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  1. Podcasts/
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  3. "Lucretia"

"Lucretia"

"Lucretia," the nom de plume for Ricochet's International Woman of Mystery, is a senior administrator and professor of political science and constitutional studies at a major southwestern university. She prefers her single malt whiskys at least 18 years old.

Series

3 Whisky Happy Hour•195 episodesThe Ricochet Podcast•2 episodes

Recent Episodes

Mar 1
March 1, 2024The Ricochet Podcast
The Ricochet PodcastRicochet•March 1, 2024

Drunken Monkey Business

This week the Three Whiskey Happy Hour gang join James for a riotous good time, even as discuss and debate their beloved nation's precarious situation. They cover Joe Biden's visit to the border, Donald Trump's appeals to the Supreme Court, the latest on the war in Gaza, and a silly journalist's constitutional illiteracy. Plus there are whiskey recommendations and a must-hear story about apish antics on the high seas. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast! - Soundbite from this week: dueling press conferences in Texas between the current and previous occupant of the Oval Office.
Host:
•James Lileks
Organization
Ricochet

December 2023

Dec 30
December 30, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•December 30, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Gala New Year’s Edition

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? Black swans everywhere are saying, "I did NOT see that coming!" But before getting started with your 2024 Bingo card we take note of the dumbest controversy of the week, which is seeing some conservatives upset at the “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America” 2024 calendar, which features fetching photos of leading conservative heroines such as Riley Gaines in fashionable attire. Like bikinis.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

November 2023

Nov 4
November 4, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•November 4, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour, with Special Guest Amy Wax

With John Yoo still away somewhere in the jungles of South America, Steve and Lucretia are delighted to be joined by a very special guest, Prof. Amy Wax of Penn Law School. Followers of the campus scene may be familiar with Penn Law's crusade to fire Prof. Wax for the sin of offending against campus orthodoxies on race and immigration, at the same time Penn so conspicuously tolerates anti-Semitism. Prof. Wax isn't at liberty to discuss the details of her ongoing ordeal ((you can read more about the case from her lawyer David Shapiro here), but we do get into the thick of several pertinent questions, such as: —Does the current crisis of tolerance for anti-Semitism on campus represent a possible inflection point to turn back “wokery” at last, or will this episode prove that higher education has passed the point of no return? —Is there any evidence that the high-profile donor revolt at Penn and elsewhere is having an effect? —On a wider note, many conservative law professors are leaving their posts because of the increasing ideological hostility. This seems another bad omen for academia.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

September 2023

Sep 30
September 30, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•September 30, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Phila-Pest Edition

Settle in with your best chilled Hungarian dessert wine and Philly cheese steak for this cosmopolitan issue, which finds John Yoo—host for this week's episode—tired out from looting in his home town of Philadelphia, while Lucretia and Steve are together in Budapest carrying on with more conspiracies against the international rules-based order. John gives us on-scene reports from ground-zero of the "recreational shopping" going on in Philadelphia, plus an update on his three days of testimony in the incredible John Eastman disbarrment trial going on in California. We also cover the aftermath of our event with Heather Mac Donald at Berkeley Law, which made it all the way to Jesse Watter's show on Fox News, and has gained something like 3 million views online. But that's nothing compared to our beat down on the implosion of Ibram X. Kendi (Sen. John Kennedy's favorite "butthole professor"), which was not only predictable, but was predicted! By Glenn Loury, among others, whose profanity-laced rant about Kendi to John McWhorter we excerpt here for its news value, but also underscore the main point that the academic exaltation of an intellectual fraud like Kendi is another indication of the corruption and deep politicization of our universities today. Government shutdown? GOP debate? The rest of the Supreme Court docket for the new term beginning Monday. Yes—we cover all that too. Better get a second bottle of Hungarian wine.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Sep 3
September 3, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•September 3, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Saving Our Gerontocracy

