Pete Spiliakos

I think that these Yuval Levin posts on civil society and politics go along very well this recent Gabriel Rossman post over at The American Scene. Rossman’s post is especially good at thinking through how the left conceives of the government as the primary avenue for dealing with our . . . . Continue Reading »

Good for President Obama for seeking congressional authorization for a strike on Syria. Among other things, it will give the administration more time to come up with a coherent strategy that has a plausible chance of advancing American interests. The current strategy of focusing outrage on Syrian . . . . Continue Reading »

 What jumps out from this New York Times article is an incredibly stupid comment by David Leege, but the most important part has to do with how the Republican establishment is trying to sell itself. The self-serving malice of an academic is less damaging than the self-serving delusions of the . . . . Continue Reading »

I think Ramesh Ponnuru has it right.   Maybe the Obama administration has a plan to use military force in a decisive way, but they haven’t made the case for a large and sustained military operation if it comes to that. A military attack that is not decisive opens the possibility that the . . . . Continue Reading »

So I’m really getting into Breaking Bad from the start. It is the show about a brilliant chemist turned failed entrepreneur, turned high school teacher, turned drug lord. Walter White has a disabled (and sweet) son, his wife is pregnant with an unexpected baby.  He turns fifty and finds . . . . Continue Reading »

So why is Rand Paul sticking up for NBC and CNN? The Republican National Committee is threatening to boycott those two networks over the production of presumed hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Why is Rand Paul standing up for liberal-leaning organizations who are boosters of Clinton? The reason is . . . . Continue Reading »

Some thoughts here . . . . . Continue Reading »

The skills gap in unemployment is huge. Workers with at least a four-year college degree have an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent and a labor force participation rate of 75.5 percent. Workers with less than a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 11 percent and a labor force participation rate of 45.4 percent. Over the last thirty years, wages for workers with a four year college degree have risen while wages for male workers with less than a high school diploma have declined sharply. And yet some economists argue that, despite the high unemployment rate and declining wages, the US faces a shortage of low-skill workers… . Continue Reading »

I’m not the biggest fan of debates in their current form, but they do give voters the chance to see candidates interact with each other and explain themselves. Debates can gives a sense of how well candidates understand their own policy proposals and the obvious objections to those . . . . Continue Reading »

 I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about the next presidential election but . . . 1. It will be tough for a guy who supports a tax increase on middle-class parents to go distance with the Republican nominating electorate. I don’t think that is what the median Republican voter . . . . Continue Reading »