WASHINGTON — If the gender gap becomes a chasm that swallows Republicans this fall, it will be no fluke. It will, however, have something to do with Sandra Fluke.

This week’s column contains a couple of tips for people concerned that Americans’ efforts to protect children fall a little short when we deliberately kill hundreds of thousands of them every year.

No recent decision of the Supreme Court has been more reviled than the 2010 Citizens United decision, which held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from barring corporations and unions from spending money on political communications.

If the New York Yankees subsidized the salaries of umpires calling games against the Red Sox, people would be screaming from Eastport to Block Island.

Some victories fought on behalf of patients with mental illnesses take years to win.

Can civility be saved?
This has become the question du jour among scholars, journalists and others who fret about such things at dozens of programs popping up around the country. As a nation, we seem to want to be a more civil society, which is laudable if, quite possibly, unlikely.

Give him points for cleverness. President Barack Obama’s birth control “accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless.

Monday is Presidents Day, the day when most Americans celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and honor the office of the presidency of the United States.

You might think that Sen. David Vitter would observe a lifetime moratorium on public moralizing after his phone number was found in the little black book of a prostitution ring’s madam.