Power Line
799 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★★ - 441 ratingsSteven Hayward brings you the Power Line Blog's perspective on the week's big headlines. Follow Power Line on Twitter (https://twitter.com/powerlineus) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/powerlineblog). Send any suggestions, tips, and fan mail to [email protected].
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Episodes
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: PM Tony Abbott Surveys the World
July 02, 2024 21:33 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBLast month John Yoo and Steve Hayward, larping around central Europe in search of the rule of law, happened to make the acquaintance for former (and perhaps future?) Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who graciously agreed to sit down for a conversation about his broad gauge view of the world scene right now. We heard him give a terrific speech at the Danube Institute, which you can take in at the beginning of this YouTube video. In our conversation Abbott ranges from the Ukraine War and...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Triumph at the Court & on the Debate Stage
June 29, 2024 18:16 - 1 hour - 65.3 MBHas there been a worse week for the left in the last 25 years? First "Squadster" Jamal Bowman loses his House seat, then the Supreme Court delivers blow-after-blow to the foundations of the administrative state, and then Biden didn't show up for a debate. Oh, wait—he did show up, though you had to wonder whether they really intended a Weekend at Bernie's sequel. John Yoo hosts this week's episode, and manages both to coax some cheerfulness out of Lucretia, but also skillfully avoiding the im...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Simcha Rothman on Israel's Judicial Crisis
June 26, 2024 19:03 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBIf you follow news out of Israel these days—and who doesn't?—you may have caught the story early this week that Israel's Supreme Court issued a ruling that the government may not exempt the haredim (Israel's ultra-orthodox community) from military service. The ruling went further, though, than just ending an exemption from service: the court ruled that government funding must be cut off from any yeshivas (schools) that do not comply with the ruling. Aside from the legal reasoning behind this...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Nitrous Oxide from the Court
June 22, 2024 17:15 - 57 minutes - 53 MBWe hadn't even planned to do a regular episode this week because John Yoo is over in Korea, Steve has been away at a three-day conference, and Lucretia is breaking in a new kitten. But we received urgent messages from listeners and readers asking us to please decode just what the Supreme Court did this week, especially in the Moore v U.S. case that dealt with the income tax. Expert commentary seems divided on just what the Court meant, but as John filed an amicus brief in that case, he's the ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Above, Behind, and Below the Law
June 15, 2024 17:14 - 1 hour - 59.5 MBNo sooner do we have a "reunion" episode last week than travel schedules blow it all up again. With John Yoo away on another junket (supposedly teaching a summer law seminar somewhere, but really in search of more elusive McRibs), Lucretia and Steve decided to do a live episode where they pondered what might be called the "meta-narrative" (that would be "McNarrative" to John Yoo) behind the sharply differing constitutional views of left and right. Steve argues that behind the left's primal ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Reunion Episode
June 08, 2024 19:39 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBThe Three Whisky Happy Hour bartenders are finally back in the same time zone, and Lucretia fills in Steve and John about what happened while they were away partying in Europe. We mostly skip over doting on Biden's dotage, and take up Jed Rubenfeld's argument that Trump isn't technically a "convicted felon" yet, and might have strong case for immediate relief from the Supreme Court. We finally have a long-postponed update on the situation in Ukraine, where there have been a number of develo...
Classic Format Edition: Scoping the European Election Scene with John O'Sullivan
June 05, 2024 16:20 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBBUDAPEST, June 5: This Sunday the member states of the European Union will be going to the polls to elect their members of the European Parliament. I don't exactly know just what the European Parliament does either, and it has become boring viewing ever since Nigel Farage departed the European Parliament after Brexit. But there is intense campaigning underway. The streets of Budapest are lined with campaign posters, and there was a campaign march last Saturday with tens of thousands turning o...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: "Our President Banged a Porn Star, and We Had World Peace."
