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No 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 drive for power that can explain the outcome-oriented constitutionalism of the left on display since the Progressive Era lies a more sinister but less recognized aspect of leftist politics: American leftists are basically socialist revolutionaries, but rather than conduct direct revolution (with certain isolated exceptions), they prefer to use the rule of law to subvert the rule of law. Steve thinks an important clue to understanding this dynamic (about which too many conservatives and Republicans are clueless) can be found in a reconsideration of . . . the Spanish Civil War. (See Nathan Pinkoski's fine essay https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/arming-the-people-against-revolution/ reviewing the revisionist literature that essentially says everything you think you know about teh Spanish Civil War is wrong, and just imagine what Franco could have done if only he'd had some helicopters.) Lucretia as always is less convinced by Steve's historical analogies and, having had three espressos after lunch and before taping, offers her own special sauce to understanding the problem, yet somehow omitted the usual snark about Steve's whisky of the week, Laphroaig Quarter-Cask. Finally, in honor of Pride Month, some topical exit music this week from the great Jonathan Richman. And thanks to the many Power Line readers who tuned in for the live taping. Sorry we didn't get to more of your questions and comments.
The 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 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1798859839395013095 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 developments over the last two weeks that make the war more volatile. The French are sending in troops ('advisers,' but that sounds too familiar), while we have apparently greenlit Ukraine to attack inside Russian with our weapons—so long as we approve the targets. What could go wrong? (And why is Hungary opposing the NATO position on Ukraine? Not for the reasons you read in the American media. . .) Finally, for our Article of the Week we take up the issue of climate change litigation, which John wrote about a few days ago for and which Steve is working separately on an article about European lawfare in this domain.
BUDAPEST, 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 out. Most of the polls suggest that right-of-center "populist" parties are likely to see the largest gains in this round of elections, though likely not large enough to command a coalition majority, but we'll have to see. But wait! There's more! On July 4—an auspicuous day for Americans obviously—Britain heads to the polls for a general election, and all of the polls indicate the Conservative Party is heading for an epic wipeout at the hands of Labour. What explains the Tories' dismal prospects just five years after their largest landslide win in 70 years? To say they have underperformed the last five years under Boris Johnson and his successors is an understatement. From COVID lockdowns to Net-Zero energy madness, who needs the Tories when you can get real socialism from Labour? And just how will the Tories dust themselves off and recover? I sat down a few days back with John O'Sullivan to sort it all out. John has had a long and distinguished career in journalism and politics, having served as editor of in the late 1980s and 1990s, and as chief speechwriter for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for a time. Nowadays he is the president of the Danube Institute https://danubeinstitute.hu here in Budapest, where he overseas an active program of visiting journalists, academics, and political figures from all over the globe.
Lucretia 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, 2024, RIP), while Steve thinks this is another dismal turning point comparable to the way the demagogic attack on Robert Bork in 1987 poisoned and embittered our judicial politics ever since. The connecting thread between the two: Joe Biden, who may be the single-most destructive figure in American politics in the last 50 years—worse even than Obama, who was at least subtle in his contempt for the United States. It was Biden who gave in to the progressive left over Bork in 1987, and now giving in to the progressive left's Trump Derangement Syndrome and warping our legal order. John looks beyond the appeals in the New York courts to a possible motion for a writ of mandamus from the U.S. Supreme Court, while all three whisky swillers agree that gane theory tells us that the only way to stop this kind of partisan lawfare is for Republicans to teach Democrats that two can play this game. And Lucretia has a list! Do Republicans have the stomach for it? Doubtful.
This 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-John ratio), and we have decided to give him his very own Roman-inspired pseudonym, "Hadleius Arkesius." We indulge way too much time with our opening banter and general discussion of our experience pondering the problem of the decay of the rule of law before getting to the main event, with is a conversation with Prof. Eugene Kontorovich https://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/fulltime/kontorovich_eugene, who is professor of law at George Mason University's Scalia Law School, and head of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum, one of Israel's largest think tanks. Prof. Kontorovich divides his time between the United States and Israel. A few weeks back Eugene wrote a bracing article in on "The Ugly Lessons of October 7 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ugly-lessons-of-october-7," and we review the article with him along with developments of the last week, such as the move of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Our conversation with Eugene begins around the 18 minute mark.
