Power Line

Power Line

Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy. Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.

Episodes

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: McDs vs Cracker Barrel, and other Burning Topics

August 29, 2025 • 61 mins
In the same week Cracker Barrel retreats on its foolish decision to "rebrand" itself with a proposed logo as boring as a hospital parking lot sign (with new interior decor to match), John Yoo, freshly back from his smuggling trip to Korea, hosts this episode for the first time ever from . . . McDonald's. Did you really need to be told that? Or maybe you are asking: What took so long?

Anyway, as he noshed on newly restored cheesy bre...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Almost Live Q & A Episode

August 22, 2025 • 66 mins
John Yoo is over in Korea this week, where he says he is "lecturing," but we know he's really just arranging to smuggle back a ton of tariff-free Korean barbecue sauce. So in his absence Steve and Lucretia attempted to hold alive live taping streamed on YouTube (in Steve's case accompanied by Bad Rock rye whisky that "Pizza Bob" supplied directly to him this week), but we missed a technical step in the preparation process and could...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Summit of Everything

August 15, 2025 • 59 mins
The Three Musketeers of the 3WHH are back with our typical end-of-week roundup, including what we think of the Trump-Putin summit (which will be over by the time everyone listens to this, so this is an exercise in sheer hubris); how to think about crime in the context of Trump's move to take over Washington DC (where, amazingly, John manages to "out-Lucretia" Lucretia with a radical suggestion for what Trump really ought to do with...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Classic Format Conversation with Michael Walsh

August 14, 2025 • 56 mins
This special episode marks the revival of the classic format edition with one-on-one conversations between Steve and a special guest, with the first in the series being author Michael Walsh, discussing his terrific new book, A Rage to Conquer: Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of Western History. 

One way to get a feel for the candor and bracing character of Michael's book is this passage from the Afterword, reflecting on the a...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: With Special Guest Star Ken Green

August 8, 2025 • 60 mins
This week's episode expands the format to include a guest appearance by environmental scientist Ken Green, whe recently joined the ranks of contributors to Steve's "Political Questions" Substack (sign up for free if you haven't already), where this week he celebrates the demise of the "Endangerment Finding" that derives from the Statute-That-Cannot-Be-Named in John Yoo's presence. But along the way Ken raised an eyebrow for certain...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Tempest in a D Cup Edition

August 1, 2025 • 59 mins
This week the 3WHH lives up to its name, as two of us were half in the bag—maybe more than half in the bag in Steve's case—when we recorded late in the evening because difficult travel schedules, but after Steve and Lucretia had completed consumption of twice the USDA's recommended daily allowance of adult beverages. The always sober-minded John Yoo is the host for this week, and we'll leave it to listeners to tell us whether this ...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: High Crimes & Misdemeanors

July 25, 2025 • 64 mins
We lead this week's show with a few short news announcements, including new menu items from McDonalds to excite John, and the debut of a new podcast competitor: Hadley Arkes and his merry band at the James Wilson Institute have launched "The 'Natural Law Moment' Podcast," surely goaded by our constant mangling of his central arguments. WE hope to have a crossover episode with Hadley at some early opportunity, if we can ever get our...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Making Child's Play of Everyone's Files

July 18, 2025 • 64 mins
Among the revelations of this week's episode that were entirely predictable when you think about it: "Lucretia" was a child TV star in Mason City, Iowa, on the local non-PBS kid's show "Bart's Clubhouse"; John Yoo confesses he was bad at sports as a schoolkid; and as everyone can guess, in childhood Steve merely aspired to be a walking historical analogy when he grew up. Meanwhile, poor Phil Munoz, last week's drive-by guest, is st...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Special AWOL Edition

July 14, 2025 • 68 mins
Behold the great 3WHH fugitive episode. Although it was posted over the weekend, somehow an Internet gremlin or something disappeared it! But now it's back, in its restored glory. (Well, almost restored. Steve had a problem with his mic that was undetected while we were recording, and we weren't able to improve it much in pist-production. We have to cut out a whole new segment on prog rock!)

And what glory there is: Lucretia hosts t...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Gala July 4 Special Edition

July 4, 2025 • 66 mins
The 3WHH bartenders take time away from the news headlines and court cases to take up some aspects of patriotism (but also with a tutorial for John about the mellotron!).  We start with an origin story of sorts for John himself, as he is an immigrant to the U.S., and as such provides a good reminder of how immigration ought to be understood and practiced. 

