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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 and penumbras of the 3WHH common law), correct the mispronunciations of "Islay," and give a tutorial of sorts on how to extract old and fragile corks from wine or brandy bottles. (Hint: don't use a traditional corkscrew by itself. . .)
Lucretia got a head start on the whisky, and thus had her feisty-meter turned up to eleven as we reviewed the Supreme Court's manhandling (can you say "manhandling" at Stanford?) of Title 42, and from there we finally get to the traditional new year's eve task of nominating our picks for the most important news story or event of the year, which prompted new arguments (shocker!), and then our favorite reading over the past year. Naturally Steve brought up a book by an obscure German author (Volker Weidermann's Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power) which elicited the usual contempt from Lucretia, while John merely noshed another Korean pork rib.
Finally, we ended up with an argument about Hamilton, Madison, and our perspective on The Federalist. Turns out John is jonesing to crash Power Line University. Money quote from that exchange: "You know Lucretia, oleomargarine pairs perfectly with kale." Happy new year!
Hosted by Steve Hayward, with guests JYJohn Yoo and "Lucretia"
Discussion (3)
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Fantastic year-end episode for the 3WHH even with only coffee to drink!
couple of comments:
John Yoo, you are a kick to listen to, but only a law professor could say with a straight face that the American people want a return to constitutional norms. The big banner waved throughout 2022 by half the country—“Our democracy is in danger!”—is the same rationale being used by those who are clamoring for a federal abortion law, despite the constitutional clarity of Dobbs, and who succeeded in getting quick passage of a federal marriage law, the title of which reaches the height of double-speak: The Respect for Marriage Act. All of this makes me also disagree that Trump was totally to blame for Republican losses, in large part because Pennsylvanians voted for a physically ill, failed mayor, and leftist crank over a clear-speaking physician. Not because of Trump, but because of abortion. It wasn’t even that close.
The final section brought up a long ago memory for me. In summer 1974, while on a student-abroad trip to London, several friends and I saw the new Tom Stoppard play Travesties, and afterward several of us went backstage and spent several minutes with the late John Hurt (Tristan Tzara) as he got dressed. I would love to see another production, as I know so much more about WWI than I did then and, so, was culturally lost throughout.
Godspeed, you guys!
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Great plays and philosophy?!!!!??
Fine, I'll promote myself again. I have some YouTube/Rumble lectures on that.
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And Lucretia is so right about the importance of the election security issue. It's one of the biggest issues of our time. It's up there with the debt, the border, the Deep State, and Ukraine.
And I wish I could say those were all different issues. There may be more connections than we think.