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Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 92, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying on Tuesday.

Let me take you back in time, ladies and gentlemen. It's 1987. I am at the time working at KFBK in Sacramento, California and I have created this term, invented this term "Gorbasm", to describe the reaction of various people, primarily in America, but around the world, to the prospect that nuclear holocaust is at hand because Ronald Reagan is in the White House, but only Mikhail Gorbachev can save the day, can save the world, can save the planet! He's reasonable. Reagan has an itchy trigger finger, right there poised above that button. Now all the time previous, from...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're gonna go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites and we are going to have another Gorbasm today, because the Drive-By Media is, in fact, having one. It's the 25th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall, and the Drive-By Media is out celebrating Mikhail Gorbachev as though he let it happen, as though Gorbachev made it happen. You know, I met Gorbachev. It was at George H. W. Bush's 80th birthday, and it was at Reliant Stadium in Houston. It was a big celebration and I didn't go to the celebration on the field. There...

This Fourth of July weekend is turning into an unforseen laff-fest. Yesterday we had NBC featuring a photo of President Obama making what he might have thought was an assertive hand gesture while discussing the situation in Egypt with his aides. Today treats us to historian Douglas Brinkley, on Morning Joe, claiming that when it comes to foreign policy, President Obama reminds him of, yes, Supreme-Allied-Commander-turned-President Dwight D. Eisenhower. View the chuckle-worthy video here.

Former Soviet president and Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev spoke to a packed house at the Wortham Center on Thursday evening, offering up an hour-long talk covering the final years of the Cold War and the strained U.S.-Russian relationship that followed. Part of the Brilliant Lecture Series, the legendary statesman told the audience he was no stranger to Houston — home, of course, to president George H.W. Bush, who he called one his "best partners" in bringing down the Iron Curtain. The two leaders have remained close since departing office and rekindled their friendship Thursday afternoon at a private lunch with...

ROME – President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear weapons-free world is welcome, but the huge U.S. defense budget may prove an "insurmountable obstacle" to reaching that goal, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Thursday. Talk of nuclear disarmament would be "just rhetorical" if other nations were asked to give up nukes while the United States maintains an overwhelming conventional military superiority, Gorbachev said. What's needed, he said, are talks to "demilitarize" world politics. Gorbachev, last leader of the now-defunct Soviet Union, helped inaugurate two days of discussions on nuclear disarmament involving some 100 former and current international leaders,...

MOSCOW - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and President Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire. Gorbachev, who presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union, said Washington had sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but had failed to understand the changing world. “The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?” Gorbachev asked reporters at a news conference in Moscow. “What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed...

Climate Change: Some in Congress think global warming is so important it should be an issue of national defense, not science. It's a wrongheaded and dangerous idea, one that shows how crazy the debate has become. Unfortunately, the proposal to make global warming a matter of national security is bipartisan, with Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, joining Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, as co-sponsors. If nothing else, this proves neither party has a monopoly on wisdom. According to the Boston Globe, their plan calls for the U.S. intelligence chief to produce a "national intelligence estimate" on global warming....

Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnistNo debate: Gorbachev a leader   By now, we know what leadership is not. Flip-flopping. Defensiveness. Big displays of power that come back as a thousand heartbreaks. So we continue to scour the political profiles. We watch every word, every nuance, every back bulge of the debates, looking for that hint of something that will settle our souls. Then Mikhail Gorbachev comes to town. And you see right away what you have been looking for. Gorbachev, 73, was in Seattle Tuesday to open the Northwest office of the Rosinternetfund, a nonprofit seeking to develop...