Stay ConnectedSteven Hayward, John Yoo, and “Lucretia” bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week’s big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy.
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Copyright: © 2022 by The Ricochet Audio Network
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 if 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 histort or biography, which are also difficult categories, but that's part of the fun.
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.
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.
Speaking of pigs, John Yoo is about to come out with his own PIG book to go on your bookshelf right next to Steve's PIG book. That is, John and co-author Robert Delahunty are about to come out with The Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, which will make a nice pairing with both a good whisky and Steve's Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, from Wilson to Obama. We discuss the common points of interest between the two books, though Steve alleges that John and his co-author got the Lochner case wrong, as everyone usually does.
There is no truth to the rumor that Lucretia is writing The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Political Incorrectness, though she's the obvious choice for the title.
The hiatus in Hollywood brought on by the current writers strike seemed a good occasion to check in with Christian Toto, proprietor of the indispensable HollywoodInToto website, as well as a podcast, and a terrific recent book, Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul.
Our conversation ranges widely from the problems of streaming services, the leftward lurch that has nearly killed off late night talk shows, why Top Gun: Maverick was snubbed at the Oscars, and above all whether a backlash against wokery in Hollywood is approaching critical mass. There are some signs that it is. Stay tuned, but listen here and bookmark Christian's site and podcast.
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!
Lucretia hosts this week's episode, and as Hamilton predicted about how executive power would promote sobriety, the awesome responsibility of the host chair led Lucretia to praise Kevin McCarthy for the second week in a row, and she even has nice things to say about Steve!
After the smelling salts were passed round to John and Steve (and fresh glasses of whisky poured), the bartenders get down to business, breaking down the rising anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party; Lucretia's first-hand report from the border in the immediate aftermath of the end of Title 42 and where the immigration disaster will go next (and once again, the responsible Lucretia surprises with her sympathy for asylum seekers); the travesty of the criminal indictment of Marine veteran Daniel Penny for his justified act of self-defense on the New York subway (just think of it as the attempt to run George Floyd 2.0); what to make of Trump's humiliation of CNN; what to make of the week's revelations of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate; and what to make of the Supreme Court interposing itself—by a rare 9 - 0 vote—between federal corruption probes of the states.
Because we're waiting on a serious corruption probe into the Bidens, and to go with our thoughts on how the country is repeating the worst of the 1970s, exit music this week is an old 70s-era Ambrosia tune, "Time Waits for No One."
Why am I searching and when will I know?
Are the years that I've waited with nothing to show?
I'm ready to listen I'm ready to win
But I can't wait much longer before we begin
Time waits for no one
Time waits for no one
No one, no one
With all three bartenders back together and John Yoo in the host chair, the gang wonders why it is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr is so far making the most sense in the 2024 presidential race, how it is that Kevin McCarthy has (stop the presses!) actually impressed Lucretia, and why the obviously political attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas expose the left at their power-grasping worst.
But then we get back to school, with John expressing his usual faux-puzzlement about the New York Times's genuine puzzlement of why conservatives "still" like Aristotle. Too bad there isn't an Aristotle for Dummies title we can send the Times, but we do manage to sort out John.
Finally, we round out this episode with some mockery of the high octane decadence of the ruling class as seen by the scheduing of the Met Gala and the White House Correspondents Dinner within 48 hours of each other last week. It must be exhausting for our rulers to keep up this kind of social schedule, not to mention the expense of the wardrobe. Tune in for Piers Morgan's fantastic headline about the scene, and grab a can of Raid.
Heather Mac Donald may be the most fearless journalist in America. She is relentless in her reporting, bracing in her truth-telling, and ferocious in arguing her case. Her new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, explores how the current attack on meritocracy in the name of "equity" is rampaging through almost all American institutions, in particular arts and culture, but also higher education and corporate America.
Her bleak inventory includes the degredation of the sciences as well, which will if continued will exact a high cost. But our conversation also takes some unusual twists and turns, delving into some of the deeper aspects of the issues of race and merit that are typically neglected. We conclude our conversation with a discussion of Heather's recommendations for remedies, which will require some serious backbone on the part of the nation's political leadership that appears to be in short supply just now.
Who is the only federal judge to have played basketball in the Olympics for Cuba? Who is the only federal judge known for driving around town in a 1960s-era convertable Rolls Royce? Who is the only federal judge who was nearly deported?
The answer is an n of 1, as statisticians would say: Judge Carlos T. Bea of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who the Los Angeles Daily Journal was correct to call "the most interesting judge on the 9th Circuit." Born in San Sebastian, Spain in 1934, his family left Spain for North America after the Spanish Civil War and on the eve of World War II. And the story only gets more interesting from there.
Judge Bea recently took senior status on the 9th Circuit, and the San Francisco chapter of the Federalist Society decided to throw a reception and celebration of his long and distinguished career in the law, inviting me to serve as an interlocutor with Judge Bea for a conversation that covers the highlights of his colorful life story along with his views on jurisprudence. He also supplies lessons on how to survive and prosper as a Republican in San Francisco.
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