Never mind saving “our democracy"—who's going to save our gerontocracy! With Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden in a contest for Greatest Brain Freeze Moment, while Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman look on with envy, we are starting to long for the good old days of the youthful vigor of the Soviet Politburo. Is it time for age limits for high federal office (though Sen. Chuck Grassley, still firing on all cylinders two weeks before his 90th birthday, might want a word with us), or do we just need cognitive tests for office? Equally alarming is how the Baude-Paulson argument for disqualiftying Trump for the presidency under the 14th Amendment is gaining traction. Could a county registrar of voters in some deep blue percinct throw the 2024 election into complete chaos? John has a good article on this scene suggesting the answer is a hard No, which we review. Meanwhile, the whole Georgia case gets curiouser and curiouser, as you'd expect in our current Alice in Wonderland world of "verdict first, trial later" phase of Trump-specific law enforcement. But also some good news: the forces of decency are fighting back against the left's demagogic attack on Clarence Thomas.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

August 2023

Aug 18
August 18, 2023The Ricochet Podcast
The Ricochet PodcastRicochet•August 18, 2023

A Sparking Powerline

We've got a crossover episode, folks! Our friends of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast (Steve Hayward, "Lucretia" and John Yoo) join to talk about the wacky legal matters of our time. There are environmentalists claiming the positive right to enjoy cooperative weather; they discuss the plush and cozy Hunter Biden tier of criminal justice compared to the briar patch tier that The Donald's living in; James dishes out some, ahem, tough love to the yutes; plus our guests pick the word that annoys them most these days. Song of the Week: Sound clip Fani Willis, Donald Trump and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on the indictments (Kennedy courtesy Hugh Hewitt Show)
Host:
•James Lileks
Organization
Ricochet

July 2023

Jul 8
July 8, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•July 8, 2023

The (Uncensorable) Three Whisky Happy Hour: Still Loitering at the Courthouse

You've heard of the Avengers. And the Incredibles. We at the 3WHH consider ourselves The Uncensorables. (Only because Justice League is taken.) In any case, just when you thought it was safe to pass by the courthouse and law library because the Supreme Court term has finished, along comes a bracing district court opinion slapping the Biden Administration hard for its collaborating with social media companies to censor COVID dissenters who turned out to be right about nearly everything. We also work through the aftermath of the Harvard/UNC decision, which is forcing the left to transfer their hated for Citizens United to this case. And what's up with the left's complaint that the 303 Creative case was a phony case? What's phony is the left's argument, which John Yoo (this week's show host) dispatches with ease, while Steve reminds us that the left has been contriving phony cases for decades. Finally, since it was Fourth of July week, we reflect on the holiday this year, Steve gives a foerboding prediction for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration in 2026, and we offer up recommendations for the best books about the Declaration for our slowly developing reading list of essential whisky-wisdom pairings.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

June 2023

Jun 9
June 9, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•June 9, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Bringing the Smoke and Fire (Brimstone to Come)

Who needs Steve's peaty, smoky whisky this week when Canada is supplying a surplus for half the nation? (But it ain't Canadian Club they're serving.) After clearing the smoke from our eyes—and our whisky glasses, we get down to business on what is known so far about the Trump indictment (we recorded before the full details of the indictment were released), and wonder of the Dept. of Justice isn't blowing a lot of smoke. And just how did the Supreme Court manage to botch the Voting Rights Act case? Finally, we begin rolling out our listener-requested Essential Reading List, starting with a couple titles for the category of philosophy. Naturally Steve and Lucretia divide on a title to recommend. Next week we'll either do history or biography, which are also difficult categories, but that's part of the fun.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Jun 3
June 3, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•June 3, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