Listeners 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 (AND WE DO!), it will be to be done directly by Congress, rather than indirectly by the courts. This week also marked the 70th anniversary of the decision, which we have deplored before on account of the poor reasoning for the halfway right result, but a our Article of the Week https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/brown-at-70-still-hazy-after-all-these-years/ from our friend Shep Melnick of Boston College draws our attention to some ongoing ambiguities of that still afflict our civil rights law. You'd think after 70 years we might have figured it out, but no—and worse, the ambiguity is likely on purpose, because it suits the shifting strategy and tactics of the identitarian left. Other topics covered briefly this week include the collapsing case against Trump in Manhattan, Trump's VP sweepstakes (you can scratch Kristi Noem from the list), the latest swimsuit edition and King Charles's ghastly portrait (hard to say which is worse here), Harrison Butker's cultural butt kick, and, finally, how to devise some tests to judge whether higher education is truly reversing its multi-decade slide into pernicious leftism.
This classic format episode features Steve in a one-on-one conversation with with Jeremy Carl, author of a dynamite (almost literally) new book entitled https://www.amazon.com/Unprotected-Class-Anti-White-Tearing-America-ebook/dp/B0CB1SSYG5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PIBT078ZC6M9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.S62JDP1frV0Riu1oqVfmn1VRiRq7K_V60YDxj9TSmBeWp5TxQ81w9eKOKY6O6DpJ.H8YtDYXhZh70iuWr3ocpxsd9JOG3M01uVex-dl1V0do&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+unprotected+class+jeremy+carl&qid=1715981350&sprefix=the+unprotcted%2Caps%2C173&sr=8-1Jeremy 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 Sailer, Zach Goldberg, and a handful of others who do not shrink from challenging the enforced orthodoxy that approves of anti-white discrimination and scapegoating. It is, Jeremy rightly notes, a formula that if continued much longer will divide the nation so badly that we won't be able to live together. He thinks the old fashioned principle of basic human equality rightly understood, and old ethic of the "melting pot" that brought together different ethnicities into a common citizenship and shared national identity needs to be restored, and soon. He offers some suggestions, some difficult, some happily already starting to happen. One good sign: the book is getting a lot of attention. Maybe the ice is finally breaking.
John 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 of just when it was that Bernie Sanders became president, because it is impossible to see how a Sanders administration would differ from everything the Biden administration has done. Steve notes a recent article https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-hur-memo-and-the-tragedy-of-joe-biden/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR210Uq8bbiiKWEeaQkEsrPn0UKKTe6f6GGaPlEF9YKf0iaFHpcNr1Ql_b4_aem_AQWE46PMx-5tyDhDktNhurgmg09uWKzYvfNRVbPvkEJRUXPHb4P0ROHmlPU9WRdyzXZolsfbWKkpO4OkzX88Wmtn that picks up on parts of the Hur report on Biden. While everybody focused on the parts of the report that dealt with Biden's senility, other parts of the report show that Biden has actually had terrible judgment for his entire political career. Finally, we look at Steve's article on the parallels between 1968 https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-1968-sequel and today, and wonder how it is possible for so many of our "leaders" in high education to have so little good judgment or common sense about what ought to be done. (Lucretia recommends pepper-bullets, which sound like some kind of high-velocity jalapenos.)
There 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 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/podcast-the-3whh-on-never-murder-a-man-who-is-committing-suicide.php"), while John thought it was also unsound on basic free speech principles. Steve was, naturally, in the middle, ending up as road kill for his analysis of why Republicans thought there were some political mischief to be made. So we decided to order another round of drinks (or, in Lucretia's case, four margaritas to honor Cinco de Mayo) and try to go through the issue more thoroughly, especially taking account of David Bernstein's observations at National Review Online https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/what-people-are-getting-wrong-about-the-house-antisemitism-bill/ that there's a lot of disinformation about what the bill does and doesn't do. We also wanted to take up the argument Harry Jaffa argued more than 60 years ago that a free society could, under certain circumstances, curtail the speech of Nazis, Communists, and . . . anti-Semites? . . . in defense of a free society. Jaffa argued: “Does a free society prove false to itself if it denies civil liberties to Communists, Nazis, or anyone else who would use these liberties, if he could, as a means of destroying the free society? The answer, I believe, is now plain that it does not. Is saying this I do not counsel, or even justify, any particular measure for dealing with persons of such description. What is right in any case depends on the facts of that case, and I am here dealing only with principles, not their application. However, those who think every denial of civil liberties is equally derogatory of the character of a free society, without reference to the character of the persons being denied, make this fundamental error: they confuse ends with means. . . [But] it is seldom either expedient or wise to suppress advocacy of even inhuman doctrines in a community like ours, it is not for that reason unjust.” Does the current campus scene arise to this standard? What does prudence counsel? The normally quarrelsome threesome at the whisky bar arrive at surprising agreement on the matter. Hint: We rather like Jaffa’s conclusion to his classic essay: “The more we can accomplish by opinion, the less we will have to do by law.”