June 01, 2024 20:08 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBLucretia hosts this episode from her bunker in an undisclosed bunker in the desert southwest while Steve and John are still galavanting over in Europe. And as hinted in a Power Line post, she is thermo-nuclear furious about the Trump verdict. Rather than rehash the details of the case, which everyone has picked over thoroughly by this point, the whisky bar considers what at means, and what may or should happen next. Lucretia thinks the American republica died on May 30 (USA, 1776 to May 30,...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Eugene Konotorovich on the Lessons of Oct. 7
May 29, 2024 05:42 - 45 minutes - 42 MBThis week's special episode originates in Budapest, where John Yoo and I were presenting at a two-day conference on the decay of the rule of law in Europe. You think things are bad with the U.S. judiciary? It's much worse over here. (I'll post some video highlights when they are available.) In any case, because of the time difference and other challenges, Lucretia couldn't join us, so we have a guest host holding down her spot as the third host (and also to maintain the crucial two-against-J...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Bad Lawyers and Worse Decisions?
May 18, 2024 17:37 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBListeners want to know from John: did Justice Clarence Thomas let us down with his ruling in this week's 7 - 2 decision upholding the unique funding structure of Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she designed precisely to avoid congressional control as much as possible? John says no, and makes a persuasive three-part case for why Thomas's opinion is thoroughgoing originalism, and good history to boot. If we want to get rid of Warren's regulatory handiwork (AN...
Bonus Classic Episode: 'The Unprotected Class' with Jeremy Carl
May 17, 2024 21:39 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBThis classic format episode features Steve in a one-on-one conversation with with Jeremy Carl, author of a dynamite (almost literally) new book entitled The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. Jeremy commits heresy in this book, offerng statistics that you aren't supposed to mention, and truths that, in an earlier age, might have got you burned at the stake. In publishing this book Jeremy joins the ranks of fellow brave souls such as Heather Mac Donald, Steve Sa...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Judges Without Judgment?
May 11, 2024 21:00 - 1 hour - 66.6 MBJohn Yoo hosts this week's episode from exile in Austin, Texas, where he humors Steve and Lucretia's the extra-legal views on the Trump trials and tribulations in a Manhattan courtroom, and speculate how Trump's "Letter from the Rikers Island Jail" would read (though it will be more likely in the form of Tweets or TruthSocial posts). Have we discovered a trial judge who seems to have no judgment at all. Certainly we have a president without judgment, and we begin with pondering the question ...
Bonus Episode, Three Whisky After Hours: What To Make of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act
May 06, 2024 04:00 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBThere was a lot of listener and reader interest in our too brief comments on the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in our last episode, and we realized this issue deserved keeping the whisky bar open after the usual 2 am closing time to extend our treatment of the issue, yielding this short special episode. To recap: Lucretia thinks it is a stupid idea (hence, "Don't murder a man who is committing suicide"), while John thought it was also unsound on basic free speech principles. Steve was, natural...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: "Never Murder a Man Who Is Committing Suicide"
May 04, 2024 15:13 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBLucretia hosts this week's episode, reminding us once again that Republicans are living up to their reputation as "the stupid party" with the proposed "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act" that seems to have overlooked this quaint old thing called the First Amendment. Steve gamely tries to defend the political strategy behind it, but Lucretia is having none of it (putting her in rare alignment with the New York Times), wondering why anyone would want to distract attention away from Democrats tieing t...
Victims of Communism Memorial Day
May 01, 2024 19:16 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBToday is May Day, but also the Victims of Communism Memorial Day, and as such today is the prefect days for this classic-hybrid format podcast, featuring Steve Hayward in a conversation with Elizabeth Spalding, chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. (Elizabeth is also Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.) The Foundation has opened the Victims of Communism Mus...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Sober Thoughts on Immunity
April 26, 2024 17:51 - 1 hour - 56 MBWe're going up a day earlier than usual this week, partly because our constantly irregular travel schedules complicated things again, but more importantly to be timely, as John, Steve, and Lucretia have LOTS of thoughts on the Supreme Court argument Thursday about whether ex-presidents should enjoy broad immunity for any or all acts they took while in office. Steve and Lucretia think the president does, while John thinks textual support for the proposition is lacking. Steve and Lucretia respo...
The Two Whisky Happy Hour: Will It Get Worse Before It Gets Worse?
