Podcasts
September 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
We got together for this week’s Three Whisky Happy Hour a day early because I was supposed to be traveling again, though another complete airline FUBAR—the second in two weeks—scratched the trip after all. On top of it all, I was all out of whisky and Lucretia was working from her “no alcohol” campus office, so this episode lacks a certain fluidity that comes from our favorite libations. This week
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September 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Move over Calvin Coolidge: Grover Cleveland has a valid claim to being regarded as the most constitutionally faithful and fiscally frugal president since the Civil War—a case made splendidly in Troy Senik’s new biography that is being published today, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland. What explains this outlier of a politician, who is so unlike Democrats before him, never mind all the
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September 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Today is Constitution Day, so naturally conversation at the 3WHH bar turned directly to the question of whether the state-mandated observances of Constitution Day in public colleges and universities are unconstitutional! Naturally there is division on this issue that maps with our ongoing division over the perspicacity of peated whisky. John (left) appears less than convinced here. From there we delve into the lively subject of the “National Conservatives,” who
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September 9, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With John Yoo sitting in the host chair this week, we decided to post this episode a day early partly on account of travel schedules (John and I are headed for the NatCon conference in Miami over the weekend), and partly because of the breaking news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Also because it turns out that the favorite whisky of King Charles III is reportedly Laphroaig 15,
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September 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The setting for Biden’s speech was so bad that it rivals Michael Dukakis’s tank ride for disastrous visuals, but that’s noting compared to the egregious content, which makes Jimmy Carter’s dreadful “malaise” speech seem like Demosthenes by comparison. Speaking of the demos, Biden’s speech can be seen an as especially inartful presumption of anti-republican principles that have been at the center of the Democratic Party since the 1850s if not
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August 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Once again the three-host Three Whisky Happy Hour didn’t get around to any whisky reviews, distracted once again by important breaking fast-food news. But the main first topic of this back-to-school special edition is the role education is playing in this election cycle. On the K-12 level, the same dynamic that propelled Glenn Youngkin to victory in Virginia last year seems to have legs, with conservatives sweeping school board elections
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August 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
This classic format edition features a conversation between me and Alex Trembath, the deputy director of Breakthrough Institute, about the climate provisions of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), namely the massive increases in subsidies for “green energy” that normally summon a gag reflex from conservatives. I’ve written about the “Breakthroughvians,” as they are known, many times before on Power Line. They are progressives who dissent from or critique much of today’s progressive orthodoxy,
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August 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
John Yoo assumes the rotating host chair for this week’s episode, since I was on the road much of the week and didn’t keep up with news that didn’t involve whisky (and mermaids). We review what to make of Liz Cheney’s huge defeat in Wyoming, and I gamely attempt to defend the shrewdness of Mitch McConnell from Lucretia’s relentless scorn. Then we turn to the still-unfolding story and fallout from
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August 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Glenn Ellmers has done it again, with a fresh provocation entitled “America Never Existed.” Say what?!?! Did he drink some 1619 Moonshine or something? Here’s his lede: It is possible (not certain, but possible) that within the next 20 years or so, the United States will no longer exist. . . The end of the American republic would most likely mean the end of self-government all over the globe—the beginning
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August 13, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With this episode of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, the great John Yoo joins up as a permanent co-host along with and Lucretia and me, having spent the last several weeks in Triple-A podcast instructional league while I was drinking my way across the British Isles. Perfect timing, since John worked in the Justice Department once upon a time, and has insights into its internal political dynamics, and as such
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August 6, 2022 — Steven Hayward
If I stay overseas any longer, it’s pretty clear the usurpation of the 3wHH will morph into the “The Three McRibb Happy Meal Podcast” if I don’t put a stop to it, so I made sure to disrupt this week’s episode once again from London, this time while finishing off a bottle of Poit Dhubh (potch-goo), as fits the real show. I didn’t stick around for long as it was
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July 30, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I managed to crash the podcast this week in a futile attempt to blunt the slow-rolling coup that Lucretia and John Yoo started last week in my absence, but by the miracle of the internet I did just that, dropping in for a few minutes between drams of whisky and dishes of haggis. We kick around the Joe Manchin news, whether the White House will invent a new term for
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July 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I can’t believe I left the car keys to the podcast sitting on the kitchen counter when I left for overseas, and now Lucretia and John Yoo have snatched them up and have usurped the usufructs of the 3WHH. After they finally get clear of their ritualistic but obligatory abuse of me, they get down to important subjects, like Philly cheese steaks and other delectables, President Biden’s latest ailments and
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July 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
In this second half of my conversation with Geoff Shepard (part 1 here, if you missed it), we walk through the famous “smoking gun” Oval Office tape of June 23, 1972, which was the final straw that led to Nixon’s resignation in August, 1974. Except we’ve got the facts all wrong about what was actually being discussed. Shepard walks through the matter, and then moves on to his devastating evidence
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July 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The big news story this week was the appearance of the fetching Fawn Hall Cassidy Hutchinson before the WatergateJanuary 6 select committee, which somehow put us in the frame of mind of “Cassidy” by the renowned poetic duo of Weir/Barlow: Lost now on the country miles in his Cadillac I can tell by the way you smile, he is rolling back [to the West Wing] Come wash the nighttime clean
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June 30, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Writing about the Watergate scandal in the 1980s, political scientist John Marini said “The passage of time has not resulted in greater clarity concerning what it is we should have learned from the event, perhaps because we still lack an authoritative account of it.” Having reached the 50th anniversary of the most famous “burglary” in history, we may be coming closer to have a complete understanding of Watergate through the
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June 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Has there been a more momentous week for the Supreme Court ever? The Court went three-for-three on the key cases this week (Carson, on school choice; Bruen, on gun rights: and Dobbs, overturning Roe and Casey), not simply on the decision of the specific cases at hand, but the broader reasoning behind the decisions. Indeed this week may come some day to be be seen as the equivalent of the
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