Power Line

To close out the year the 3WHH barflies recorded a special Boxing Day edition, in which, following the obligatory McDonald's news for John and a breaking story that indicates President Trump really does mean it about defending Western Christendom, we review our predictions for 2025 from a year ago (which, unlike the old McLaughlin Group predictions, turned out to be fairly good in most cases); then discuss what each of think is the most significant story of 2025, and offer predictions for 2026. We couldn't make the Substack livestream work, but we're going to sort that out in the next week before our first show of the new season next weekend, which will be 2026!

Just how are you going to pass the time on Christmas Day after you've got the roast in the oven (at low temp, of course) and you've finished your obligatory annual screening of Die Hard? How about a special Christmas Day edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour! Lucretia took time out from the kitchen to host this ad-free episode which features a discussion of the law governing religious symbols on public property, and why they are NOT violations of the Estasblishment Clause of the First Amendment (the phrase "separation of church and state" is not even hiding in any of the emanantions an punumbras of the Constitution, so don't even look). Discussion also turned to wondering why liberals are increasingly hostile to religion—especially Christianity—and Steve offers his theory that the decline of patriotism among liberals, which also shows up in opinion survey data, is connected to the decline of religion among liberals, too. (He gave the full analysis of the matter in this Substack post a few months ago. One sentence summary: politics, the substitute diety for the left, isn't going well for them right now, which makes them angry.) And did you know that Christmas itself is now a"far right" plot? That's what Politico thinks. (Yes, we know: "Politico thinks" is an oxymoron.)We manage to get in some good holiday cheer, such as mocking John's total ignorance of "throuples" *the latest thing for the "Modern Love" section of the NY Times) and we manage to get in our obligatory reference to—wait for it!—the Clean Air Act, and Sydney Sweeney. Because it's Christmas!We'll be back sometime over the weekend with a regular episode in which we review the most significqnt events of 2025, and offer predictions for 2026.

It's conspiracy theory week at the 3WHH, as host John Yoo guides us through the mysteries of the shootings at Brown University and MIT, the mystery of why an article about the corruption of the DEI world should suddenly go viral just now, what conspiracy theory could explain why White House chief of staff Susie Wiles would call VP Vance a "conspiracy theorist" (among other things), and last but not least, how Candace Owens stole Lucretia's tin foil hat right out from under her nose! After all this, we expect Santa will be delivering fancy new tin foil hats to us next week.

It's the usual brawl at the bar with the three barflies of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, where we take note of Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson sayiing the quiet (progressive) part out loud, likely flattered by the New York Review of Books recently saying of her: "Ketanji Brown Jackson is proving to be the sharpest justice on the Supreme Court." (No, seriously—they really printed that sentence.) But did she really just give away the whole anti-democratic impulse of progressives? It looks like she did.We actually agree that Humphrey's Executor is going to get executed because Slaughter (the party to the case against Trump) ha set it up for the slaughter.Speaking of slaughtering, we get around to celebrating the seasonal apperance of the McRib, but not before reviewing how his bears on John Yoo's favorite constitutional doctrine, the 'unitary executive,' and we take a brief tour to argue over some of the fine points of the Dred Scott case. Because whisky will do that to you.

Lucretia hosts this week's episode with the running theme that there's too much pearl clutching going on among the hand-wringers in Washington and the media. We flop our pearls of wisdom on the Tennessee special election, the J6 bomber arrest, the double-tap bombings on Venezuelan "fishing boats," the Minnesota welfare scandal, and the related immigration control issues it raises. We have some diversions into the latest Trumpian nomenclature, including his rehabilitation of "third world countries" and the "R-word," as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz calls it, and how Sydney Sweeney might react to listening to an episode of the 3WHH (because it is the new Kantian Categorical Imperative that Sydney Sweeney must be kept in the news).Exit music this week is “Clutchin’ Pearls,” by Ross Kleiner and the Thrill. Key lyric that does not apply to our hostess with the mostest: “She’s so mad/I left her clutchin’ pearls!”

Now we know what you're thinking: if we have on as a special guest historian Richard Samuelson, one of the pre-eminent experts on John Adams, you'd think we find out what Adams thought about the Clean Air Act, but no! Instead, the show reaches its zenith with Samuelson drawing our attention to some of Adams's handwritten marginalia that demonstrates why Adams would have completely understood the Sweeney Sensation. Richard joined us for our intermittent series between now and next July 4 about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and he helpfully arbitrated the debate we had last week about the probity of Gordon Wood's treatment of the American creed. (Readers should also not miss Samuelson's article "John Adams Versus Edmund Burke," which helps clarify the extent to which Adams should be thought of (as Russell Kirk did) as "America's first conservative."We also went through a couple of current headlines about the latest frontiers in lawfare, and the aftermath of the shooting of two national guard troops in Washington.For those who like to take in the video, you can find the YouTube right here (and consider subscribing).

