Power Line

Mar 08 2025 535 ep. 55 mins 393
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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.

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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Sister Souljah Time for the Dems?

Mar 08 2025 59 mins  
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 po

The Three-Whisky Happy Hour: Emergency Midweek Edition

Mar 05 2025 42 mins  
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

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: 180 Proof Edition

Feb 28 2025 47 mins  
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 sali

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Great Reset

Feb 22 2025 52 mins  
Our long-running intramural argument on this podcast over the Ukraine War has become just like the Ukraine War itself—lots of casualties on both sides, but very little movement from week to week. But is Trump actually on the cusp of a breakout? There's one thing Trump did this week that is surely causing Putin to wipe the smile off his face, and no one seems to have figured it ou

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Is Trump Re-Writing Executive Power?

Feb 15 2025 68 mins  
With Lucretia hosting both the episode and the bar this week (with three different whiskies just for herself), we manage to keep John Yoo from excessive gloating about the Eagles win in the Super Bowl by distracting him with his favorite subject—executive power, about which he seldom thinks there can be excessive use. But maybe we found some limits this time?The intensifying pace

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Trump's Five Big Fights

Feb 08 2025 58 mins  
We're only 19 days into Trump's term, but it seems like 19 months have passed already since January 20. When Alexander Hamilton wrote of "energy in the executive," he had no idea that a real estate tycoon would become the greatest example of this understanding of the presidency. This week's episode reviews five of Trump's biggest fights that are interrelated in ways that could reba

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: War, Peaceniks, Bishops, Senators, Onesies, Everything

Feb 01 2025 60 mins  
This wide-ranging, round-robin format episode begins with celebrating the end of "Dry January" (which we, um, didn't much observe), mockery of Bernie Sanders' obsession with "onesies," a brief account of a Steve roadtrip to Villanova University, and a declaration of war against the Commentary podcast. (It's serious: it involves McRibs.) After we clear away this opening frivolity, w

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Getting Right with Free Speech

Jan 24 2025 65 mins  
The 3WHH bartenders raise their glasses high for the first 100 hours of Trump II, which bid to replace FDR's famous "Hundred Days" for breathtaking executive action. You'd think that this is Trump's first term, and metaphysically, Steve argues, it is. In just the way we've come to expect of Trump in all things, he may have turned the usual presidential cycle on its head. Even John,

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Non-Jejune Edition

Jan 17 2025 52 mins  
Nothing "jejune" about this edition, except perhaps for the first-ever use of "jejune" in a podcast, but it is the perfect term to describe Joe Biden's "farewell address," which, aside from its jejune content, is a most welcome sound, since he will be gone in about another 48 hours, never to be heard from again one hopes.This week we take up three topics—one from each of the bart

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Emigrating to Immigrating

Jan 11 2025 62 mins  
With this episode the Three Whisky Happy Hour emigrates into its very own identity on Ricochet and Steve's new group Substack, "Political Questions," but not to worry—the old Power Line Show will live on in its old format as an interview show. The 3WHH, meanwhile, is rebooting with some new formats. We'll be doing some show with a single-subject format; on some we'll do a round r