John Yoo is away traveling this weekend, so the 3WHH reverts to its old form, with Lucretia pummeling Steve like a chiropractor working on a stiff neck for his conventional thinking about the debt ceiling deal. But otherwise we're in a jolly mood this week, as we see signs that a "Revolt of the Normies"—that is sensible middle class Americans—against gender wokery is finally underway. Just ask the sales manager for Bud Light, or shareholders of Target. (We could have alternately called this episode "Pride Month Goeth Before the Fall.") Then, in response to some listener requests, we begin a preliminary excursion into a "Best Books" list, though we want to await John's return for an orderly treatment of this question. For this episode Steve and Lucretia talk about political novels, and why some are enduring, like Orwell's 1984 or Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and why others have been forgotten, like Andre Malraux's Man's Fate, or Wyndham Lewis's Revenge for Love (which Steve is reading right now). As usual Steve and Lucretia come at this subject from different directions, and finally settle together on . . . Shakespeare.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

May 2023

May 27
May 27, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•May 27, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Supreme Court Touchdowns

It's late in the 4th quarter for this year's Supreme Court season, and the Justices are starting to score with some long bombs. Our 3WHH bartenders celebrated with entire flights of whisky (our kind of diversity!) while pondering Thursday's clean sweep of two 9 - 0 decisions that reinvigorate the "takings clause" of the 5th Amendment, and clip the wings of the EPA without once mentioning either the Chevron doctrine, or a certain other statute that is banned from this podcast. But wait! There's more! We also dispatch with prejudice the crazy idea of President Biden using the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, preview a couple of brand new cases that may start to undo the DEI regime, and puzzle over a head-scratching case from a few weeks ago involving California's extra-territorial imposition of regulations of pig-farming. As this poses an existential threat both to the availability of bacon supplies and McRibbs in California going forward, this is a matter of deep concern and outrage.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
May 20
May 20, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•May 20, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Lowdown on RFK Jr with KJT

With Steve Hayward back in the host chair this week, the 3WHH actually breaks some real news with special guest Kelly Janes Torrance, the op-ed editor of the indispensible New York Post. This week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is attracting surprising interest from many conservatives, visited the Post for a grilling from the Post's editorial board, and Kelly Jane opened up her reporter's notebook to share previously unreported statements RFK Jr offered at their 90-minute meeting. You won't want to miss her scoops shared exclusively with the 3WHH podcast. John Yoo was late joining us—apparently he got stuck in an extra long McDonald's drive-through line right before show time—but did manage to break down the Durham report, and also gets in on the sequels with Kelly Jane, who has a lot of thoughts on the Ukraine situation from her experiences as an election watcher in recent years. Since KJT is Canadian, we decided to honor her guest turn with exit music from the Barenaked Ladies, "New Kid on the Block," since we're definitely going to have her back on 3WHH. As mentioned early in this episode, she may not be a neat whisky drinker, but she has an epic cocktail game. We're got a short pre-roll excerpt from John on the Ricochet podcast that we think is appropriate to share with our listeners, though I think Rob Long was not amused!
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

April 2023

Apr 25
April 25, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•April 25, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Almost Live, from Commenter-Con II

This week we took the 3WHH on the road for a special ad-free episode, as Lucretia and Steve recorded before a live audience at Commenter-Con II in Phoenix. Commenter-Con II is the inspiration of 'Ammo Grrrll" (known in real life as Susan Vass), with Power Line readers from 27 states turning up. It also coincides roughly with the 40th anniversary of Lucretia and Steve's very first argument, which, Steve now admits, Lucretia was right about after all. After we kick around the stunning news about Tucker Carlson's startling exit from Fox News, and a few other background questions about favorite books, reasons for the never-ending whisky divide, and related, we turn to audience questions, in particular our nominees for who we'd like to lock up if we had genuine prosecutorial powers. (John Yoo wasn't able to join us as he had to be in the classroom for the last week of his classes at Berkeley Law, but sent along a note: "I wish I were there, but on the advice of counsel, I've been warned against showing up anywhere where people calling themselves 'Ammo Grrrll' and 'Lucretia' are in attendance. Steve Hayward, not so much."
Hosts:
•'Lucretia'•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Apr 22
April 22, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•April 22, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Devil and Miss Lucretia?