Lucretia 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 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/us/politics/antisemitism-jews-republicans-democrats-congress.html), wondering why anyone would want to distract attention away from Democrats tieing themselves in electoral hangman's knots over the anti-Semitism raging wild inside their party and their wholly-owned subsidiary college campuses. Republicans ought to impose a gag order on themselves, and crusade against the gag order on Trump in his current trial in New York. Concerning which, John has several observations. And about that campus scene: another week, and another data point for Steve's thesis that "it's going to get worse before it gets worse." About the only sensible conclusion is that somewhere in the Great Beyond, Tom Wolfe is behind the whole current scene. Maybe we can still get a sequel from him, .
Today 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 https://victimsofcommunism.org/leader/elizabeth-spalding-phd/, 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 Museum in downtown Washington DC, and you should put it on your itinerary for your next visit to the nation's capital. We call this a "hybrid" format because it comes in two parts. Following the conversation with Elizabeth, this episode offers Steve's recent speech at the Victims of Communism Museum about Reagan and Churchill on the Cold War, a major part of Steve's book https://www.amazon.com/Greatness-Reagan-Churchill-Extraordinary-Leaders/dp/0307237192/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RRZAT4RHVZDI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sQBrunUd4h0v9ZacG8Uw0R5AHpJhbu3xn4BSzR_A_KpmIFWUaDlLgFR-2Qm-8FEylDQg0w03uGmzrLztMs4k4-L_8FIZ8W7G52DNVhST1gw.9zmDilDsvJQcvoA1utsHLqpCJhMNxVZzsPf_K5nt7bQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=Steven+F.+Hayward+Greatness&qid=1714590853&sprefix=steven+f.+hayward+greatness%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-1 about the two great statesmen.
We'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 respond with an appeal to first principles, and enlist as an expert witness Harvey Mansfield, because of his unique book on the inherent ambivalence of executive power even in a constitutional republic, . As usual, we fought to a draw. Our second subject is the ongoing Kristalnacht on campus. There's not much new to say except to calibrate how cowardly university administrators continue to be, and note that even some liberals, like George Packer in (who provides our article of the week, "The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/campus-left-university-columbia-1968/678176/") are starting to figure out what conservatives have known about higher education for two generations now. It's as if no one ever bothered to notice .
This week's 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 from around the country. My theme was "Will it get worse before it gets worse?", and Lucretia offered some thoughts on the future of free speech. We had some technical difficulties with our sound recording devices, so the recording has a sudden and noticeable quality shift right in the middle, and you can't always make out the audience questions perfectly, but we think listeners will still enjoy most of it.
Steve 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 to tamp down the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East, it seems to be inviting one with Antony (Blank) Blinken saying a week ago that Ukraine should or would become a member of NATO. Are they trying to make Russia dig in, or draw the U.S. more directly into the war (which NATO membership would require)? We also ponder J.D. Vance's very clear-headed op-ed https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/jd-vance-ukraine.htmlthat reviews the grim math of the Ukranian battle scene, making us wonder whether the Biden Administration has any strategy at all beyond "fight to the last Ukranian." Then we ponder briefly the astounding scene of the anti-Semitic protests in the back yard of Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with Steve arging that to see this incident as a matter of the limits of free speech is woefully inadequate. But the bulk of the episode is devoted to analyzing the latest abortion controversies, starting with the Arizona Supreme Court decision upholding the validity of Arizona's pre-Roe statutes, and observing as usual the way this narrow and largely technical ruling is being mis-reported in the media and misrepresented by the left. The main portion of this segment, though, is devoted to Trump's announcement that he does not support federal legislation of abortion and wants to leave the issue iup to the states. Does this make him the modern-day equivalent of Stephen Douglas, as John Davidson argues in our Article of the Week https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/11/on-abortion-donald-trump-goes-the-way-of-stephen-a-douglas/ over at The Federalist? Lucretia will startle many regular listeners with her analysis of the matter, to which John and Steve largely agree. In fact, it is an amazing how much agreement we had this week, but perhaps because we recorded in the morning whisky, and with Steve and Lucretia ailing.