From there, Lucretia meditates on the curious recent survey results showing t...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Daddy's Home

June 28, 2025 • 63 mins
A NATO potentate may—or may not—have said this week that President Trump is the "daddy" of the alliance, but daddy is firmly back in charge here at the 3WHH, as Steve has finally decided to rejoin the American republic after several weeks abroad, during which time John and Lucretia pretty much ran amok. 

After noting that Trump is on a roll, with a sharp argument about whether Trump actually has true prudence in his grand strategy a...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Successfully Suppressing the Rebellion

June 20, 2025 • 58 mins
After last week's thrashing after leaving John and Lucretia with the car key to the podcast. Steve threatened to return this week like George Washington leading the troops to squash the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 (which, people who know their history will recall, was a total rout for the rebels), but since he is still in Ireland—the birthplace of Edmund Burke—the virtues of moderation, prudence, prescription, and magnanimity took ov...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Unplugged (or Unhinged?) Edition

June 14, 2025 • 72 mins
Hoo boy—Steve wasn't able to work out the schedule (and internet acess in the Norwegian Sea) to join Joohn and Lucretia for this week's episode, so he left them completely unsupervised, resulting in what John and Lucretia described as an "unplugged" edition, blessedly free (supposedly) from any historical analogies.

Steve thinks "unhinged" might be a better description of this heterodox episode, which somehow included quite a lot of...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Northern Exposure Edition

June 7, 2025 • 64 mins
With two of the three bartenders hanging around near or above the arctic circle this week, this is an official Northern Exposure episode of 3WHH, with Lucretia, instead of channeling her usual Barry Corbin disposition, actually has some nice things to say about many of her usual targets, including KJP, Dread Coward Roberts, and even Ka-tan-ji! Something in the Alaska air must be affecting her!

John Yoo offers his usual expert opinio...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Time for Viking Justice?

May 30, 2025 • 58 mins
John Yoo hosts this week where there is so much free trade in ideas that you'd need a 1,000% tariff to slow it down. Which the U.S. Court of Intenational Trade attempted to do for about six hours, during which time the 3WHH panel chews up the ruling and spits it out like a bad piece of Icelandic cod. (Which happens to be where Steve, now dubbed as the "International Man of No-Mystery" happens to be at the moment, which is why this ...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: John Yoo's Top Five Legal Rules

May 23, 2025 • 60 mins
Lucretia hosts this week's episode, and puts Steve and John through their paces, challenging both to judge Trump's winning streak (John isn't so sure), plus more mixed signals from the Supreme Court, which posted a 2 - 1 record this week. The group also ponders whether and how Congress should now step up on the Biden health cover up scandal, and notice that Congress indeed has explicit constitutional power under the 25th Amendment ...
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The Whisky Happy Hour: Lucretia's List of the Five Dumbest Ideas

May 17, 2025 • 58 mins
One of Lucretia's favorite epithets is "that's the dumbest idea," so we decided to put her on the spot and demand a list of "Lucretia's Top Five Dumbest Ideas" for this episode, but not before a thorough dissection of the issues involved with Thursday's Supreme Court oral argument about the conjunction of birthright citizenship and the plague of nationwide injunctions against executive branch actions by a single judge out in the hi...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Neoconclave Edition!

May 9, 2025 • 65 mins
We're up a day early with this special emergency edition of the 3WHH because it isn't every millennium when you get an American Pope. With John Yoo hosting this week we hold ecumenical court on what to think about an American Pope who displays some progressive political sympathies, but is a math major and an Augustinian, which are more promising indications. We offer a few things to watch for as this papacy unfolds.

Next up: what to...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Lookism and Imperial Conquest Redivivus

May 3, 2025 • 69 mins
Lucretia hosts this week as the Three Musketeers are back together again, taking on Trump at the 100 Day mark, the latest in lawfare, the dismal Canadian election, whose solution John Yoo suggests is straight up imperial conquest—why make Canada the 51st state when we can make it a territory to be exploited like Puerto Rico and Greenland? 

We're so back that Lucretia even revives some good old fashioned lookism in this episode!

We cl...
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The Three Whisky Happy Hour, with Special Guest Robert Bryce

April 26, 2025 • 61 mins
Friday was cap and gown day for Steve at Pepperdine's commencement for the School of Public Policy class of 2025, while John Yoo is on the road somewhere at an undisclosed location, so Steve and Lucretia kick around a couple of seemingly unrelated stories about the Amish (the ultimate opt-out community) and the latest Supreme Court argument involving human nature and the right of parents to opt-out from public school nihilism.

And t...
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