To understand the sometimes glaring gaps between candidate Obama’s promises and President Obama’s policies, it is useful to appreciate an old tension in American progressivism. . . .

In the midst of the Great Recession California students protest in favor of themselves. . . .

This week on Uncommon Knowledge, host Peter Robinson mediates a discussion between PayPal founder and Stanford Professor Peter Thiel and Velocity Capital Management founder and journalist Andy Kessler on the state of technology and innovation in the United States over the past four decades. Thiel argues that, outside of computers, there has been very little innovation in the past forty years, and the rate of technological change has significantly decreased when compared to the first half of the 20th century. In contrast, Kessler asserts that innovation comes in waves, and we are on the verge of another burst of technological breakthroughs. Industries covered include education, medicine and biotechnology, as well as robots and high tech.

The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Board of Overseers’ summer meeting during July 9–11, 2013.

The program began on Tuesday evening with before-dinner remarks by Paul D. Clement, a partner at Bancroft PLLC. Clement served as the forty-third solicitor general of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. He has argued more than sixty-five cases before the US Supreme Court. During Clement’s speech, titled “Federalism in the Roberts Court,” he talked about the revitalization of federalism in the Rehnquist court “imposing some limits on the federal government’s power vis-a-vis the states.”

Partnerships with religious groups may have been dismissed as a stepchild of the Bush administration, but they appear to have a bright future all the same. By David Davenport.

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses his article “Gay Marriage and the Libertarian’s Dilemma.”

Michael Boskin, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and T. M. Friedman Professor of Economics at Stanford University, discussed “Why Is Social Security So Hard to Reform and What Can Be Done About It?”

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force, speaks to the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Richard Epstein the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the flaws in the America Invents Act and considers how to create a patent system that more effectively fosters American innovation.