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Former President George W. Bush and Michelle Obama are surprisingly close considering their political differences, and the 43rd president credits the former first lady's appreciation for his sense of humor as a key reason.

Ted Cruz just got done speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Unlike many of Donald Trump’s former opponents, Cruz has not endorsed the Republican nominee, and his speech Wednesday night only mentioned Trump once. The RNC crowd, of course, is largely filled with Trump supporters. And as you can see above, Cruz’s steadfast nonendorsement did not go over well in the room; at one point there was an “EN-DORSE TRUMP” chant.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is getting a taste of the "New York values" he derided in Iowa as Republicans turn to the next big U.S. presidential contest in the home state of front-runner Donald Trump.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s brashness and willingness to denounce Senate colleagues for their perceived lack of conservative chops have made him wildly popular among Republican voters and have helped him surge to the top of the polls.

In 2008, in the high-profile Supreme Court gun-rights case called District of Columbia v. Heller, a brief was filed from the eighth floor of the Price Daniel Sr. State Office Building in Austin, Texas, specifically from the corner office of the man who was then the state’s solicitor general, Ted Cruz. The brief took a strong stance on the divisive question of whether the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to own guns, or just protects state and local militias. The brief argued forcefully for the first view, writing that “the individual right to keep and bear arms” is a “fundamental right” and that “an individual right that can be altogether abrogated is no right at all.” Thirty attorneys general from other states signed on.

Earlier this year, Donald Trump turned up the heat on immigration rhetoric in the GOP primary race. But thanks to attacks in Paris and then San Bernardino, the U.S. immigration conversation has shifted from fears over jobs to fears over personal safety. Those fears made the clashes over immigration in the latest GOP debate all the more intense. On Tuesday night, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz each tried to make the other look willing to endanger Americans' lives by being too lenient on immigration policy.

I am a lifelong Democrat. I proudly boast an “F” rating from the NRA. And, yet during my 2014 gubernatorial campaign in Texas, I supported the open carry of handguns in my state. It is a position that haunts me.

The New York Times this morning has an op-ed by Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan, whom I regard as one of the world’s best television journalists. Its primary point is one that has been recently promoted by others such as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: namely, that in the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush diligently avoided, and even forcefully rejected, the anti-Muslim bigotry and animus now prevalent in the 2016 GOP primary race. Titled “Why I Miss George W. Bush,” Hasan’s op-ed argues that Bush and his top advisers (such as Karl Rove and Michael Gerson) “understood that demonizing Muslims and depicting Islam as ‘the enemy’ not only fueled al Qaeda’s narrative but also hurt their party’s electoral prospects.”