Power Line

The spectacle of Georgia’s grand jury forepermix is enough to induce a grand mal seizure, but we move on quickly from that spectacle to the specter of the Supreme Court pondering the Heisenberg Uncertainty Point of the Constitution: is the vice president, as first in line of succession, part of the executive branch, or, as president of the Senate, part of the legislative branch? The answer is Yes. Source

Settle down class, time for our next lesson. This week we take up how The Federalist explains Article III, the judiciary, and especially the nowadays familiar power of judicial review, which is nowhere specified in the text of the Constitution, and was in fact an issue of controversy and confusion at the time of the founding. So we start our investigation with Federalist #78... Source

John showing off his gourmet dinner. Getting together at the bar was a bit tricky this week since we’re all scattered to the wind and John Yoo thought it essential that he swing through a McDonald’s takeout window for the double-cheeseburger special with large fries, so he was late joining us. We were halfway through learning about the newest acronym in higher education—AANAPISI—when he finally... Source

Can it really be possible that this is the 400th episode of this ramshackle podcast? With such a milestone, it seemed a good occasion to get the Fantastic Four who work the site every day together at once (never simple to do), and we decided to do a dry run with a special Zoom webinar for our VIP subscribers. Savor this rare occasion, as Steve, Scott Johnson, Joe Malchow and John Hinderaker... Source

Session 7 of our PLU short course on The Federalist met on Saturday this week, and took up Hamilton’s defense of the presidency from the anti-Federalist critics starting with Federalist 70, the paper where he discusses the famous phrase “energy in the executive.” Included in the usual inventory of Hamiltonian paeans to the executive is a look at his often overlooked views on the proper... Source

Lucretia hosts this week’s episode, though this does not let Steve and John off the hook for their Stockholm Syndrome symptoms in any way. The run-up to America’s most holy secular observance—the Super Bowl—found Steve having his own Bill & Ted-style excellent adventure with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Lucretia pondering Sy Hersh’s latest purported scoop on who blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline... Source

John Yoo assumes the host chair for this week’s episode, and despite declaring this week to be a Ukraine-Free Zone, Lucretia still manages to get in a sequel to some of last week’s discussion threads. But the main event for the first third of this episode is reviewing the dreadful events in Memphis last week, though John has to go a stretch to reach the Dylanesque heights of “Memphis Blues Again”... Source

This week’s Power Line University seminar on The Federalist completes our discussion of the separation of powers in Federalists 47 – 51, and then takes an extended detour into the Progressive Era attack on the separation of powers and other basic principles embedded in The Federalist—and by extension, in the Constitution. There are few things more fun than beating up Woodrow Wilson... Source

Many of The Federalist Papers bear the title, “The Same Subject Continued,” and with a lot of news about the Ukrainian situation coming out this week, we decided to continue last week’s vigorous argument over Ukraine with some of the new facts, such as how much of our own munitions inventory is being drawn down to supply Ukraine (see chart below), the decision to send Abrams tanks... Source

We continue our leisurely stroll through The Federalist with an extended look at Federalist numbers 47 through 51, which explain the key concept of the separation of powers—a phrase that is nowhere found in the text of the Constitution, but which is clearly implied by the design and structure of the text. But Madison and Hamilton leave nothing to chance, citing “the celebrated Montesquieu” as a... Source