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This viewpoint is from a writer rated Center.

As friendships and family relationships continue to strain or break over political disagreements, Americans are learning firsthand about a new kind of political polarization: affective polarization. Affective polarization is when we not just disagree with the other side, but show contempt for them.

How much we

President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, as predicted, took on the challenge of being funny last night at the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York City — which as we said Thursday has become a quadrennial must-stop on the campaign trail for those seeking the White House.

Nebraska's conservative legislators "argued that the death penalty is a wasteful and ineffective government program that costs too much and accomplishes too little," according to Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. That's probably correct: because of intense and extended litigation, imposing the death penalty in the US is significantly more expensive

In a hyper-polarized political environment like ours, it’s not often that we can identify a policy area where there is strong bipartisan agreement. But even in the middle of this scorched-earth campaign season, there is one critical issue on which Democrats and Republicans have achieved a strong degree of unity.

They agree that China is bad.

As is often the case, President Trump