April 20, 2024 17:09 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBThis week's ad-free episode is probably better thought of as a Two Whisky Happy Hour, because John Yoo is away on a lecture- and Philly-cheesesteak-procurement tour back east, and Lucretia is out of action right now, too, though she appears in this episode by proxy, so to speak. So two whiskies it is. Last weekend, Lucretia and I offered a keynote session for Ammo Grrrll's annual CommenterCon conference in Phoenix, which is an annual gathering of Ammo Grrrll's best friends and devoted fans f...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Letter from the Birmingham Starbucks Edition
April 14, 2024 18:53 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBSteve hosts this crisp episode despite his creaky voice from a springtime bug (and Lucretia is partly hobbled, too) covering a lot of ground, starting with a brief recap of the latest (unanimous!) property rights victory at the Supreme Court, but then moving quickly on to initial reactions to the outbreak of World War III yesterday. What to make of Iran's attack on Israel? Many things are not clear about this impetuous scene. Closely related, while the Biden Administration seems determined t...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: On Earthquakes, Physical and Political
April 06, 2024 12:47 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBJohn Yoo takes command of host duties this week, as Steve was on the road at an academic conference at City University of New York, where a knowledgeable faculty member remarked that he was surprised Steve didn't need an armed guard. The conference was largely devoted to the intellectual history of the liberal tradition, and was designed perfectly to induce a scornful snort from Lucretia who disdains all such flim-flummery. The bonus was that Steve apparenlty brought an earthquake with him, a...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: To Obscenity and Beyond
March 29, 2024 21:57 - 1 hour - 70.1 MBThis week's episode has it all, starting with the lamentable fact that when you hear "porn is everywhere these days," it included even the Powerline website this week, and then proceeding to the obscenity of the John Eastman disbarment, the disappointment with the 5th Circuit's decision preventing Texas from securing its territorial integrity, on how best to squash squatters, and a vigorous argument about the legacy of the recently deceased Joe Lieberman. (Steve and John give Lieberman a thum...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour—With a Twist!
March 23, 2024 15:23 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBThis episode could be mistaken for the Three Martini Happy Hour, because this week's episode comes with a tangy twist. John Yoo is away this week, so we brought in a ringer to take his place: Prof. Hadley Arkes! Thus this episode become a Positivism-Free Zone, in which we review the deepest ground of the natural law unencumbered by John's usual alarums, excursions, and errors. The episode comes in three parts: Hadley made some news yesterday, celebrating the retirement of the noted Notre Dam...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Hur, Harried, Hopeless, and Fiery!
March 16, 2024 05:20 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBMove over "Republicans pounce" as the favorite media deflection. We now know that when an old man yells at clouds—or members of Congress—the media fall in line and declare it "fiery." Well the 3WHH is authentically fiery! Four habanero spicy! This week more than ever. After dissecting the Hur testimony and its missed opportunities, we take on the issue of whether Biden is playing senile on purpose, what to make of the Tik-Tok forced sale proposal, what to make of Chuck Schumer's proposal fo...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Normalizing Dishonesty Edition
March 09, 2024 18:46 - 1 hour - 71.2 MBLucretia hosts this week's episode, which we recorded in the morning over coffee instead of whisky because travel schedules prevented the normal and proper Friday evening happy hour, and guess what? We're even worse without whisky! Among the news and issues treated this week: Why Biden isn't FDR (he's not even Harry Truman); why this was the worst SOTU (Lucretia offers a different acronym) speech ever; whether there are signs of life for the GOP in California after all; how immigration and ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Eye-Bleach Edition
February 24, 2024 16:28 - 1 hour - 64.6 MBThis episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald's hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (Steve thinks the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn! Say what? Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump's alleged fraud trial in New Yor...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Real Prosecutors of Atlanta Unreality Show
