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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Another whirlwird week of controversies that exceeded our bandwidth to keep up (or at least to compress into an hour), but John Yoo, this week's host, leads us in revisiting the question of "birthright citizenship" under the 14th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has rather unusually agreed to take up in May—surprisingly late for such and important oral argument. We take note of the growing number of scholars who think the current...
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John Yoo is back this week, bringing the 3WHH up to full strength again after last week's astonishingly congenial episode, which can mean only one thing—not even high tariffs, which this week's host (Steve) vainly tried to impose on ths discussion—could stop a vigorous free trade in ideas. 

After our discussion of where the tariff matter stands as of the end of this week, we turn our focus to the week's continuing legal and constitu...
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The 3WHH crew is down a glass this week because John Yoo is down with a bug and unable to join us—or was he afraid of subjecting himself to Lucretia, host for this week's episode. With fear, trembling, and trepidation Steve barved the peril with all the aplomb of the Black Knight in Monty Python, and yet by the end of this episode still ahd all four limbs attached! Lucretia's fancy whisky must have mellowed her, as this surprisingl...
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As if to put an exclamation point to the crazy story of the week about the Trump national security team adding a hostile journalist to their Signal group chat about bombing Houthi and the Blowups, Steve accidentally texted the Zoom link to this week's taping to John Eastman (who was otherwise pre-occupied).

In any case, after reviewing the completely out of whack signal-to-noise ratio of Signalgate, and the latest machinations in th...
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Trump does more consequential things in a day that most presidents do in a month, so we may need to measure his tenure in office in dog years. It must certainly seem like dog days for the left, which is lying prostrate on the ground much of the time, panting and out of breath, gnawing on a bare bone.

After ticking through a number of happy stories this week—the end of DEI at Berkeley; Greenpeace getting nicked for $667 million dolla...
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The only truly functioning high-speed rail in America today is the Trump Train, and not even the prospect of a 200% tariff on the core commodity of this podcast—single malt scotch whiskies—can dampen the 180-proof spirits of Lucretia, host of this week's episode.

But we still manage to get in some disagreements about how to understand what is going on, especially with the Ukraine War endgame. In fact, we got John Yoo to out himself ...
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The whole gang is finally back together behind the bar this week, with John Yoo in the host chair skillfully leading our unruly gang in a round-robin three-subject format that we're alternating this year.

Steve leads off wondering if Gavin Newsom, and Senate Democrats, are at last having their "Sister Souljah" moment about the transgender millstone around their neck, though Steve points out that Democrats will have great difficulty ...
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Why let our frenemies at the Commentary podcast (frenemies since they dissed the sacred McRib recently) have all the fun with their emergency podcasts: after today's errant Supreme Court rulings, it was necessary for the 3WHH bartenders —well two of us at least—to jump to our mics to express our outrage, but also to celebrate briefly Trump's tour de force speech before Congress last night. And not to mention the second installment ...
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John Yoo is away this week, so the 3WHH has brought in a 180-proof guest in John's place—the great Richard Epstein, who speaks at an average rate of 125 words a minute, with occasional gusts of 200 words per minute. We discuss two of his many extraordinary books, the first being his 1992 title Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws, which is newly salient in the aftermath of recent Supreme Court decision...
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