Power Line

Ricochet

4.8 (5)
POLITICS
UPDATED WEEKLY

Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy. Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.

4 DAYS AGO

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Is Trump Re-Writing Executive Power?

With Lucretia hosting both the episode and the bar this week (with three different whiskies just for herself), we manage to keep John Yoo from excessive gloating about the Eagles win in the Super Bowl by distracting him with his favorite subject—executive power, about which he seldom thinks there can be excessive use. But maybe we found some limits this time? The intensifying pace of President Trump's exertions of executive power look to be the most serious attempt to contain spending, reorganize the executive branch, and discipline Congress since Nixon in 1973, and we know how that ended. We also give three cheers and host a glass in celebration of Vice President Vance's throwdown at the Munich Security Conference. And it will probably come as no surprise that we even talk about the Constitution, and manage the rare feat of discussing the EOA without mentioning a Certain Statute that we are not allowed to mention in John's presence.

1h 8m
8 FEB

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Trump's Five Big Fights

We're only 19 days into Trump's term, but it seems like 19 months have passed already since January 20. When Alexander Hamilton wrote of "energy in the executive," he had no idea that a real estate tycoon would become the greatest example of this understanding of the presidency. This week's episode reviews five of Trump's biggest fights that are interrelated in ways that could rebalance out constitutional order in ways conservatives have hoped beyond hope for decades might be possible. Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship is forcing a long overdue debate on the issue along with a challenge to district judges issuing nationwide injunctions; his freezing of spending revives the issue of presidential power to impound funds Congress has appropriated; and his firing of civil servants and termed appointees to federal boards and commissions will force a reconsideration of the old Humphrey's Executor case that a wide spectrum of scholar believe was wrongly decided. Along the way we get in some pop culture references to Star Trek and The Sporanos; the required defense of the McRib from all comers, and some additional closing observations on the "vibe shift" Trump has set in motion on DEI and related culture war issues.

59 min
2 FEB

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: War, Peaceniks, Bishops, Senators, Onesies, Everything

This wide-ranging, round-robin format episode begins with celebrating the end of "Dry January" (which we, um, didn't much observe), mockery of Bernie Sanders' obsession with "onesies," a brief account of a Steve roadtrip to Villanova University, and a declaration of war against the Commentary podcast. (It's serious: it involves McRibs.) After we clear away this opening frivolity, we get down to serious business. Lucretia is in high dudgeon about the Catholic bishops behaving just the way they did in the 1980s—like lapdogs for the left—which generated reflections on theology, federal grant restrictions, J.D. Vance's dialectical skill, and some reasons for optimism for the future of both the Catholic Church and the world as a whole. John casts his spotlight on what we saw in the contentious confirmation hearings for Kash Patel, RFK, Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard. There was rare agreement and sharp disagreement (our usual mode) about aspects of these appointments. Exit bumper music from our pal, the historian Steve Tootle, who doubles as the singer/songwriter for Cosigner; "No Hour Is Mine" sounds a bit like what professors think after class.

1h 1m
25 JAN

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Getting Right with Free Speech

The 3WHH bartenders raise their glasses high for the first 100 hours of Trump II, which bid to replace FDR's famous "Hundred Days" for breathtaking executive action. You'd think that this is Trump's first term, and metaphysically, Steve argues, it is. In just the way we've come to expect of Trump in all things, he may have turned the usual presidential cycle on its head. Even John, champion of executive power, is impressed. And one more miracle: he actually gets rare praise from Lucretia for his Newsweek article concluding than Biden's pardons were much worse than Trump's blanket pardons or all the J6 protesters. From there we get to the main event, a three-part discussion of a single issue—in this case free speech and how to understand the First Amendment correctly. Steve argues back to first principles, in which the freedom of conscience and thus free expression was grounded in reason, that is, free speech was essential to deliberation about right and wrong, and how we should be governed. By nearly imperceptible degrees, in the 20th century the protection of "free expression" was re-grounded in moral skepticism (if not nihilism), which is why nude dancing and F-bombs on t-shirts became "protected speech." This is not progress. From there we move on to wondering if the time has come to revisit the libel standard of New York Times v. Sullivan, which has enabled our mainstream media to behave with increasing recklessness. And we think: Yes! Yes it is. And along the way, some digressions into Animal House, Spongebob Squarepants, and other cultural totems. And we depart briefly from our new proprietary bumper music from Cosigner to use a very topical old tune (from lefties!), "Immigration Man."

