Add another chapter to the illus­trious his­tory of free­wheeling vice pres­i­den­tial debates. At Centre Col­lege in Ken­tucky, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan engaged in what might euphemisti­cally be described as … read more »

In the fall of 2008, as Sen. Joe Biden pon­dered the del­i­cate task of debating Gov. Sarah Palin, his debate team hon­chos cir­cu­lated an internal prepa­ra­tion memo. The first sen­tence: “No … read more »

Incum­bent pres­i­dents often take it on the chin when they return to the debate stage after a four-​​​​year absence. Wednesday night in Denver added another such instance to the his­tory … read more »

Alan Schroeder and Patrick Mill­saps dis­cuss how humor and off-​​​​script exchanges can help or hurt a can­di­date in debates.

AUDIO: Here are some of the sto­ries we cover in today’s edi­tion: In just one week, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will meet for the first pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2012 … read more »

Joe Paterno was pulled off his pedestal, almost lit­er­ally. The leg­endary Penn State coach, a bigger-​​​​than-​​​​life hero for most of his life, was cast in a seven-​​​​foot, bigger-​​​​than-​​​​life statue that … read more »

(CNN) — We don’t yet know how heavy a blow Hur­ri­cane Isaac will deliver to the Gulf Coast when it hits. But mindful of the dev­as­ta­tion that Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina left … read more »

In a deci­sion announced Wednesday, Australia’s high court upheld the plain pack­aging act, which says that tobacco prod­ucts must be in plain pack­aging without logos and bear graphic health warn­ings … read more »

My col­league James Alan Fox and I have studied hun­dreds of cases of mass murder, including those com­mitted at random in shop­ping malls, churches, health clubs, and cin­emas. Almost every killer … read more »

Is Lady Gaga an artist? Sure, she can play piano. She’s got some song­writing talent, too. But music isn’t what comes to mind when the former Ste­fani Ger­man­otta is dis­cussed. Instead, … read more »

There are few crim­inal events as stun­ning and fright­ening as a mass shooting. The sud­den­ness, ran­dom­ness and unpre­dictability of episodes like Friday’s early morning mas­sacre at an Aurora, Col­orado, movie … read more »

Def­i­n­i­tions of Amer­ican patri­o­tism are as diverse as Amer­i­cans. Polit­ical philoso­pher and North­eastern Uni­ver­sity pro­fessor Stephen Nathanson explores the sub­ject in his book “Patri­o­tism, Morality, and Peace.” He writes that patri­o­tism is gen­er­ally char­ac­ter­ized … read more »