Be careful when one uses the superlative case—best, most, -est, etc.—or evokes end-of-the-world imagery...

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.”

In today's Wall Street Journal, Hoover's Peter Robinson reports on an interview with Gary Becker. . . .

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 and a member of its Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force, points out the problems associated with implementing the Affordable Care Act.

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and John Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley law school, examine the merits of various constitutional arguments for the Supreme Court’s striking down Obamacare.