1h 5m
18 JAN

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Non-Jejune Edition

Nothing "jejune" about this edition, except perhaps for the first-ever use of "jejune" in a podcast, but it is the perfect term to describe Joe Biden's "farewell address," which, aside from its jejune content, is a most welcome sound, since he will be gone in about another 48 hours, never to be heard from again one hopes. This week we take up three topics—one from each of the bartenders: Behold, President Biden amended the Constitution on Friday—all by himself! Aside from the obvious absurdity and low comedy of it, what does it tell us about the state of leftist presumption? Special counsel Jack Smith released his magnum opus, which seems more of a parvum opus if not an opusculum (ask your nearest Latin geek), Finally, Biden's farewell address—and presidential farewell addresses in general—was our third topic (summary: it was absolutely Biden's opusculum). Once again we have custom proprietary exit bumper music from our pal Steve Tootle and his indie band Cosigner.

52 min
11 JAN

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Emigrating to Immigrating

With this episode the Three Whisky Happy Hour emigrates into its very own identity on Ricochet and Steve's new group Substack, "Political Questions," but not to worry—the old Power Line Show will live on in its old format as an interview show. The 3WHH, meanwhile, is rebooting with some new formats. We'll be doing some show with a single-subject format; on some we'll do a round robin of hot topics and reflections on currtent news items, and we'll even have some guests from time to time, as well as emergency shows when somethingbig happens—or we get a new single malt in whose virtues we just have to share. And having completed our emigration to a new logo and format, it seemed only logical that we'd take up as our primary focus this week the issue of immigration, with an attempt at an orderly procession through the key aspects of the matter: How much is too much? Should we have an immigration pause? What's up with the H1-B visa controversy anyway? How should skills-based immigration be done, and should we move to some kind of point- or auction system to regulate immigration. And finally the big one: what about birthright citizenship? We throw down pretty hard on this issue, and our three bartenders nearly get into a brawl about several of these questions. So don't think alone when you can drink it all in with us!

1h 3m
1 JAN

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Special Happy New Year's Edition

Since so many of our fellow conservative podcasts are taking the holidays off, we decided to do another special mid-week edition to observe the new year, and gear up for some changes. Last year's end of year show featured some low-probability but plausible predictions for 2024 (inspired by the late Wall Street guru Byron Weins' annual practice, which was often right), and unlike other shows that never track prediction accuracy (like the McLaughlin Group, which had a terrible record once someone checked), we decided to do a scorecard. Steve was 0 for 6; John was 5 for 8 (depending on how you score partial credit); Lucretia didn't make any new year's predictions, but pointed out that ALL of her mid-year predictions came true, especially J.D. Vance for running mate. We offered a few new low-probabilty predictions for 2025, but you'll have to listen to get them. Steve offers one of his as a teaser: some time in 2025 an elite or major university (could be a state flagship) will fire their president and senior administrators, and bring in a team to "clean house," which will mean closing whole departments and programs that teach anti-Semitic ideology, and eliminating faculty positions attached to these poisonous programs. From there we resume our unfinished argment from last week about discrimination and the 14th Amendment, and come to some unsatisfactory conclusions. Now the news: We're taking this weekend off from our usual Saturday show, and won't be back until January 11 or so. We're going to be re-tooling the podcast with some format changes. Stay tuned for details as they become available!

1h 4m
28/12/2024

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Osculate This!

Our final podcast of 2024 looks back on the top story and bottom story of the year, and you won't be surprised to see some symmetries in our answers. But then we move on to the main event—a question from a listener (initials RW) about whether the 14th Amendment, rightly understood, actually permits the federal government to outlaw private discimination. We go several rounds (but not really enough rounds) about aspects of this issue before realizing after we finished that we didn't reach a verdict. Perhaps we'll return to it in our first episode of 2025. The title for this week's episode is taken from Steve's nomination for the slogan of the year, which comes from a Twitter person who responded to the UN demanding that Americans give up meat to fight climate change with the phrase: "they can osculate my fundamental orifice!" You'll just have to listen to the end to get the translation. Announcement: We'll be back on January 1 with another special holiday midweek episode that will introduce some format changes, a review of our predictions from last year (guess who had the best record), and a fresh round of predictions for 2025 that will likely be mostly wrong.

1h 1m

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NJGB18

06/02/2018

NJGB18

The go-to blog for intelligent conservative commentary

Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy. Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.