In what may be the most wide-ranging episode of the 3WHH yet, the troika ranges from the implications of the Fox News settlement with Dominion for the defective NY Times v. Sullivan doctrine (and the old article that prompted Steve's story of being threatened once with a libel suit is here), to an extended discussion of the natural law arguments on abortion—the topic aborted last week for lack of time—and lastly to a look at notable political movies with the unlikely offering from Lucretia that an underrated moral-political movie worthy of note is . . . The Devil in Miss Jones??!! Needless to say John and Steve didn't see that coming, and didn't know quite what to say. And this doesn't include our new segment, "Lucretia's Featured Rant of the Week," which debuted with a much deserved blast at the Department of Justice. Steve gets his revenge at the very end, with exit music drawn from his favorite recent political movie that John and Lucretia have embargoed from further mention on the 3WHH (but if you're curious you can read about it here and here.)
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Apr 15
April 15, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•April 15, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: No Leaking Here

Lucretia hosts the bar this week, as Steve and John extol the virtues of Japanese whisky while trolling the left for its latest futile attempt to take down Justice Clarence Thomas. Lucretia celebrates a brew pub in Arizona that stood up to the braying mob that resents real beer drinkers who like the Federalist Society, which deserves to go with a lighter highland malt. And in our "This Week in Democrats" segment, which pairs well with a dusty, peaty whisky, we wonder why the left is suddenly trying to push out Dianne Feinstein, and the problem this creates for Gov. Winsome Newsom, among other amusements and free entertainment Democrats provided this week. John then walks us through the puzzles of the fast-moving case involving the revocation (stayed for the moment) of the aboritificent drug mifepristone, which turns quickly to a too-brief discussion of natural law and abortion, and why, to borrow once again Stan Evans's great line now more applicable than ever, it is a good thing Republicans are pro-life, since they spend so much time in the fetal position, unable to offer even the simplest public argument for their stance on the issue. (To be continued. . .) Finally, Steve and Lucretia wonder why the leak of classified documents showing that the situation in Ukraine is very different from what we've been told (some people might call the party line a "lie," but that's just some people) isn't seen as the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers and Vietnam. Instead, we're being treated to a spectacle of government secrets unveiled by the cast of High School Musical: Gamer Sequel.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Apr 8
April 8, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•April 8, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Peak Crazy Achieved?

You know how people who think they can top something crazy like to say, "Hold my beer"? Well, this week Budweiser decided to try to top Alvin Bragg's bogus indictment of Donald Trump by rebranding their "light" beer such that no one want to hold it even for Alvin Bragg. What explains this dumbest marketing move since the New Coke? And does the Biden Administration have a political death wish by deciding to use Title IX as a trans-cudgel? ("Trans-cudgel" is one of the 159 genders isn't it?) Yes, this week was that crazy, and we haven't even got to the elections in Chicago and Wisconsin yet. John Yoo hosts this week's episode, which is good since Steve is under the weather with yet another bug of some kind, necessitating at least three whiskies, while Lucretia adds to her "Moron of the Week" designation with yet another new feature (which will rotate amongst the three of us every week) on . . . political philosophy! Don't groan—it's going to be fun. Especially since Steve demonstrates in this episode how it is possible to sneak up on John unawares with a reference to . . . the verboten Clean Air Act!
Host:
•John Yoo
Organization
Ricochet
Apr 1
April 1, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•April 1, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Israel’s Judicial Coup?

Lot going on this week, including Steve successfully completing his mandatory online "Abusive Conduct Training," otherwise known as Lucretia's How-To Guide to Blunt Speaking. Did you know abusive conduct is bad? How would we have known without an online training module? The good news for Lucretia is that "making unpopular statements about controversial issues" is not considered abusive. The bad news is that "making egregious statements about a person's lifestyle" is considered abusive, so we have to stop ragging on John for his McRibb fixation. The main subject this week is the turmoil in Israel about proposed reforms to its judiciary. Somehow this is an international story, as it involves possible interference from the United States, and with might be called the Internationale of the Administrative State. Did you know Israel doesn't have a written constitution? This is a large part of the problem. While the judicial reform package Netanyahu's government put forward may have some defects, its defeat—and defeat is what has occurred, make no mistake—is a loss for the cause of constitutional government everywhere. We also get in some observations about Trump's indictment, the Nashville shooting, the proposed Census question about whether someone is a descendant of slaves, and a new feature: Lucretia's Stupid Person of the Week.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