Naturally the 3WHH bartenders can't agree on the best way to cook a Thanksgiving turkey as well as the side dishes at the outset of this special Thanksgiving Day edition, but after that we get down to discussing what to make of prosecutions being dropped left and right—literally left and right in the case of the misbegotten Big Fani Willis case against Trump being dismissed in Georgia, and the Trump DoJ case against James Comey and Letitia James being dismissed in federal court. At least we still have trial by jury to be thankful for in America, as we hear Britain may abolish trial by jury for many crimes. Maybe the Labour Party is just trying to get out ahead of what's coming for them.We'll be back over the weekend with a regular episode, just as soon as our tryptohpan-induced comas wear off.

Another week of last minute schedule changes, flight delays, lost iPads, misplaced laptops, and other mishaps delayed the recording of this week's episode, but finally on Saturday night we were able to sit down for an especially fast-paced episode to close out the week that comes with competing Star Trek metaphors, reflectioning and debating briefly about which was the weirdest news story of the week—the latest Epstein file revelations, MTG departing the House, the Mamdani-Trump Oval Office Summit—the greatest clash since Yalta, or the most bizarre meeting of Capitalist and Communist since Franklin Roosevelt dined alone—before we finally settle down to out main topic of the week: the launch of what will be a regular feature here on the 3WHH between now and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next July 4.For this first installment, we ponder the strange case of historian Gordon Wood, considered the pre-eminent historian of the American Founding, who was in the news last week for a speech he delivered in Washington DC for the American Enterprise Institute. Steve was present to hear the speech; John took in the published version, and Lucretia let out a mighty harumph. Wood's main thesis at the beginning of his illustrious career was that the American Founding should be understood as part of the "civic republican" tradition, rather than a Lockean-Jeffersonian natural rights revolution. It made him the left's favorite historian for a time, a point Steve made in a critical article about Wood 20 years ago, "The Liberal Republicanism of Gordon Wood." Naturally—do I really need to say "naturally"? you know what's coming next—John stepped up to defend Wood's civic republican thesis. Lucretia thought she could sit this one out, but ChatGPT provided us with a debate between Lucretia and Wood, with "Wood" getting off some good zingers like "Lucretia, the Founding wasn’t a live-action performance of Natural Right: The Musical,"  and "Of course they were serious—serious about the collapse of deference, the emergence of democratic culture, and all the other things that give Straussians spontaneous nosebleeds." Lucretia responded in kind: "You make it sound like Samuel Adams was out there organizing consciousness-raising workshops. “Hi, I’m Sam, and I’m here to talk about my feelings on monarchy…”The episode is slightly shorter than normal as Steve had to rush off to the final performance of Steve Hackett's North American tour in Portland, Oregon, and the final performance of keyboardist Roger King, and because the philistine and cretinous Lucretia and John attempted to mock the gods of prog rock, the exit music this week is an excerpt from Hackett's most famous guitar lick. IYKYK.

While it was sorely tempting to devote the entire show to celebrating the return of Sydney Sweeney to the public eye last week, we decided to turn our attention to the serious matter of antisemitism on the right, and just what the heck "groypers" (groyperism??) is all about. Rod Dreher passed along estimates that up to 40 percent of young conservatives in Washington are closet Nick Fuentes fans or groyper-adjacent, though this estimate has received strong challenges. We review a few of the counter-arguments that seem to be left unsaid at the moment.Then we turn to a brief recap and critque from Lucretia on our brief segment last week with Akhil Amar about his new book Born Equal. We didn't have time to get very far with the subject, but the amazing thing is that Lucretia and John were together on their end of this episode, and Lucretia didn't hit John once (though she may have spiked his whisky).Oh, and we did have time to talk briefly about Helen Andrews's legs.  You'll just have to listen to find out what this means in this compact, ad-free episode.

You might want to think of this totally gonzo episode as the 3WHH-Squared, as it was taped live during happy hour Friday night in a very noisy Washington Hilton Hotel at the annual conference of the Federalist Society, where John and I are present and making a general nuisance of ourselves. Lucretia was supposed to be in Hawaii this week on some kind of junket or super-secret mission, but the government shutdown interposed itself.) As we did last year, we simply invited a handful of legal luminaries to drop by our not-so-quiet corner, with cocktails in hand, to kick around whatever is on our mind. We were delighted to have Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals drop by briefly before having to run off to host a dinner for his clerks; Roger Pilon, long-time director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, hung around to heckle everyone; Ilan Wurman, one of the rising young stars of the conservative legal academy, fell into our snare as well, and Hadley Arkes, who needs no introduction here. (Would any such gathering be complete without Hadley dropping by? To ask the question is to answer it, of course, as any disquisition on necessary truths from Aristotle to Kant would know.)The highlight of this gaggle was Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University (and one of John's principal mentors at Yale Law way back when, which may explain a few things), to talk about his brand new and highly readable book, Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920. Since we were recording out in the open at the Washington Hilton, this episode is a bit . . . authentic, to so speak. We ask the indulgence of listeners to its many irregularities.