It's late in the 4th quarter for this year's Supreme Court season, and the Justices are starting to score with some long bombs. Our 3WHH bartenders celebrated with entire flights of whisky (our kind of diversity!) while pondering Thursday's clean sweep of two 9 - 0 decisions that reinvigorate the "takings clause" of the 5th Amendment, and clip the wings of the EPA without once mentioning either the Chevron doctrine, or a certain other statute that is banned from this podcast.But wait! There's more! We also dispatch with prejudice the crazy idea of President Biden using the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, preview a couple of brand new cases that may start to undo the DEI regime, and puzzle over a head-scratching case from a few weeks ago involving California's extra-territorial imposition of regulations of pig-farming. As this poses an existential threat both to the availability of bacon supplies and McRibbs in California going forward, this is a matter of deep concern and outrage.Speaking of pigs, John Yoo is about to come out with his own PIG book to go on your bookshelf right next to Steve's PIG book. That is, John and co-author Robert Delahunty are about to come out with The Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, which will make a nice pairing with both a good whisky and Steve's Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, from Wilson to Obama. We discuss the common points of interest between the two books, though Steve alleges that John and his co-author got the Lochner case wrong, as everyone usually does.There is no truth to the rumor that Lucretia is writing The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Political Incorrectness, though she's the obvious choice for the title.

The hiatus in Hollywood brought on by the current writers strike seemed a good occasion to check in with Christian Toto, proprietor of the indispensable HollywoodInToto website, as well as a podcast, and a terrific recent book, Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul. Our conversation ranges widely from the problems of streaming services, the leftward lurch that has nearly killed off late night talk shows, why Top Gun: Maverick was snubbed at the Oscars, and above all whether a backlash against wokery in Hollywood is approaching critical mass. There are some signs that it is. Stay tuned, but listen here and bookmark Christian's site and podcast.

With Steve Hayward back in the host chair this week, the 3WHH actually breaks some real news with special guest Kelly Janes Torrance, the op-ed editor of the indispensible New York Post. This week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is attracting surprising interest from many conservatives, visited the Post for a grilling from the Post's editorial board, and Kelly Jane opened up her reporter's notebook to share previously unreported statements RFK Jr offered at their 90-minute meeting. You won't want to miss her scoops shared exclusively with the 3WHH podcast.John Yoo was late joining us—apparently he got stuck in an extra long McDonald's drive-through line right before show time—but did manage to break down the Durham report, and also gets in on the sequels with Kelly Jane, who has a lot of thoughts on the Ukraine situation from her experiences as an election watcher in recent years.Since KJT is Canadian, we decided to honor her guest turn with exit music from the Barenaked Ladies, "New Kid on the Block," since we're definitely going to have her back on 3WHH. As mentioned early in this episode, she may not be a neat whisky drinker, but she has an epic cocktail game.We're got a short pre-roll excerpt from John on the Ricochet podcast that we think is appropriate to share with our listeners, though I think Rob Long was not amused!

Lucretia hosts this week's episode, and as Hamilton predicted about how executive power would promote sobriety, the awesome responsibility of the host chair led Lucretia to praise Kevin McCarthy for the second week in a row, and she even has nice things to say about Steve! After the smelling salts were passed round to John and Steve (and fresh glasses of whisky poured), the bartenders get down to business, breaking down the rising anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party; Lucretia's first-hand report from the border in the immediate aftermath of the end of Title 42 and where the immigration disaster will go next (and once again, the responsible Lucretia surprises with her sympathy for asylum seekers); the travesty of the criminal indictment of Marine veteran Daniel Penny for his justified act of self-defense on the New York subway (just think of it as the attempt to run George Floyd 2.0); what to make of Trump's humiliation of CNN; what to make of the week's revelations of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate; and what to make of the Supreme Court interposing itself—by a rare 9 - 0 vote—between federal corruption probes of the states.Because we're waiting on a serious corruption probe into the Bidens, and to go with our thoughts on how the country is repeating the worst of the 1970s, exit music this week is an old 70s-era Ambrosia tune, "Time Waits for No One."Why am I searching and when will I know?Are the years that I've waited with nothing to show?I'm ready to listen I'm ready to winBut I can't wait much longer before we beginTime waits for no oneTime waits for no oneNo one, no one

With all three bartenders back together and John Yoo in the host chair, the gang wonders why it is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr is so far making the most sense in the 2024 presidential race, how it is that Kevin McCarthy has (stop the presses!) actually impressed Lucretia, and why the obviously political attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas expose the left at their power-grasping worst.But then we get back to school, with John expressing his usual faux-puzzlement about the New York Times's genuine puzzlement of why conservatives "still" like Aristotle. Too bad there isn't an Aristotle for Dummies title we can send the Times, but we do manage to sort out John.Finally, we round out this episode with some mockery of the high octane decadence of the ruling class as seen by the scheduing of the Met Gala and the White House Correspondents Dinner within 48 hours of each other last week. It must be exhausting for our rulers to keep up this kind of social schedule, not to mention the expense of the wardrobe. Tune in for Piers Morgan's fantastic headline about the scene, and grab a can of Raid.

