Francine Wheeler choked back tears while delivering the president's weekly address in Barack Obama's stead Saturday, to share how her 6-year-old son Ben's tragic death turned her and her husband into gun control advocates. Read More

Former state representative Robin Kelly won a special election Tuesday night, claiming the seat vacated by Jesse Jackson Jr. Read More

After facing months of backlash, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is temporarily abandoning his controversial plan to ditch his state's income and corporate tax, leaving the state legislature to pick up the pieces on his crumbling proposal. Read More

The South African government confirms that former President Nelson Mandela was discharged on Saturday from the hospital where he was receiving pneumonia treatments. Read More

FBI agents visited the Washington, D.C. suburban home of former CIA Director David Petraeus on Friday, two sources with knowledge of the visit told NBC News. Read More

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed off on the order at a midnight meeting of top generals and "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation", official KCNA news agency said. Read More

Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota will not be seeking re-election at the end of his term in 2014, making him the fifth Democrat in recent months to announce plans to retire from the Senate. Read More

The Senate budget, which reflects Democratic priorities of boosting near-term job growth and preserving social safety net programs, will square off in coming months against a Republican-focused budget passed by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. Read More

After landing a few one-liners and laughs when referencing the "drama" between him and his Israeli Prime Minister "Bibi" Netanyahu, President Obama faced a heckler during his speech before a crowd of university students in Jerusalem Thursday--and it wasn't to say "I love you back." Read More

"We were on a roller coaster," Romney said. "Exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends. And then you get off. And it's not like 'oh, can we be on the roller coaster for the rest of our life?' No. The ride is over." Read More

The administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief late in the afternoon, saying the Proposition 8 legal battle that began in California four years ago should be subjected to "heightened scrutiny." Read More

A spokeswoman for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says the Republican's accusations that there were a dozen Marxists on the Harvard Law School's faculty when he attended in the early 90s were "substantive" and "absolutely correct." Read More

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates defended the Obama administration's use of targeted killings through drone strikes oversees, but added that judicial oversight on the program "is something worth giving serious consideration to.” Read More

Sen. Marco Rubio will be speaking for Republicans in their rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, but Tea Partiers--recently cast off by mainline conservatives--are offering up their own counter to the counter-statement. Read More

"My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everyone else does in every institution and walk in life," Obama said. Read More

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Sunday defended not only his potential successor to lead the Pentagon, but also the government's response time to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Read More

Beware, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, says President Obama will disarm "law-abiding citizens" of their most basic weapons. Read More

President Obama has already listed a plan for America's 11 million people living in the shadows as a "top priority" for his second term, but the fate of possible citizenship for millions of people could hinge on a bolstered southern border. Read More

First it was the "birther" movement, but now President Obama is left to squash skeet-shooting skepticism? Read More

Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearings for the Defense Secretary job are underway -- and they're likely to be contentious. Here's Chuck Todd's guide to the key controversies. Read More