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 around the country. My theme was “Will it get worse before it gets worse?”, and Lucretia offered some thoughts on the future of free speech.

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 deteremined to tamp down the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East, it seems to be inviting one with Antony (Blank) Blinken saying saying a week age that Ukraine should or would become a member of NATO. Are they trying to make Russia dig in, or draw the U.S. more directly into the war (which NATO membership would require)? We also ponder J.D. Vance’s very clear-headed New York Times op-ed that reviews the grim math of the Ukranian battle scene, making us wonder whether the Biden Administration has any strategy at all beyond “fight to the last Ukranian.”

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-up, while Lucretia. . .)

All three of us independently chose the same article for our picks for Article of the Week—Walter Russell Mead’s Tablet magazine piece entitled “Twilight of the Wonks.” It has some magnificently harsh language about the leaders of our elite educational institutions, such as “moral jellyfish,” and leaders who are “careerist mediocrities who specialize in uttering the approved platitudes of the moment.” We’re less sure about Mead’s diagnosis about the role of narrow specialization in the decay of our universities.

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 abortion are playing out in the campaign cycle so far; how to think about the Supreme Court decision in the Colorado case dealing with Trump’s eligibility for the ballot (hint—it ain’t over till it’s over); and finally, can Harvard be serious in asking for a government bailout? The unifying theme here is galloping dishonesty, which is being normalized more and more every day.

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 became more of a bourbon-swilling barroom brawl, and indeed we were tempted to call this episode “Showdown at the Positive Law Corral.” Steve thinks the crisis over Texas’s assertion of its right to defend the border, and the demand of the Biden Administration that Texas back down by tomorrow, represents the kind of “right of revolution” moment contemplated in the Declaration of Independence, especially since the governors of 25 other states have signaled their agreement with Texas.