in this space on the occasion of his 85th birthday in...

Too bad Sam Gibbons isn't still around to advise President Obama on the central issue of the 2012 election.

That was my first thought after hearing that the 92-year-old former Democratic congressman from Florida died on October 10 at his home in Tampa, two days after Obama and Mitt Romney...

Here's a letter to the editor of The New York Times that you won't be reading in that august newspaper:

September 17, 2012

To the Editor:

I love Gail Collins. She writes an interesting, insightful and thought-provoking op-ed column, as in her latest about the importance of Ohio's electoral votes...

All right class, put away your smartphones and iPads and BlackBerries and pay attention, because you obviously weren't listening when I told you the other day why the Teddy White Rule is key to the 2012 election.

You there, wearing the Free Pussy Riot T-shirt: What did I say about...

Okay, Mitt Romney's gotten enough mileage out of all the speculation about his choice of a running mate so let's end the suspense by telling you who he's going to pick. I can tell you he's decided he wants Ohio Sen. Rob Portman at his side when he accepts the...

Even before Mitt Romney nailed down the Republican presidential nomination, many of my friends and acquaintances, mostly of the Democratic persuasion, were asking me about Barack Obama's re-election prospects and whether I think he'll have a Democratic Congress to work with if re-elected.

Maybe it's because they know I began...

As a dyed-in-the-wool yellow dog Democrat, it's no secret I'm not a big fan of Mitt Romney.

But the fact is he stands a fair chance of winning the presidency, even though he campaigns, as someone said, like a man falling out of a tree, which makes it easy...

Robert Caro says he doesn't pay much attention to what reviewers write about his books, but he paid plenty of attention to what one reviewer wrote about The Passage of Power, the fourth and latest volume of his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson.

And that's not just because of what...

Did Joe Biden just commit political hari-kari with his comment on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he's "absolutely comfortable" with married same-sex couples having the same rights as heterosexual couples?

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure President Obama isn't "absolutely comfortable" with...

He may be the only person still living who witnessed firsthand the two pivotal events of one of the most dramatic -- and traumatic -- days in American history. And even though it was almost half a century ago, he remembers when history tapped him on the shoulder like it...

Earlier this month, the St. Louis University School of Law paid tribute to the late Sen. Tom Eagleton by hosting a celebration of the Missouri Democrat's life of public service. Eagleton, who died on March 4, 2007 at the age of 77, is best remembered for having been forced to...

Please forgive me for bragging about our children, but my older daughter Kitty is amazing.

She clearly has a feel for history. When she was six weeks old, she underwent surgery at the University of Minnesota Hospital for premature closure of her cranial sutures on the same day that...