
Power Line
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.
Latest episodes

Oct 22, 2022 • 1h 16min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Burke, Natural Right, and Free Speech
Hoo boy! This week’s fiery episode takes up the argument leftover from last week about whether conservatism—and especially the new “national” variety that is sparking so much energy and enthusiasm right now—should conceive of its mission as Burkean in character, as “restorationist” or revolutionary. We cover a lot of ground, with Lucretia beating up on Steve for his suspicious Burkean sympathies... Source

Oct 15, 2022 • 1h 3min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Biggest Farce Contest
With John Yoo in the host chair this week, we get off to a rocky start because a certain friend of ours made a favorable reference to Edmund Burke in a draft article shared with us in advance of publication, and Lucretia immediately went to DefCon1. To be continued next week! Anyway, after introducing our whiskies of the week, we get down to business with ranking the biggest farce of the week... Source

Oct 8, 2022 • 1h
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Juris-Thermo-Armageddon Edition
For the left, we have arrived at juris-thermo-geddon. If the Ruskies don’t nuke us, then the Supreme Court is going to nuke the Constitution! The Doomsday Clock at leftist institutions everywhere is striking midnight, yet somehow the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists “official” Doomsday Clock hasn’t budged, because apparently it is just a climate change clock now. Anyway, before taking up the legal... Source

Oct 1, 2022 • 1h 7min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Command and Control to Fascism
This week offers a hybrid car of an episode—almost literally as it turns out—as John Yoo was traveling midweek when Lucretia and Steve gathered in person with Richard Samuelson to record the first half, reviewing his reflections on the significance of the “Washington Football Team” deciding to name themselves the “ Commanders,” which rather fits the administrative state today, no? From there we go... Source

Sep 23, 2022 • 1h 11min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Star Wars to Law Wars
This week the gang revisits the taxonomy of which Star Wars characters map properly onto the domain of the New Rebel Alliance, aka, the “national conservatives” we discussed in some detail last week, chiefly because John and Steve knew it would annoy Lucretia, who declined to accept the open position as the Princess Leia of the NatCons. But this was all just preface for her on-the-scene report of... Source

Sep 20, 2022 • 50min
Cleveland Rocks, with Troy Senik
Move over Calvin Coolidge: Grover Cleveland has a valid claim to being regarded as the most constitutionally faithful and fiscally frugal president since the Civil War—a case made splendidly in Troy Senik’s new biography that is being published today, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland. What explains this outlier of a politician, who is so unlike... Source

Sep 17, 2022 • 1h 21min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Drink Up for Constitution Day!
Today is Constitution Day, so naturally conversation at the 3WHH bar turned directly to the question of whether the state-mandated observances of Constitution Day in public colleges and universities are unconstitutional! Naturally there is division on this issue that maps with our ongoing division over the perspicacity of peated whisky. John (left) appears less than convinced here. Source

Sep 9, 2022 • 1h 6min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: God Save the Queen
With John Yoo sitting in the host chair this week, we decided to post this episode a day early partly on account of travel schedules (John and Steve are head for the NatCon conference in Miami), and partly because of the breaking news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Also because it turns out that the favorite whisky of King Charles III is reportedly Laphroaig 15, which counts as a point in... Source

Sep 3, 2022 • 1h 20min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Behind Biden's F-Bomb
The setting for Biden’s speech was so bad that it rivals Michael Dukakis’s tank ride for disastrous visuals, but that’s noting compared to the egregious content, which makes Jimmy Carter’s dreadful “malaise” speech seem like Demosthenes by comparison. Speaking of the demos, Biden’s speech can be seen an as especially inartful presumption of anti-republican principles that have been at the center... Source

Aug 27, 2022 • 1h 8min
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Back to School
Once again the three-host Three Whisky Happy Hour didn’t get around to any whisky reviews, distracted once again by important breaking fast-food news. But the main first topic of this back-to-school special edition is the role education is playing in this election cycle. On the K-12 level, the same dynamic that propelled Glenn Youngkin to victory in Virginia last year seems to have legs... Source