No sooner do we have a "reunion" episode last week than travel schedules blow it all up again. With John Yoo away on another junket (supposedly teaching a summer law seminar somewhere, but really in search of more elusive McRibs), Lucretia and Steve decided to do a live episode where they pondered what might be called the "meta-narrative" (that would be "McNarrative" to John Yoo) behind the sharply differing constitutional views of left and right. Steve argues that behind the left's primal drive...
Jun 15, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 490
The Three Whisky Happy Hour bartenders are finally back in the same time zone, and Lucretia fills in Steve and John about what happened while they were away partying in Europe. We mostly skip over doting on Biden's dotage, and take up Jed Rubenfeld's argument that Trump isn't technically a "convicted felon" yet, and might have strong case for immediate relief from the Supreme Court. We finally have a long-postponed update on the situation in Ukraine, where there have been a number of development...
Jun 08, 2024•58 min•Ep. 489
BUDAPEST, June 5: This Sunday the member states of the European Union will be going to the polls to elect their members of the European Parliament. I don't exactly know just what the European Parliament does either, and it has become boring viewing ever since Nigel Farage departed the European Parliament after Brexit. But there is intense campaigning underway. The streets of Budapest are lined with campaign posters, and there was a campaign march last Saturday with tens of thousands turning out....
Jun 05, 2024•38 min•Ep. 488
Lucretia hosts this episode from her bunker in an undisclosed bunker in the desert southwest while Steve and John are still galavanting over in Europe. And as hinted in a Power Line post, she is thermo-nuclear furious about the Trump verdict. Rather than rehash the details of the case, which everyone has picked over thoroughly by this point, the whisky bar considers what at means, and what may or should happen next. Lucretia thinks the American republica died on May 30 (USA, 1776 to May 30, 2024...
Jun 01, 2024•59 min•Ep. 487
This week's special episode originates in Budapest, where John Yoo and I were presenting at a two-day conference on the decay of the rule of law in Europe. You think things are bad with the U.S. judiciary? It's much worse over here. (I'll post some video highlights when they are available.) In any case, because of the time difference and other challenges, Lucretia couldn't join us, so we have a guest host holding down her spot as the third host (and also to maintain the crucial two-against-John ...
May 29, 2024•46 min•Ep. 486
Listeners want to know from John: did Justice Clarence Thomas let us down with his ruling in this week's 7 - 2 decision upholding the unique funding structure of Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she designed precisely to avoid congressional control as much as possible? John says no, and makes a persuasive three-part case for why Thomas's opinion is thoroughgoing originalism, and good history to boot. If we want to get rid of Warren's regulatory handiwork (AND W...
May 18, 2024•1 hr 10 min
This classic format episode features Steve in a one-on-one conversation with with Jeremy Carl, author of a dynamite (almost literally) new book entitled The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. Jeremy commits heresy in this book, offerng statistics that you aren't supposed to mention, and truths that, in an earlier age, might have got you burned at the stake. In publishing this book Jeremy joins the ranks of fellow brave souls such as Heather Mac Donald, Steve Saile...
May 17, 2024•50 min•Ep. 484
John Yoo hosts this week's episode from exile in Austin, Texas, where he humors Steve and Lucretia's the extra-legal views on the Trump trials and tribulations in a Manhattan courtroom, and speculate how Trump's "Letter from the Rikers Island Jail" would read (though it will be more likely in the form of Tweets or TruthSocial posts). Have we discovered a trial judge who seems to have no judgment at all. Certainly we have a president without judgment, and we begin with pondering the question of j...
May 11, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 483
There was a lot of listener and reader interest in our too brief comments on the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in our last episode, and we realized this issue deserved keeping the whisky bar open after the usual 2 am closing time to extend our treatment of the issue, yielding this short special episode. To recap: Lucretia thinks it is a stupid idea (hence, " Don't murder a man who is committing suicide "), while John thought it was also unsound on basic free speech principles. Steve was, naturally...
May 06, 2024•46 min•Ep. 482
Lucretia hosts this week's episode, reminding us once again that Republicans are living up to their reputation as "the stupid party" with the proposed "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act" that seems to have overlooked this quaint old thing called the First Amendment. Steve gamely tries to defend the political strategy behind it, but Lucretia is having none of it (putting her in rare alignment with the New York Times ), wondering why anyone would want to distract attention away from Democrats tieing the...
