Power Line

Hoo boy, this week’s happy hour very nearly descended into a full-scale bar room brawl, even though we recorded in the morning over coffee instead of single-malts because John Yoo is still over in Rome! (And may not come back after this episode!) After noting a few late breaking news stories, such as Harvey Mansfield’s retirement and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s surprise announcement that she’s becoming... Source

With the new Supreme Court term under way, and with several potential landmark oral arguments already in the can, I decided to catch up with Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, and author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court. It turns out that the kind of confirmation battles that have become famous ever... Source

The whisky bar is short one bartender this week as John Yoo is overseas yet again to Italy for some nefarious purpose, so it’s just Steve and Lucretia slinging the 180-proof analysis of the Twitter revelations and other news headlines of the end of the week. But the main topic is following up on the mid-week conversation with Glenn Ellmers on “Hard Truths & Radical Possibilities... Source

Glenn Ellmers has done it again, with a new provocation that “the constitutional republic created by our founders no longer exists.” His article posted at American Greatness, “ Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities,” backs up this startling proposition with five very stark supporting arguments, starting with the fact that elections no longer suffice to control our government (even if they are fair... Source

In this special Thanksgiving long weekend edition with John Yoo sitting in the rotating host chair, the 3WHH bartenders share some wine, whisky and food pairings from the big meal. Steve supplemented his usual fare with popovers, washed down with some 2015 Trump Meritage red, expecting that it was likely past its prime, and although it had indeed lost its fruit, the depth and complexity surprised... Source

One of my favorite journals these days is The European Conservative, edited by the intrepid Alvino-Mario Fantini out of Vienna. Printed on heavy stock paper, its articles are adorned with fabulous reproductions of classic art, making it the kind of journal you’d happily put out on your coffee table alongside your gallery books from the Met or wherever. Back in September I wrote on Power Line about... Source

Your Three Whisky Happy Hour bartenders wandered to Milan this week where we recorded a rare in-person episode, and since we met in Italy, naturally we taste-tested Austrian single-malt whisky, described on the label as “dark” and “peated.” You’ll have to listen to find out the complete verdict, though one hint is that we don’t think we’ll be rushing to import any Waldvietler whisky any time soon. Source

Some smart aleck wag at the Daily Caller has decided this midterm was the “McRib” election, saying “Democracy is like the McRib: It comes and goes mysteriously every two years or so and it is confusing. And, like politicians, once the McRib is reintroduced with a big ad campaign, you remember months later why you didn’t like it in the first place.” Needless to say, with lingering threats by... Source

With John Yoo in the host chair this week, the 3WHH bartenders enjoy some four-finger pours of mostly American whisky ahead of Tuesday’s midterm election, which Steve and Lucretia think is going to be a wave of tsunami proportions. In addition to reviewing the still-volatile findings of the latest polls, we offer ranges of GOP pickups in the House and Senate (you’ll just have to listen to mark... Source

With the World Series knotted at 2-2, and the mid-term election just days away, it seemed the perfect time to catch up with Henry Olsen, the premier psephologist (trying saying that word fast just once, never mind seven times) of all things data-related when it comes to politics—and also baseball. We disagree about the decision to remove a starting pitcher working on a no-hitter into the 7th... Source

That was an extraordinary five hours at the Supreme Court yesterday—twice as long as the oral arguments were originally scheduled to last—and the longer the argument went on, the worse it seemed to get for the defenders of raced-based admissions for higher education. Maybe that was by design on the part of Chief Justice Roberts, who was sarcastic in his open scorn for what he has previously called... Source

On Monday the Supreme Court takes up the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases in what is the Super Bowl of civil rights litigation—arguably the biggest moment for the Court since Brown v. Board of Education. Naturally that is the focus of this episode, though we do briefly review a couple of the key news stories of the week, such as Fetterman’s collapse... Source

Next Monday the Supreme Court takes up the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action admissions cases, but before getting to the constitutional doctrine of the matter, there is a vexing matter that is often overlooked: if we’re going to be giving out racial preferences for admissions (and government contracts, etc), who counts as a member of which minority group? Source

Lucretia and Steve gave John Yoo the day off for this special interstitial (and abbreviated) episode that we’ll just call the *Two* Whisky Happy Hour, in which Lucretia and Steve clear up some confusion from our most recent fast-paced episode, where a few main points got muddled. Several new listeners want us to clear up exactly what we mean by natural right, how natural right (especially its... Source

Last February John Yoo and I hosted Richard Epstein, who needs no introduction for Ricochet members and listeners, for a lecture at Berkeley Law on his most recent book, The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law. Given that we were still under a mask mandate on campus at the time, Richard decided to talk about our COVID misadventures as a prime example of the administrative state run amok. Source

Hoo boy! This week’s fiery episode takes up the argument leftover from last week about whether conservatism—and especially the new “national” variety that is sparking so much energy and enthusiasm right now—should conceive of its mission as Burkean in character, as “restorationist” or revolutionary. We cover a lot of ground, with Lucretia beating up on Steve for his suspicious Burkean sympathies... Source

With John Yoo in the host chair this week, we get off to a rocky start because a certain friend of ours made a favorable reference to Edmund Burke in a draft article shared with us in advance of publication, and Lucretia immediately went to DefCon1. To be continued next week! Anyway, after introducing our whiskies of the week, we get down to business with ranking the biggest farce of the week... Source

For the left, we have arrived at juris-thermo-geddon. If the Ruskies don’t nuke us, then the Supreme Court is going to nuke the Constitution! The Doomsday Clock at leftist institutions everywhere is striking midnight, yet somehow the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists “official” Doomsday Clock hasn’t budged, because apparently it is just a climate change clock now. Anyway, before taking up the legal... Source

This week offers a hybrid car of an episode—almost literally as it turns out—as John Yoo was traveling midweek when Lucretia and Steve gathered in person with Richard Samuelson to record the first half, reviewing his reflections on the significance of the “Washington Football Team” deciding to name themselves the “ Commanders,” which rather fits the administrative state today, no? From there we go... Source

This week the gang revisits the taxonomy of which Star Wars characters map properly onto the domain of the New Rebel Alliance, aka, the “national conservatives” we discussed in some detail last week, chiefly because John and Steve knew it would annoy Lucretia, who declined to accept the open position as the Princess Leia of the NatCons. But this was all just preface for her on-the-scene report of... Source