More than 130,000 Pennsylvanians joined the Democratic Party in the days and weeks leading up to our March 24 registration deadline.

I wasn't one of them.

I'm still a Republican, and while I won't have a vote in the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, like everyone else, I...

On Tuesday, this son of Eastern European stock drove into Center City to bear witness to a speech about race delivered by a candidate who described himself in his remarks as "the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas."

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.),...

Welcome, Candidates! It's been a long time since Pennsylvania mattered in a presidential contest and we are elated to host you. As your self-appointed advance man, I offer the following survival tips for your seven-week sojourn into the Keystone state:

Pronunciation matters. When in Philadelphia, make certain that Olney is...

With the news that longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro is stepping down, I was reminded of the chance I had six years ago to dine with Castro. After digesting that unique experience, I wrote in these pages, "Despite more than 40 years of effort, the Cuban embargo has failed miserably...

Eleven months ago, I wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the key for Republicans to win Pennsylvania and the White House in 2008 was to focus on suburbanites who wanted a hawk on terror but a moderate on social issues.

"GOP presidential candidates need to focus on surviving primaries and...

I just got sued.

Go ahead. Laugh if you want.

No doubt some will say it's a fitting comeuppance for a former trial lawyer. It's not the first time I've been on the receiving end of a lawsuit, but no litigation against me has been successful.

A...

The world's gone mad.

A major Hollywood star appears devoid of all common sense when it comes to matters of religion, and the same malady is on display in the life of a leading presidential contender.

First, there's Tom Cruise. According to the just-out unauthorized biography of Cruise by...

I don't envy the voters of Bucks County, Northeast Philadelphia, and a small part of eastern Montgomery County.

Residents who compose Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District are going to cast ballots in 2008 that will likely require a particularly grueling political calculus: weighing the impact of a young Marine's tragic passing...

Maureen Faulkner thought she'd done all of the heavy lifting.

She'd spent three years recounting the complete story of her life, the murder of her police officer husband Danny, the trial of the man charged with the killing and the aftermath as the case became the highest profile death-penalty case...

Iowa caucus goers will cast their first ballots in the 2008 presidential race in just five weeks, and Rudy Giuliani, trailing rival Mitt Romney in the Hawkeye State, needs to spend every available moment campaigning there.

Yet on Tuesday, Rudy could instead be found in a state whose April primary...

I have a distinct recollection of one of my first lectures at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Stephen Schulhofer, a brilliant academic (he's now at NYU) who looked as if he'd responded to Central Casting's call for a liberal, was leading a discussion of the death penalty - and...

I have a distinct memory of a particular eighth-grade science class in junior high, circa 1976. When a buddy of mine was called on and asked to name the male and female genitalia, he quickly responded, "The penis and the Virginia."

That's stuck with me all these years. It's a...

"Mission accomplished."

That's the reaction of Marcus Luttrell to the news that Lt. Michael Murphy would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The presentation will be made to Murphy's parents by President Bush today at the White House.

Murphy's life and death are the stuff of storybooks. If only...

There are events in our lives that will forever be entwined with the person who broke the news.

I doubt you can recall the passing of a loved one without remembering who first told you. Any mention JFK's assassination reminds me of an emotional Walter Cronkite informing the nation of...

Thank you, Sen. Barack Obama.

Yours truly, a two-time, Bush 43-supporting political pundit who worked in an appointed capacity in the administration of Bush 41, offers you his gratitude for being the first among A-level presidential aspirants willing to say something substantive about our failure to find Osama bin Laden...

Six years removed from 9/11, I'm appalled that no one seems to care whether we find and kill Osama bin Laden.

How else to explain that there have been seven presidential debates so far - four for the D's, three for the R's - and only one question has been...

The daughter of the shoemaker to King Nicholas Petrovich of Montenegro is on her deathbed. She is 101 years old. She is my grandmother.

Word of Victoria Grovich's (nee Ivanisevich) imminent passing came to me last week on the same day I reviewed the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey....

Thomas and Mary raised seven children: Thomas Jr., Joseph, Joanne, Lawrence, Patrick, Kenny and Danny. They were a religious family, united not only by their Catholic faith, but also by the hardscrabble lives each led in Southwest Philadelphia and in Delaware County.

Thomas Jr. was a cop for five years...

Things like this don't happen here. That's what I was thinking while standing at a parking lot at State and Hamilton in Doylestown, Pennsylvania last week.

It's a location I know well. I used to walk through this spot most mornings on the way to high school at C.B. West,...

On Sunday, I took my three sons to the annual A-Day celebration at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Think farm animals, kids' activities, decent food. The milkshakes are legendary.

A-Day is staged a baseball's throw from where the Manion family resides. I know, because my mom sold them their...