May 04, 2024•1 hr
Today is May Day, but also the Victims of Communism Memorial Day, and as such today is the prefect days for this classic-hybrid format podcast, featuring Steve Hayward in a conversation with Elizabeth Spalding , chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. (Elizabeth is also Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.) The Foundation has opened the Victims of Communism Museum...
May 01, 2024•59 min•Ep. 480
We're going up a day earlier than usual this week, partly because our constantly irregular travel schedules complicated things again, but more importantly to be timely, as John, Steve, and Lucretia have LOTS of thoughts on the Supreme Court argument Thursday about whether ex-presidents should enjoy broad immunity for any or all acts they took while in office. Steve and Lucretia think the president does, while John thinks textual support for the proposition is lacking. Steve and Lucretia respond ...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 479
This week's ad-free episode is probably better thought of as a Two Whisky Happy Hour, because John Yoo is away on a lecture- and Philly-cheesesteak-procurement tour back east, and Lucretia is out of action right now, too, though she appears in this episode by proxy, so to speak. So two whiskies it is. Last weekend, Lucretia and I offered a keynote session for Ammo Grrrll's annual CommenterCon conference in Phoenix, which is an annual gathering of Ammo Grrrll's best friends and devoted fans from ...
Apr 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 529
Steve hosts this crisp episode despite his creaky voice from a springtime bug (and Lucretia is partly hobbled, too) covering a lot of ground, starting with a brief recap of the latest (unanimous!) property rights victory at the Supreme Court, but then moving quickly on to initial reactions to the outbreak of World War III yesterday. What to make of Iran's attack on Israel? Many things are not clear about this impetuous scene. Closely related, while the Biden Administration seems determined to ta...
Apr 14, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 406
John Yoo takes command of host duties this week, as Steve was on the road at an academic conference at City University of New York, where a knowledgeable faculty member remarked that he was surprised Steve didn't need an armed guard. The conference was largely devoted to the intellectual history of the liberal tradition, and was designed perfectly to induce a scornful snort from Lucretia who disdains all such flim-flummery. The bonus was that Steve apparenlty brought an earthquake with him, and ...
Apr 06, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 516
This week's episode has it all, starting with the lamentable fact that when you hear "porn is everywhere these days," it included even the Powerline website this week, and then proceeding to the obscenity of the John Eastman disbarment, the disappointment with the 5th Circuit's decision preventing Texas from securing its territorial integrity, on how best to squash squatters, and a vigorous argument about the legacy of the recently deceased Joe Lieberman. (Steve and John give Lieberman a thumbs-...
Mar 29, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 475
This episode could be mistaken for the Three Martini Happy Hour, because this week's episode comes with a tangy twist. John Yoo is away this week, so we brought in a ringer to take his place: Prof. Hadley Arkes ! Thus this episode become a Positivism-Free Zone, in which we review the deepest ground of the natural law unencumbered by John's usual alarums, excursions, and errors. The episode comes in three parts: Hadley made some news yesterday, celebrating the retirement of the noted Notre Dame L...
Mar 23, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 474
Move over "Republicans pounce" as the favorite media deflection. We now know that when an old man yells at clouds—or members of Congress—the media fall in line and declare it "fiery." Well the 3WHH is authentically fiery! Four habanero spicy! This week more than ever. After dissecting the Hur testimony and its missed opportunities, we take on the issue of whether Biden is playing senile on purpose, what to make of the Tik-Tok forced sale proposal, what to make of Chuck Schumer's proposal for an ...
Mar 16, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 473
Lucretia hosts this week's episode, which we recorded in the morning over coffee instead of whisky because travel schedules prevented the normal and proper Friday evening happy hour, and guess what? We're even worse without whisky! Among the news and issues treated this week: Why Biden isn't FDR (he's not even Harry Truman); why this was the worst SOTU (Lucretia offers a different acronym) speech ever; whether there are signs of life for the GOP in California after all; how immigration and abort...
Mar 09, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 472
This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald's hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (Steve thinks the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn! Say what? Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump's alleged fraud trial in New York City,...
