Pete Spiliakos

Ross Douthat has concluded that Romney is most likely to pick the safest and most boring available candidate for his running mate, and that guy is Rob Portman.  Maybe.  I’ve read some articles about Portman and I’ve seen him give some speeches on television.  I . . . . Continue Reading »

My mom was a seamstress for much of the 1980s and some of the 1990s.  I remember that she would work for a company, and then that company would close shop, and then she would find a job somewhere else and then that place would close down and so on.  Evan Soltas has an explanation . . . . Continue Reading »

Ryan Lizza’s long New Yorker profile of Paul Ryan is a masterpiece of subtle liberal partisanship.  My favorite part is Lizza’s treatment of Ryan’s proposal for premium support Medicare.  When referring to the Ryan Roadmap, Lizza describes “Obama’s alleged . . . . Continue Reading »

This is from the Justice Scalia-written  majority opinion in the landmark case of Heller v. DC in which the Supreme Court upheld an individual right to keep and bear arms: Like most rights, the  Second Amendment  right is not unlimited.  It is not a right to keep and carry any . . . . Continue Reading »

1.  Here is one reason I think the “You didn’t build that” issue is proving so hard to shake: It comes across like special pleading and it is demeaning to disfavored social groups.  Obama describes the success of businessmen and women as a matter of luck (“a . . . . Continue Reading »

First off, let me direct you to this Batman thread from the old No Left Turns site.  Second, I saw The Dark Knight Rises and here are my thoughts below: There has been some discussion about whether The Dark Knight Rises is critique of Occupy Wall Street. The most obvious villain (though as it . . . . Continue Reading »

Reihan Salam wondered how Luis Zingales’s proposals for a “pro-market populist” politics that defends “defends freedom of entry in all cases” translates into policy proposals.  As I said yesterday , a major political problem with any “pro-market . . . . Continue Reading »

Reihan Salam cites Luis Zingales’s suggestion that Romney run as a “pro-market populist.”  Romney could run as a businessman for greater fairness and broadly rising living standards and against entrenched business interests that have allied with the . . . . Continue Reading »

So the NRO crew has been writing a lot about the possibility of Romney picking Bobby Jindal for Veep.  Rich Lowry is for it.   Andrew Stuttaford worries that the Jindal exorcism story from back in his college days could turn into a major problem.  Ramesh Ponnuru has suggested a big . . . . Continue Reading »

The presidential campaign is both very boring and a waste of attention.  Obama’s minions (to include the Boston Globe of course) would accuse Romney of being Jack the Ripper and the captain of the Exxon Valdez if they thought that such accusations would deflect public attention from the . . . . Continue Reading »