There was a time when ticket splitting was common. Voters would support one party’s candidate for president and the other’s for Congress. At its peak in 1972, ticket splitters represented 30 percent of voters, reports political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University. Since then, the practice has gone into eclipse. In 2012, only 11 percent of the electorate were …

  I was in the middle of an e-mail to an old friend this week, and had written a sentence about a mutual acquaintance that was more than 50 percent positive but contained a snarky word or two. I paused. “Is that necessary?” I thought to myself. No, it wasn’t. So I deleted the sentence. Maybe it was the Neera …

  Does anyone remember President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia? The plan was to focus diplomatic and military assets in East Asia to contain a rising China. It was one of the reasons Obama said he was shrinking the American footprint in the Middle East. Well, the pivot is failing. On Thursday, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, announced …