March 2023

Mar 26
March 26, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 26, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Alvin (Bragg) and the Chipmunks

We're a day late getting to the whisky bar this week on account of complicated travel schedules. Lucretia sits in the host chair as Steve was still feeling light-headed from too much high-altitude skiing while John is his usual jaunty self, baiting Lucretia with his thoughts in the Boston Globe about how Alvin Bragg and the other chipmunks of the left are blowing it with their attempt to bring down Trump through the dubious vehicle of Stormy Daniels. That's just a warmup for a review of this week's developments in the Harvard affirmative action case and the Stanford Law School DEI meltdown, which are related at their core. The New Yorker, of all unexpected places, launched a high-explosive torpedo at Harvard, while Stanford's DEI evil empire doubled down on wokery. Steve wonders whether the DEI dean, Tirien Steinbach, and the National Lawyers Guild chapter that ginned up the student protest against Judge Kyle Duncan, are double-agents secretly in the employ of Karl Rove or the Koch brothers or something, given the damage they did to campus wokery through this single incident. (Actually it just shows how thick and impervious is the campus woke bubble.) And we end with a celebration of what has to be one of Kamala Harris's top five cringiest word-salads, and a puzzle over the explosion of a . . . chocolate factory, just before Easter. Coincidence?
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Mar 17
March 17, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 17, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Silicon Death Valley Days

John and Steve are off galavanting in Florida, up to all kinds of mischief and boozy dinners, so this episode was recorded sans whisky but after a lot of fine wines. So this episode really could have been called "the three Bordeaux happy hour," plus steak. We picked up where we left off last week, with some follow up thoughts on the defects of the criminal justice system especially when it comes to "political" offenses like protesting at the Capitol on that faraway winter day. The argument quickly degenerated into another session of beating up on John for his legal positivism. To be continued, probably, ad infinitum. . . Then we get to the main event: who had the worst week in Silicon Valley: Stanford University, or Silicon Valley Bank, and all of its tech bro clients? More to the point, what is the role of the new Nicene Creed of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" in the whole scene? Our detours take us to the controversy over Amy Wax at Penn, the San Francisco proposal for $5 million reparation payments, and lots of other related matters that summon forth our best rants ever.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Mar 11
March 11, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 11, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Uniparty On

The unifying theme to this week's episode (recorded before a live Zoom audience) is that Republicans had a pretty good week, except for Sen. Mitch McConnell, who preceded falling down a stairway (Lucretia swears she didn't push him, but we're waiting for the video footage!) by falling for the liberal line that releasing the January 6 video footage is somehow a threat to the republic—almost as big a threat as the hapless Vikings fan who took a wrong turn and ended up becoming the Q-anon Shaman on January 6. (In other words, McConnell lost his footage over footage.) But as the longest-serving Senate leader in history, Steve and John manage to find some good things to say about Cocaine Mitch. From there we note the triumphs of House Republicans in this week's various oversight hearings, which managed the neat but apparently easy trick of getting Democrats to make utter fools of themselves. But it does look like "the walls are closing in" on Dr. Fauci.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Mar 8
March 8, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 8, 2023

The Nature of the Administrative State, with John Marini, Part 2

John Marini was one of the first conservative thinkers in 2016 to recognize that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to the administrative state, in a series of articles that are included in a recent collection we highly recommend, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century. In this second half of our conversation (take in the first part here if you missed it), Glenn Ellmers helps us draw John out further on these deeper aspects of the problem, noting that conservatives might actually find some insight into the authoritarianism of the administrative state from an unlikely source—certain French social theorists, in particular Foucault. Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes, references to Foucault usually summon my gag reflex, too, but you should hear out John and Glenn on this point. From time to time I bait Lucretia with the suggestion that we can sometimes turn the left’s dogmas against them, and she usually doesn’t buy it, but here we may see some support for this idea.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Mar 6
March 6, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 6, 2023