February 16, 2024 04:53 - 1 hour - 60.4 MBWe're up a day early with this week's episode because of schedule problems, but mostly to get a drop on the streaming services with our new (un)reality TV show, "The Real Prosecutors of Atlanta," starring Big Fani Willis. OMG, is this not the best television since last week's Super Bowl? Steve show up, however, with a gin martini instead of peaty whisky, which drew a rebuke from You Know Who, who had three proper whiskies on hand for the episode. But this episode isn't all fun and giggles...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The 25th Hour
February 10, 2024 18:30 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBThe Twenty-Fifth Hour is the 1950 novel by the Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu that weaves a tangled, early post-modern tale of central Europe and the Balkans in World War II. It is justly forgotten today, but the title is back in a manner of speaking because it highlights the great irony of the Left's Ahab-like pursuit of the Great Orange Whale (to mix literary references). Anyone else recall back in 2017 how a concerted mob of concerned citizens suggested the presidential disability c...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Civil War and the Fire This Time
February 03, 2024 19:27 - 1 hour - 65 MBJohn Yoo is where?? Mexico!?!? So after all that talk the last couple weeks saying the situation at the southern border did not constitute an "invasion," now he's in Mexico on some undisclosed clandestine mission. Which makes no sense: they don't even have McRibb there. Taking John's place this week is Inez Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum, frequent contributor to the New York Post, First Things, The Federalist, and other premier outlets, and co-host of the High Noon podcast on the ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Civil War at the Border Special Edition
January 26, 2024 18:40 - 1 hour - 66.9 MBThis special ad-free edition, posted a day ahead of the usual schedule because of the urgency of events at the southern border, finds the 3WHH hosts engaging in their own civil war over the question of whether states have any remedy when the federal government abdicates is responsibility to protect the border. Steve and Lucretia were in rare accord—well maybe not quite complete accord*—against John's positivist position of federal supremacy uber alles. Our normally genteel whisky-sipping sal...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Inside John's Briefs, Plus the Civil War Over the Civil War
January 20, 2024 18:52 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBThis week's episode covers more ground more quickly than a Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes passing attack. Which the Philadephia Eagles won't get to experience because they flopped in the first round of the playoffs last weekend, falsifying one of John Yoo's predictions for 2024 that the Eagles would make the Super Bowl. We're hoping his brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Trump's place on the Colorado ballot is more on the mark. We mostly skip over the fine points of John's brief and t...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Iowa Stubborn Edition
January 13, 2024 16:54 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBOn the eve of the Iowa caucuses Monday, we got to wondering just who or what lives up to the description of "Iowa Stubborn" in Meredith Wilson's "Music Man": And we're so by God stubborn We can stand touching noses For a week at a time And never see eye to eye! Is it Trump, DeSantis, Haley—or the legions of lawyers waging endless lawfare against Trump? It's a trick question. Lucretia—the host for this week's episode—actually hails originally from Mason City, Iowa, which is the inspiration ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Happy Insurrection Day Edition
January 06, 2024 17:29 - 1 hour - 74.8 MBRonald Reagan used to joke that for Republicans, every day is the 4th of July, while for Democrats every day is April 15. Today we need to update that contrast by noting that the favorite new holiday for Democrats is January 6—"Insurrection Day." We'll get to Joe Biden in due course, but the real insurrection this week took place at Harvard, where, as John Yoo predicted last week (we have receipts!) Claudine Gay was ousted in a right-wing putsch, a vertiable academic insurrection against al...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Gala New Year's Edition
December 30, 2023 18:46 - 1 hour - 75.3 MBWho needs a rockin new year's party when you have the Three Whisky Happy Hour in peak form, dishing out on the top stories of 2023, and, in the spirit of the late financial analyst Byron Wein, offering a range of potential low-probability surprises (rather than firm predictions) for 2024. What's the difference between a prediction and a surprise? Well think about it this way: who would have predicted, at year end 2022, that right now our favorite Democratic Senator would be . . . John Fetter...
