Obama Would Ease Cuba Travel Limits

Barack Obama says that as president, he would reverse the Bush administration's increased restrictions on travel to Cuba, the AP reports. Visiting or sending money to relatives on the Communist-controlled island became more difficult in 2004, a policy change the candidate calls "strategically blundering" in an op-ed published in today's Miami Herald.

No other candidate has advocated easing the restrictions, which isolate "the transformative message carried there by Cuban Americans," Obama writes. Candidates hoping to win Florida have traditionally fallen into step with the Cuban community's hardliners, who support a full embargo. But sentiment is changing, and many want to be able to visit relatives on the island. (More Cuba stories.)