Feb 24, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 471
We're up a day early with this week's episode because of schedule problems, but mostly to get a drop on the streaming services with our new (un)reality TV show, "The Real Prosecutors of Atlanta," starring Big Fani Willis. OMG, is this not the best television since last week's Super Bowl? Steve show up, however, with a gin martini instead of peaty whisky, which drew a rebuke from You Know Who, who had three proper whiskies on hand for the episode. But this episode isn't all fun and giggles. We al...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 470
The Twenty-Fifth Hour is the 1950 novel by the Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu that weaves a tangled, early post-modern tale of central Europe and the Balkans in World War II. It is justly forgotten today, but the title is back in a manner of speaking because it highlights the great irony of the Left's Ahab-like pursuit of the Great Orange Whale (to mix literary references). Anyone else recall back in 2017 how a concerted mob of concerned citizens suggested the presidential disability clause...
Feb 10, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 469
John Yoo is where?? Mexico!?!? So after all that talk the last couple weeks saying the situation at the southern border did not constitute an "invasion," now he's in Mexico on some undisclosed clandestine mission. Which makes no sense: they don't even have McRibb there. Taking John's place this week is Inez Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum, frequent contributor to the New York Post , First Things , The Federalist , and other premier outlets, and co-host of the High Noon podcast on the Ri...
Feb 03, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 468
This special ad-free edition, posted a day ahead of the usual schedule because of the urgency of events at the southern border, finds the 3WHH hosts engaging in their own civil war over the question of whether states have any remedy when the federal government abdicates is responsibility to protect the border. Steve and Lucretia were in rare accord—well maybe not quite complete accord*—against John's positivist position of federal supremacy uber alles . Our normally genteel whisky-sipping salon ...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 467
This week's episode covers more ground more quickly than a Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes passing attack. Which the Philadephia Eagles won't get to experience because they flopped in the first round of the playoffs last weekend, falsifying one of John Yoo's predictions for 2024 that the Eagles would make the Super Bowl. We're hoping his brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Trump's place on the Colorado ballot is more on the mark. We mostly skip over the fine points of John's brief and take i...
Jan 20, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 466
On the eve of the Iowa caucuses Monday, we got to wondering just who or what lives up to the description of "Iowa Stubborn" in Meredith Wilson's "Music Man": And we're so by God stubborn We can stand touching noses For a week at a time And never see eye to eye! Is it Trump, DeSantis, Haley—or the legions of lawyers waging endless lawfare against Trump? It's a trick question. Lucretia—the host for this week's episode—actually hails originally from Mason City, Iowa, which is the inspiration for "R...
Jan 13, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 465
Ronald Reagan used to joke that for Republicans, every day is the 4th of July, while for Democrats every day is April 15. Today we need to update that contrast by noting that the favorite new holiday for Democrats is January 6—"Insurrection Day." We'll get to Joe Biden in due course, but the real insurrection this week took place at Harvard, where, as John Yoo predicted last week (we have receipts!) Claudine Gay was ousted in a right-wing putsch, a vertiable academic insurrection against all tha...
Jan 06, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 464
Who needs a rockin new year's party when you have the Three Whisky Happy Hour in peak form, dishing out on the top stories of 2023, and, in the spirit of the late financial analyst Byron Wein, offering a range of potential low-probability surprises (rather than firm predictions) for 2024. What's the difference between a prediction and a surprise? Well think about it this way: who would have predicted, at year end 2022, that right now our favorite Democratic Senator would be . . . John Fetterman?...
Dec 30, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 463
This special holiday week bonus episode features a conversation between Steve and Will Inboden, author of a fabulous recent book based on the very latest declassified files of the Reagan presidency entitled Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink . (Steve reviewed the book favorably in the Free Beacon .) In his distinguished career Inboden has worked on Captiol Hill and at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. He was professor and director of t...
Dec 27, 2023•40 min•Ep. 462
This week's special, ad-free edition of the 3WHH was recorded in live webinar format with about 80 of our most loyal listeners tuning in and heckling us MST3K style (IYKYK) in the chat room, but for a holiday episode it partook more of Judgment Day at times, as we reckoned with some lingering issues from our Cage Match about J6 and the Ukraine War two weeks ago, along with a thoroughly judgmental detour into "Lookism." Steve, in particular, recalls Taki's old case from the 1980s that Jane Fonda ...
Dec 23, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 461