John 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, and we're not referring to his conference paper! Aside from these unexpected things, there were fresh tremors for Trump's legal problems, Biden's long-expected turn against Israel that was designed to appear to a constituency of one (hint: the person insists on being called DOKTOR), fresh encomiums for Mitch McConnell (okay—it was not unanimous), and finally into some tremors for the income tax. As Stan Evans liked to say, "Any country that can land a man on the moon can abolish the income tax," and now a member of the House has proposed repealing the 16th Amendment. Especially salient in light of the pending Supreme Court case that might allow the government to tax unrealized asset gains (a back-door wealth tax), which will guarantee that the government will adopt a policy of 10 percent inflation forever.
This 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 thumbs-up, while Lucretia. . .) All three of us independently chose the same article for our picks for Article of the Week—Walter Russell Mead's magazine piece entitled "Twilight of the Wonks https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/twilight-wonks-walter-russell-mead." It has some magnificently harsh language about the leaders of our elite educational institutions, such as "moral jellyfish," and leaders who are "careerist mediocrities who specialize in uttering the approved platitudes of the moment." We're less sure about Mead's diagnosis about the role of narrow specialization in the decay of our universities. At least we have Krispy Kreme donuts coming soon to McDonald's to look forward to.
This 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 https://jameswilsoninstitute.org/about/about-page-3! 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 Dame Law professor Gerard V. Bradley https://law.nd.edu/directory/gerard-bradley/, who will be joining Hadley at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Law and the American Foundin https://jameswilsoninstitute.orgg. From there Hadley proceeds to answering the question that we've been kicking around ever since the decision, namely, just how should pro-life politicians break out of their self-imposed muteness about abortion. Hadley has the strategy. Finally, we spend some time toward the end getting down some of Hadley's "origin story" that brought him to Leo Strauss's classroom at the University of Chicago back in the 1960s, and key friendships made along the way—especially our late friend and unsung hero Michael Uhlmann. Note: We had some internet glitches while recording this episode that weren't easily edited or smoothed over, so we ask listeners' indulgence with these hiccups, in return for which we'll present this installment ad-free.
Move 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 for an putsch in Israel, and finally, another round in the ring on constitutional originalism, prompted by Frank DiVito's article out this week, "Can Constitutional Originalism Overcome Our Crisis? https://tomklingenstein.com/can-originalism-overcome-our-crisis/"
Lucretia 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 abortion are playing out in the campaign cycle so far; how to think about the Supreme Court decision in the Colorado case dealing with Trump's eligibility for the ballot (hint—it ain't over till it's over); and finally, can Harvard be serious in asking for a government bailout? The unifying theme here is galloping dishonesty, which is being normalized more and more every day. Our articles of the week are (from Steve): Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic essay "Defining Deviancy Down https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212064," newly salient in an age of truth-denying euphemisms like "justice-involved youth" and "newcomers" instead of "migrants" (which was a substitute for "illegal alien"); Lucretia ponders the challenges of Alex Berenson's Substack article on new threats to free speech https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/free-speech-under-attack-the-weaponization-095; And John draws our attention to the original 14th Amendment article https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9843&context=penn_law_review from Baude and Paulson that brought us to the Supreme Court steps earlier this week, plus responses https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4568771 (also here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4591838) that got overlooked at the time, now largely vindicated.
This 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 York City, apparently has a case of Anthony Weiner envy, and posted some rather racy locker room pics https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-manhattan-judge-in-trump-civil-trial-snapped-shirtless-selfies-to-share-with-his-alumni-newsletter of himself some years back. And right in the middle of our discussion Lucretia flashed the pictures up on the Zoom screen, sending John and Steve rushing for some eye-bleach. There must be something in the bottled water Manhattan Democrats drink. (And doesn't Engoron sound like the name of a dwarve or elve who goes bad in ?) Click through the link here if you are brave. In any case, we do finally get around to a new segment of the 3WHH, where we note three articles from the last week for what they can tell us about something. John chose those stupid presidential rankings http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf; Lucretia chose an MSNBC article https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-rcna139798 from leftist columnist Paul Waldman that unwittingly admits that everything conservatives say about the administrative state is completely true; and Steve picked Karol Markowitz's column https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/opinion/why-is-noting-married-people-are-happier-and-kids-do-better-with-married-parents-so-controversial/ reflecting on how recent social science that ratifies the conservative view that two-parent families are the best way to raise children is so contoversial with the left, which is no surprise.
