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Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson is the co-founder of Power Line

Series

3 Whisky Happy Hour3 episodes

Recent Episodes

3 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy Hour

The Fab Four for the 400th

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 (resuming his legacy role as the host) gather for this gala 400th episode, where we deflated more balloons than Joe Biden with a dart gun, preview the 2024 presidential field, and also discuss in broad terms some early plans for upgrading the site in the near future.
Host:
Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

June 2022

3 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy Hour

Happy Anniversary: Power Line Celebrates 20 Years

The 20th anniversary is known as the "China anniversary," and can you still use that if your predominant mode is breaking China? In any case, the Power Line crew assembled for a live (by Zoom) VIP webcast this week that featured a rare appearance by our technical director Joe Malchow, who is usually our behind-the-screen Wizard of Oz figure. Among other things, Joe shared a sacred relic, a signed copy of Tom Wolfe's last novel, as it turned out Wolfe was an occasional Power Line reader. We decided after the hour was over that our general readership might enjoy the conversation (though everyone should still sign up to be a Power Line VIP member—new premium VIP content coming soon!). A lot has changed in 20 years, from the technical aspects of websites which saw Power Line early on coping with the problem of site crashes from sudden surges of traffic (we were one of the first to figure out how to cope with that), to changes in the format and character of the online media world. We still have "blog" in our title because of the difficulties of changing domain names.
Host:
Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet

May 2022

3 Whisky Happy Hour
3 Whisky Happy Hour

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Special Leakgate Edition

Owing partly to travel schedules that prevent our normal and proper Friday evening happy hour to debrief the week, combined with the shocking leak of the prospective Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs case, we decided to declare a special mid-week happy hour with Scott and John joining in the libations, along with a special guest, the noted Whisky-McRibb pairing expert, John Yoo, coming to us from outside his favorite squash court in San Francisco—all recorded before a live audience on Zoom (and thank you to everyone who tuned in). We begin by revisiting several predictions we made about the Dobbs case in our podcast of December 10, where we not only nailed the dynamic of the likely decision based on how the oral argument went, but also discussed the probability that the opinion would leak, in an unprecedented attempt to blow up trust and public esteem for the Supreme Court. In fact, as the show notes for that episode record: We also speculate on whether there might actually be leaks from somewhere inside the Court ahead of the decision—something that rarely or never happens—because the liberal justices are desperate to do anything to derail an overturning of Roe (which, Steve argued to John, is the “McRibb sandwich of modern jurisprudence: a compressed confection of offal cuts slathered with sauce to disguise its true awfulness”). Now I had forgotten this since Lucretia uses her Will Smith "Men in Black" neuralizer flashy thing on me after every episode. Our perspectives on the legal analysis and political fall out are all over the map and quite unpredictable, so settle in with a single-malt or other substitute, and enjoy.
Host:
Steve Hayward
Organization
Ricochet