A Conversation with Will Inboden
December 27, 2023 21:43 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBThis special holiday week bonus episode features a conversation between Steve and Will Inboden, author of a fabulous recent book based on the very latest declassified files of the Reagan presidency entitled Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. (Steve reviewed the book favorably in the Free Beacon.) In his distinguished career Inboden has worked on Captiol Hill and at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. He was professor and director of...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Live Holiday Edition
December 23, 2023 16:45 - 1 hour - 75.7 MBThis week's special, ad-free edition of the 3WHH was recorded in live webinar format with about 80 of our most loyal listeners tuning in and heckling us MST3K style (IYKYK) in the chat room, but for a holiday episode it partook more of Judgment Day at times, as we reckoned with some lingering issues from our Cage Match about J6 and the Ukraine War two weeks ago, along with a thoroughly judgmental detour into "Lookism." Steve, in particular, recalls Taki's old case from the 1980s that Jane Fon...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: In Context
December 16, 2023 04:25 - 1 hour - 66.9 MBThe cleaning crew is still scrubbing the blood off the floor from last week's cage match about Ukraine and January 6, and already Ali and Frazier (that is, Lucretia and John) want to go for a sequel—maybe "Rumble in the Faculty Club Food Court" or something. (And yes, since we recorded in the morning instead of evening happy hour like we are supposed to, talk turned to McDonald's and breakfast meats. Steve blames John for McDonald's stock slumping this week while the broad market had a monste...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Cage Match Edition
December 09, 2023 19:13 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBWe finally get around to our promised but delayed cage match about Ukraine and unanswered questions about January 6, and alas, all of Steve's attempts to cheer up Lucretia with the week's great news—the Hunter Biden indictment, the embarrassment of Ivy League presidents, Kevin McCarthy resigning, Trump winning Tom Friedman's vote—proved unavailing. Futile, even. Why Lucretia even trashed McDonald's, which is really fightin' words for John. But then we get down to business, with the bruising ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Catch Match Edition
December 09, 2023 19:13 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBWe finally get around to our promised but delayed cage match about Ukraine and unanswered questions about January 6, and alas, all of Steve's attempts to cheer up Lucretia with the week's great news—the Hunter Biden indictment, the embarrassment of Ivy League presidents, Kevin McCarthy resigning, Trump winning Tom Friedman's vote—proved unavailing. Futile, even. Why Lucretia even trashed McDonald's, which is really fightin' words for John. But then we get down to business, with the bruising ...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: John Yoo One-on-One with...Charles Barkley??
December 02, 2023 04:12 - 1 hour - 67.9 MBSo we had promised last week that this episode would feature a cage match between Lucretia and John about realism versus idealism as applied to the Ukraine War (especially since John baited Lucretia by calling her a neocon, which is fighting words not just in the desert west), as well as the problem of January 6, but the passing of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Henry Kissinger diverted us, along with the DeSantis-Newsom debate. Along the way we were treated to an extraordinary tale—John Y...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Deciding Between Bad and Worse
November 25, 2023 19:05 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBWhile most other podcasts are taking the Thanksgiving holiday off, your three bartenders behind the Three Whisky Happy Hour remain on the job, because no one wants leftover podcasts for the long weekend. Steve and Lucretia had traditional home-cooked feasts, while John, naturally, dined Thursday at a yacht club, sweater knotted properly around his neck. In the middle of this episode that ranges from the metaphysics of free speech to Nikki Haley's chances to the Argentinian and Dutch election...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour, on Students for (In)Justice in Palestine
November 18, 2023 03:24 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBHoo-boy—pour yourself three-fingers of your favorite high-proof single malt for this episode of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, as Steve, John, and Lucretia throw down hard on the limits of free speech in theory and practice. A lot of people—some of them conservatives (and, ahem, John at times!)—think that banning student chapters of the pro-Hamas Students for (In)Justice in Palestine, as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida, represents right-wing "cancel culture" and is therefore hypocritical....
FDR and Civil Liberties, with David Beito
November 15, 2023 18:39 - 46 minutes - 43 MBFranklin Roosevelt and the New Deal are back in fashion these days, featuring some truly strange bedfellows. Liberal intellectuals told President Biden that he could become the next FDR if he simply spent like a convention of drunken sailors, but some of the "national conservatives" also suddenly like FDR and think we should emulate the New Deal's economic policies, which surely has Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley rolling over in their graves. Meanwhile, historians have neglected FDR'...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Return of the King
November 11, 2023 15:34 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBWith John Yoo, who accuses Lucretia and Steve of being closet monarchists, back from his jungle adventures in South America (albeit without any archeological relics to satify his Indiana Jones fantasies) and sitting in the host chair this week, the gang offers its two cents on the latest GOP debate (someone—guess who?—is not impressed with Nikki Haley), and the disappointing election results, which, Steve suggests, is like Twain's remark on Wagner's music ("it's better than it sounds"), thoug...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour, with Special Guest Amy Wax
November 04, 2023 16:54 - 1 hour - 61 MBWith John Yoo still away somewhere in the jungles of South America, Steve and Lucretia are delighted to be joined by a very special guest, Prof. Amy Wax of Penn Law School. Followers of the campus scene may be familiar with Penn Law's crusade to fire Prof. Wax for the sin of offending against campus orthodoxies on race and immigration, at the same time Penn so conspicuously tolerates anti-Semitism. Prof. Wax isn't at liberty to discuss the details of her ongoing ordeal, but we do get into th...