We'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. We also rake up the ongoing immigration saga in Washington, complete now with an impeachment! And also analysis of Trump's supposed attack on NATO and surrender to Putin, though some of us think this is another sign of Trump's peculiar genius. Finally, can we really be so lucky that a week later the Hur report is the gift that keeps on giving?
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 clause of the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove President Trump from office? Think of it as a 25th Hour moment. This week ended with the 25th Hour being invoked to remove from office because of his obvious and rapidly advancing senility. Yet one more example of how a strategy to get Trump, like the Me Too movement, has circled around like a rogue torpedo to explode in the face of the Left. The week began with such promise for the anti-Trump crusade. The walls were closing in on the breaking dam that would drown the freshly roosting chickens! Bam: no immunity for you! And the Supreme Court might allow Trump to be banned from the ballot! Except that didn't go according to script. And then the report of the greatest Hur since Ben Hur, declaring that Biden isn't competent to stand trial for the very same "willful" crime for which Trump is being prosecuted, but is somehow competent to remain president? The Left should have taken a lesson from those failed exploding cigars they tried to use on Castro 60 years ago. But about that disability clause in the 25th Amendment: we take a closer look, and note that Section 4 in particular is not as clear cut and simple as it sounds. Meaning we're likely stuck so long as Edith Wilson. . ., er, we mean, DOCTOR Jill Biden has anything to say about it. And finally, we close out this week's epsiode with happy 64th birthday wishes to Lucretia, so the exit bumper music is fairly predictable, isn't it? (Though I chose a rendition from an obscure artist just to annoy this week's host!)
John Yoo is 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 , , , and other premier outlets, and co-host of the High Noon podcast https://ricochet.com/series/high-noon/ on the Ricochet network. She was more than game to join Lucretia in beating up on Steve. We invited Inez to weigh in on the long-running debate we've been having here about the Civil War, how to understand it correctly, and how presidential candidates like Nikki Haley should talk about it. From the we take a look of David Frum's quixotic attempt in to "uncancel Woodrow Wilson," to which were in heated agreement that David is off his rocker. Then John Hinderaker joins us to give us the latest news about the firebombing of his office this past week, plus a few summary impressions of the Michael Mann vs. Mark Steyn cage match playing out in court in Washington DC, where John sat in on the trial several days last week. Does this politically-motivated arson fire presage a return to the bad old days of the Weather Underground of the late 1960s? Thematic exit music this week is "Burning Up My Time" by Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.
This 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 accord*—against John's positivist position of federal supremacy . Our normally genteel whisky-sipping salon became more of a bourbon-swilling barroom brawl, and indeed we were tempted to call this episode "Showdown at the Positive Law Corral." Steve thinks the crisis over Texas's assertion of its right to defend the border, and the demand of the Biden Administration that Texas back down by tomorrow, represents the kind of "right of revolution" moment contemplated in the Declaration of Independence, especially since the governors of 25 other states have signaled their agreement with Texas. But the rare concord between Steve and Lucretia breaks down when the subject turns to the Haley-Trump cage match in New Hampshire primary. (*To paraphrase an old Bill Buckley line, if you think it is hard to argue with Lucretia, just try agreeing with her. It's nearly impossible.)
This 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 take in a wider look at the entire pool of briefs filed in this case, wondering, for example, why the world needs an Amicus brief from the Ryan Binkley for President campaign. This prompts us into wider still observations about other current issues involving the administrative state, which somehow managed to bring up the Statute usually banned from mention on this podcast, John Locke, and the weaknesses of modern property rights theory. Which ultimately brings us to the question heldover from the last two weeks: Nikki Haley and the Civil War. It is now apparent that Haley's momentum in the nomination contest halted abruptly with her flub of the Civil War question, and alas some of our friends are still not getting the question right, such as our good friend Dan Oliver https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/08/civil-war-101/. We go over the matter from Square One, and try—not for the first time—to school John on the issue of . Oh, and we also make our prediction for the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries coming up.
