Yesterday we held our second class session of Power Line University, this time taking up the famous Federalist #10, drawing out key points of James Madison’s views on how an “extended republic”—long thought impossible—was a solution for the perpetual defects and eventual failures of republican governments. His views on equality and property come in for special attention. For those who may wish to... Source

The response to COVID is arguably the single greatest public policy mistake in American history, which in turn became a global catastrophe since so many other nations followed the United States with foolish lockdowns, school closures, and other authoritarian measures that were ineffective and heedless of adverse tradeoffs. Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford’s Hoover Institution has been vilified for his... Source

John Yoo serves as lead bartender for this gala new year’s eve edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, though he was nearly deposed for arriving late and then taunting us with pics of his Korean new year’s feast (see nearby). To ring out 2022 and look ahead to 2023, we cover some new whisky choices (which in John’s case included some very old port by special exemption discovered in the emanations... Source

“Human rights do not exist,” claims an anonymous dissident conservative writer, but when he (at least we’re going to identify the author as a “he”—heh) added some animadversions about our pal Michael Anton, the fight was on! Anton has responded at length to this provocation with a true tour de force over at American Greatness, entitled “Natural Right and the Traditional Reproach. Source

Lucretia and I held the first “classroom” for PLU (Power Line University) yesterday, with 110 people ultimately tuning in live for our first formal session on The Federalist Papers. We had a couple of technical difficulties—for some reason we kept failing to get the Chat window working right—and we had some hiccups admitting some live questions and comments from viewers, but we hope to have these... Source

Who knew that John Yoo is a total science fiction geek?! I’m going to have to go back and scour his law review article footnotes to see if I can detect esoteric references to Sci-Fi classics, which, it turns out, he has thoroughly familiarity. Ken Green channeling Jayne Cobb. Some time last year I did a podcast on science fiction with my old AEI writing partner Ken Green (who turned up with this... Source

As you may have heard, Stanford “University” embarrassed itself this week by issuing a list of 160 words or phrases that you shouldn’t use because they are not sufficiently “inclusive” or sensitive, including even “trigger warning,” because, Stanford helpfully explained, “The phrase can cause stress about what’s to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular... Source

We get a steady stream of emails from readers and listeners who want to know if any of my or Lucretia’s college courses are webcast or otherwise available online, and unfortunately the answer is No, partly for legal reasons but also for some technical reasons (streaming live classes is not as easy as it might seem, and the recording quality is often poor). But we have for the longest time been... Source

What do you do when you wake up and see the news story of how the University of North Carolina is once again violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a scholarship that specifically excludes white students from eligibility? Your first thought is that you need to call Mark Perry, except he’s already on the job! Perry, professor emeritus of economics and finance at the University of Michigan/ Source

John Yoo is back at last from yet another Italian junket—yes, Lucretia let him back across the border unharmed!—and hosts this week’s episode in which we clarify some of the over-hasty arguments from last week’s highly thymotic episode about exactly when and how it is legitimate to contest the Supreme Court over the application of the Constitution. This opening elided nicely into the sequels from... Source