Heather Mac Donald may be the most fearless journalist in America. She is relentless in her reporting, bracing in her truth-telling, and ferocious in arguing her case. Her new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, explores how the current attack on meritocracy in the name of "equity" is rampaging through almost all American institutions, in particular arts and culture, but also higher education and corporate America.Her bleak inventory includes the degredation of the sciences as well, which will if continued will exact a high cost. But our conversation also takes some unusual twists and turns, delving into some of the deeper aspects of the issues of race and merit that are typically neglected. We conclude our conversation with a discussion of Heather's recommendations for remedies, which will require some serious backbone on the part of the nation's political leadership that appears to be in short supply just now.

Who is the only federal judge to have played basketball in the Olympics for Cuba? Who is the only federal judge known for driving around town in a 1960s-era convertable Rolls Royce? Who is the only federal judge who was nearly deported?The answer is an n of 1, as statisticians would say: Judge Carlos T. Bea of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who the Los Angeles Daily Journal was correct to call "the most interesting judge on the 9th Circuit." Born in San Sebastian, Spain in 1934, his family left Spain for North America after the Spanish Civil War and on the eve of World War II. And the story only gets more interesting from there.Judge Bea recently took senior status on the 9th Circuit, and the San Francisco chapter of the Federalist Society decided to throw a reception and celebration of his long and distinguished career in the law, inviting me to serve as an interlocutor with Judge Bea for a conversation that covers the highlights of his colorful life story along with his views on jurisprudence. He also supplies lessons on how to survive and prosper as a Republican in San Francisco.

This week we took the 3WHH on the road for a special ad-free episode, as Lucretia and Steve recorded before a live audience at Commenter-Con II in Phoenix. Commenter-Con II is the inspiration of 'Ammo Grrrll" (known in real life as Susan Vass), with Power Line readers from 27 states turning up. It also coincides roughly with the 40th anniversary of Lucretia and Steve's very first argument, which, Steve now admits, Lucretia was right about after all. After we kick around the stunning news about Tucker Carlson's startling exit from Fox News, and a few other background questions about favorite books, reasons for the never-ending whisky divide, and related, we turn to audience questions, in particular our nominees for who we'd like to lock up if we had genuine prosecutorial powers.(John Yoo wasn't able to join us as he had to be in the classroom for the last week of his classes at Berkeley Law, but sent along a note: "I wish I were there, but on the advice of counsel, I've been warned against showing up anywhere where people calling themselves 'Ammo Grrrll' and 'Lucretia' are in attendance. Steve Hayward, not so much."

In what may be the most wide-ranging episode of the 3WHH yet, the troika ranges from the implications of the Fox News settlement with Dominion for the defective NY Times v. Sullivan doctrine, to an extended discussion of the natural law arguments on abortion—the topic aborted last week for lack of time—and lastly to a look at notable political movies with the unlikely offering from Lucretia that an underrated moral-political movie worthy of note is . . . The Devil in Miss Jones??!!Needless to say John and Steve didn't see that coming, and didn't know quite what to say. And this doesn't include our new segment, "Lucretia's Featured Rant of the Week," which debuted with a much deserved blast at the Department of Justice.Steve gets his revenge at the very end, with exit music drawn from his favorite recent political movie that John and Lucretia have embargoed from further mention on the 3WHH.

This week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Groff vs. Dejoy, involving a Post Office mail carrier named Gerald Groff, who, for religious reasons, wished not to work on Sundays. Previously the postal service had granted this accommodation, which was easy back when the Post Office didn’t do mail delivery on Sundays. But a few years ago the Post Office started contracting with Amazon and other package delvery services to do Sunday deliveries, though they still granted Groff his religious accommodation. But then the Post Office changed its mind and compelled Groff to work Sundays. Hence this case, raising again an aspect of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.You would think after all these decades of both religious liberty cases and employment law cases that such a situation would be well-settled, but you would be wrong. In fact the First Amendment’s clauses related to the establishment and free exercise of religious remain highly contested and unsettled.One person who has a deep grasp of the broader issue is Vincent Phillip Munoz, who is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of political science and law at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book is “Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses.” Phil’s work has been cited in several Supreme Court opinions on the issue. Phil sat down recently with John Yoo and me to discuss the issue, and the wider issue of how constitutional originalism should be understood today. You could think of this episode as a “two-whisky happy hour,” as we wanted to have Lucretia Zoom in, but she wasn’t able to, so Phil got off the hook. But in any case, let’s turn to Phil now.Note: Apologies for the background static and other sound issues. We had our communal microphone on the wrong settings, and it was not amenable to a post-production fix.