Podcasts
February 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
John Yoo assumes the host chair for this week’s episode, and despite declaring this week to be a Ukraine-Free Zone, Lucretia still manages to get in a sequel to some of last week’s discussion threads. But the main event for the first third of this episode is reviewing the dreadful events in Memphis last week, though John has to go a stretch to reach the Dylanesque heights of “Memphis Blues
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February 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s Power Line University seminar on The Federalist completes our discussion of the separation of powers in Federalists 47 – 51, and then takes an extended detour into the Progressive Era attack on the separation of powers and other basic principles embedded in The Federalist—and by extension, in the Constitution. There are few things more fun than beating up Woodrow Wilson, but we note several of the ways his
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January 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Many of The Federalist Papers bear the title, “The Same Subject Continued,” and with a lot of news about the Ukrainian situation coming out this week, we decided to continue last week’s vigorous argument over Ukraine with some of the new facts, such as how much of our own munitions inventory is being drawn down to supply Ukraine (see chart below), the decision to send Abrams tanks, the news that
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January 26, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week we continued our leisurely stroll through The Federalist with an extended look at Federalist numbers 47 through 51, which explain the key concept of the separation of powers—a phrase that is nowhere found in the text of the Constitution, but which is clearly implied by the design and structure of the text. But Madison and Hamilton leave nothing to chance, citing “the celebrated Montesquieu” as a theoretical authority,
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January 25, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This classic format episode features a conversation with Dan Lowenstein, professor emeritus at UCLA Law School and, more importantly, the impresario of UCLA’s Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI), which he founded, and one of our favorites at Power Line, Jean Yarbrough of Bowdoin College. Prof. Yarbrough was in town for three days to deliver a fabulous lecture comparing Lincoln and Tocqueville on slavery, and then a small
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January 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We’re going to have this week’s Power Line University online class on The Federalist tomorrow (Tuesday) instead of Wednesday for scheduling reasons. Lucretia and I will meet live at 4:30 pm Pacific time, and go through the major question of the separation of powers as explained in Federalist numbers 47 – 51. Use this Zoom link to join us. Although Montesquieu had explained the theory of the separation of powers
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January 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s raucous episode, recorded well after conventional happy hour usually ends, ranged from Biden’s dementia to the failed Dobbs leak investigation, to Kevin McCarthy’s (relatively) good week, the post hockey ergo propter hockey fallacy, bidding good riddance to one of the premier COVID cultists, a defense of cat-calling (even when it’s done to our Lucretia), and then . . . a big fat argument about Ukraine. The vigorous disagreements among
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January 20, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s PLU class resumes our leisurely stroll through The Federalist starting with Federalists #33 and #37, and the “partly federal, partly national” character of the Union under the proposed Constitution—a subject that remains as confusing and contentious today as it was then. Lucretia walks us through how the issue began to settle out starting with the landmark 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland. We also have a lively discussion of the
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January 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
John Yoo is away this week, so Hillsdale historian Richard Samuelson joins the Three Whisky Happy Hour for an extended discussion of the passing of Paul Johnson, and especially why he deserves to be considered one of the premier historians of all time. But first we rummage around in Joe’s garage (Joe Biden that is), where the lyrics to Frank Zappa’s tune by that name seem appropriate: This is the
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January 6, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We recorded a day early this week because I have to travel (supposedly—the airlines are not cooperating—again). Only the 3WHH bartenders could possibly draw the connecting thread between the subjects of the passing of Pope Benedict XVI, the drama over the next Speaker of the House, and Thomas Hobbes. But with the help of a little fine whisky, we’re up to the job! Lucretia and I give the Protestant John
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January 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The response to COVID is arguably the single greatest public policy mistake in American history, which in turn became a global catastrophe since so many other nations followed the United States with foolish lockdowns, school closures, and other authoritarian measures that were ineffective and heedless of adverse tradeoffs. Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford’s Hoover Institution has been vilified for his dissent from the party line on COVID, most fully explained
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December 31, 2022 — Steven Hayward
John Yoo serves as lead bartender for this gala new year’s eve edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, though he was nearly deposed for arriving late and then taunting us with pics of his Korean new year’s feast (see nearby). To ring out 2022 and look ahead to 2023, we cover some new whisky choices (which in John’s case included some very old port by special exception found in
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December 30, 2022 — Steven Hayward
And yet another bonus holiday episode for everyone to savor before the college football bowl games arrive. . . “Human rights do not exist,” claims an anonymous dissident conservative writer, but when he (at least we’re going to identify the author as a “he”—heh) added some animadversions about our pal Michael Anton, the fight was on! Anton has responded at length to this provocation with a true tour de force
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December 29, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Lucretia and I held the first “classroom” for PLU (Power Line University) yesterday, with 110 people ultimately tuning in live for our first formal session on The Federalist Papers. We had a couple of technical difficulties—for some reason we kept failing to get the Chat window working right—and we had some hiccups admitting some live questions and comments from viewers, but we hope to have these ironed out for our
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December 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Who knew that John Yoo is a total science fiction geek?! I’m going to have to go back and scour his law review article footnotes to see if I can detect esoteric references to Sci-Fi classics, with which, it turns out, he has thoroughly familiarity. Ken Green channeling Jayne Cobb. Some time last year I did a podcast on science fiction with my old AEI writing partner Ken Green (who
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December 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
As you may have heard, Stanford “University” embarrassed itself this week by issuing a list of 160 words or phrases that you shouldn’t use because they are not sufficiently “inclusive” or sensitive, including even “trigger warning,” because, Stanford helpfully explained, “The phrase can cause stress about what’s to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person.” And although “American” is among the terms Stanford
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December 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I get a steady stream of emails from readers and listeners who want to know if any of my or Lucretia’s college courses are webcast or otherwise available online, and unfortunately the answer is No, partly for legal reasons but also for some technical reasons (streaming live classes is not as easy as it might seem, and the recording quality is often poor). But we have for the longest time
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