On 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": 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 for "River City" in the Broadway play, which explains a lot about our Lucretia when you think about it. Anyway, John and Steve declare their picks if they were caucusgoers, but then the episode turns quickly to the latest frontiers of the lawfare against Trump, from which we have an inside perch of sorts: John is busy spending the weekend workng up an brief for the upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the case involving Colorado's attempt to ban Trump from the ballot on grounds he is an "insurrectionist." (Trump, not John.) And since the brief have to be turned in next Thursday for this fast-track case, it's very fresh in mind. We also consider the latest developments in other Trump cases, too. Did Trump's lawyers really claim that in fact he shoot someone on 5th Avenue if he was back in the White House. (Short answer: No.) And what accounts for Hunter Biden's reversal of his refusal to submit to a House subpoena for a deposition? Has Texas first the first shot of a new rebellion by taking over part of the souther border? Has the Supreme Court signaled that enough is enough with rampant urban homelessness by granting cert in an appeal of lower court rulings that the homeless have 8th Amendment (that's right, 8th Amendment) rights to sleep on the streets wherever they want? (The Court had previously declined to hear this issue.) All that and our usual good cheer and raspberries, including the fact that we recorded on Edmund Burke's birthday. To paraphrase the great lyric from our title tune, "Oh, there's nothin' halfway/About the Whisky way we treat you/If we treat you/Which we may not do at all."
Ronald 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 a vertiable academic insurrection against all that is true and good (if you believe the left and Gay's causal explanation). A harbinger of things to come? Our panel weighs the chances, but the key clue to real change will be whether Harvard starts by reforming its governing board, currently dominated by political hacks. And who will be the next president of Harvard? We offer some guesses. . . Then we turn to Biden's demagogic campaign speech warning about the "end of democracy," and are undecided whether it deserves a sneer or a snort, but above all wondering if will backfire on Biden. Clearly Democrats hope to bait Trump into making crazy statements, but Trump's way-outside-the-box comments are fairly well discounted by now. Is this the best they've got? Well, at least they are securing their base of NPR listeners. We also take up the late-breaking news that the Supreme Court will take up on an expedited schedule the Colorado ruling throwing Trump off the ballot, with a few early thoughts, though we'll be all over this story in depth right after the oral argument next month. And finally, a few quick closing thoughts on the latest Jeffrey Epstein non-revelations.
Who 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 Fetterman? Black swans everywhere are saying, "I did NOT see that coming!" But before getting started with your 2024 Bingo card we take note of the dumbest controversy of the week, which is seeing some conservatives upset at the "Conservative Dad's Real Women of America" 2024 calendar, which features fetching photos of leading conservative heroines such as Riley Gaines in fetching outfits. Along the way we learn that somewhere in a box in her garage, Lucretia has some modeling photos from her time doing the Jane Fonda workout back in the 1980s, and so we're committing ourselves to producing a 3WHH calendar at some point. And speaking of attractive women in unattractive poses, Nikki Haley got her second strike this week (her first being the blunder several weeks ago of proposing to ban anonymous accounts on social media) when she completely flubbed the "planted" question about the cause of the Civil War. We deplore her Kamala-esque answer and attempts a cleaning it up, but are relieved that at least she didn't say "tariffs." And as befits any fast-moving party conversation, we take surprising digressions, such as a detour into the legacy of Edward Tufte, who reminds us that Stalin had the greatest Power Point presentations ("no one has bullet points like Stalin's bullet points!") and also the single greatest chart of all time. Eventually we get down to business with our picks for Story of the Year for 2023 (hint: Steve says "party like it's 1954!"), and our surprises for 2024. Get your Bingo cards ready. And also enjoy our exit bumper music this week from Spike Jones. Happy new year!
This 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 . (Steve reviewed the book https://freebeacon.com/culture/the-clear-headed-ronald-reagan/ favorably in the .) 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 Willian Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, but is now the brand new director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, which is one of the brand new initiatives several states have set in motion at their public universities to generate some actual intellectual diversity on campus. This two-part conversation covers both topics—Reagan's statesmanship, and the problems of higher education today. And because this episode features The Gipper, it ends with a departure from the usual closing bumper music.
This 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 Fonda was the ugliest woman in America, while we reveal Lucretia's guilty secret that she in fact once owned the Jane Fonda Workout video from that glorious era. But if the judgment of our three bartenders remains divided, we are unanimous in scorn for the Colorado Supreme Court, who somehow think that safeguarding us from "threat to democracy" requires preventing political parties from choosing their nominees, and since when did Orwell don judicial robes?