America's Proxy Wars: A Conversation with Col. Austin Bay
November 02, 2023 17:58 - 1 hour - 61 MBAnother bonus classic format edition, this time featuring Steve in extended conversation with Col. Austin Bay, one of the proprietors of the indispensable Strategy Page, columnist for Creators Syndicate, and author of the splendid Cocktails from Hell: Five Complex Wars Shaping the 21st Century. His column last week is a brief and lucid tour through the proxy wars America is currently confronting (against Russia and Iran, by way of Ukraine and Israel), and our conversation goes into much grea...
A Conversation with Hadley Arkes about Natural Law
October 30, 2023 18:19 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBWay back in 1960, Leo Strauss wrote in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences that "Natural law, which was for many centuries the basis of the predominant Western political thought, is rejected in our time by almost all students of society who are not Roman Catholics." In the decades since then, however, natural law has enjoyed a revival of sorts, and is implicated today in the rise of constitutional originalism at the Supreme Court. But it is also a confusing subject, because many so-call...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Crowd-Pleaser Edition
October 28, 2023 17:23 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBWith John Yoo away this week on a junket to South America, Steve and Lucretia reverted to old times and scheduled a live taping where we fielded questions and comments in a webinar format. We talked about the reasons to be bullish about the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, along with discussion of the strategic challenges facing Israel and the United States, and more—always more—on the rot in our universities. In between these three main topics we took up listener questions about soc...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Campus Conundrums Over Hamas and Frankie Five-Angels Returns?
October 21, 2023 20:24 - 1 hour - 70.8 MBThe only thing more predictable than a sunrise in the east is a Hamas claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital and that the Western media would report it as dictated because the story was just too good to check, though we always thought the mainstream media employed—or so they told us in 2004—"layer and layers of fact-checkers." Once again, we see whose side our media is on. And it's not ours—or Israel's. Topic 2: Time to "decolonize" all the academic departments that won't shut up about "co...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Hamas on Campus
October 14, 2023 08:23 - 49 minutes - 45 MBNever mind Hamas in Gaza: what do we do with Hamas ideology on American college campuses? On top of the pusillanmous responses of college presidents we can clearly see the emerging theme of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, out of which the next step is certain: any attempts to curtail Hamas ideology on campus will be called "cancel culture," and will be said to prove the hypocrisy of everyone who has been attacking cancel culture over the last few years. And thus nothing will chang...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Dog Days of the Biden Presidency
October 07, 2023 18:20 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBLucretia, freshly back in the U.S. from her adventures with Steve in Budapest, is in the host chair for this week's episode, and she's not in a good mood. And it's not jet lag. Looking out at the concurrent disasters at home and abroad at the moment—high inflation, an undefended southern border, and now war in Israel—she poses a straightforward question: Would any of this be happening if Trump was still president? And more acute to a certified dog-lover: While Trump has many personal flaws, w...
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Phila-Pest Edition
September 30, 2023 15:29 - 1 hour - 77 MBSettle in with your best chilled Hungarian dessert wine and Philly cheese steak for this cosmopolitan issue, which finds John Yoo—host for this week's episode—tired out from looting in his home town of Philadelphia, while Lucretia and Steve are together in Budapest carrying on with more conspiracies against the international rules-based order. John gives us on-scene reports from ground-zero of the "recreational shopping" going on in Philadelphia, plus an update on his three days of testimon...