Power Line University: Judicial Review and the Bill of Rights

Our ninth and final seminar of our series on The Federalist concludes our discussion of judicial review, with a detour to the famous case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803 that supposedly settled the matter, though Lucretia draws some fine and original distinctions between what John Marshall did in Marbury and what the Supreme Court did afterwards. From there we consider Hamilton's argument in Federalist #84—the next to last Federalist Paper—that a Bill of Rights was not only unnecessary, but potentially dangerous. Hamilton lost that argument as a practical matter, but was his reasoning about this question wrong? Not necessarily, as we explain. Could we have been better off without a Bill of Rights? It seems unfathomable to think so, but we take in Herbert Storing's thoughtful angle on this question. Unfortunately a technical glitch bollixed our video recording of this final session, so we can't post a YouTube video for people who like to follow along with our Power Point slides of the text and quotations we use. We'll see if we can find an alternative mode to post them up.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Mar 4
March 4, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•March 4, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Tackling All the Major Questions

This week the Three Whisky Happy Hour tackles not only the "major questions" doctrine at the Supreme Court, but the major question about McDonald's new (but unadvertised) triple-cheeseburger, whether the Democrats' decision to hold their first primary of 2024 in South Carolina is a major or minor question, who is the All-Time Worst/ Most Evil Bureaucrat ever (it's a close call), whether the FBI can be salvaged at all, why most of our current confusions on executive power trace back to Nixon, and finally, what's up with "right-wing peaceniks"? Oh, and Lucretia's "Compleat Compendium of Morons" gets some new entries.
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

February 2023

Feb 28
February 28, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•February 28, 2023

The Origin of the Administrative State, with John Marini, Part 1

The “administrative state” is an obscure and ungainly phrase, but in recent years the term has burst out into general use, though it is often conflated with another term currently popular—the “deep state.” They are not the same thing, though they do overlap, and “deep state” does enjoy the advantage of being shorter and pithier. What is “the administrative state”? It is a mistake to confuse it with mere bureaucracy, or just concentrated executive branch power, nor should it be analyzed principally as an economic problem on account of high taxes or stifling regulation. It is partly a constitutional issue, as it involves the erosion of the separation of powers. But the administrative state is a more profound problem than that. The premier analyst of this subject is Prof. John Marini of the University of Nevada at Reno. Prof. Marini is retiring from his long teaching and writing career at the end of this semester, and we decided it was high time we sit down with him for an extended conversation involving one of my “origin story” intellectual histories before proceeding to the main event. John explains the philosophical origins of what he prefers to call the “rational state,” taking after Hegel. But it is no abstract theory. It leads to the practical result we’ve just experienced with COVID, where the presumptions of scientific expertise were married to the authority of executive government to yield a wholly authoritarian response. "Lucretia" and Glenn Ellmers, both dutiful students of Prof. Marini, join me for this fascinating conversation, which we'll continue with next week in the sequel we're calling "Marini Strikes Back."
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
Feb 24
February 24, 20233 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy HourRicochet•February 24, 2023

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: A Grand Week Indeed

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. But can Vice President Pence involve the "speech and debate" clause of Article I to assert privilege against testifying to a special prosecutor? "Separation of powers" you say? A quandary indeed. From there we talk about Jimmy Carter, who is likely not to be with us much longer, but defer our criticisms to a later time. Well most of them anyway. From there, a few summary judgments about Speaker McCarthy releasing the January 6 videotape archive to Tucker Carlson (Lucretia smells a rat), what to make of the derailed train that looks to derail Pee-Wee Herman's presidential ambitions, and whether the latest entries into the GOP presidential field mean anything at all. (Steve has a theory of the case.)
Host:
•Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet
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