Power Line

Way back in 1960, Leo Strauss wrote in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences that "Natural law, which was for many centuries the basis of the predominant Western political thought, is rejected in our time by almost all students of society who are not Roman Catholics." In the decades since then, however, natural law has enjoyed a revival of sorts, and is implicated today in the rise of constitutional originalism at the Supreme Court. But it is also a confusing subject, because many so-called "new natural law" theories seem to concede too much to modern philosophy, as if the great tradition of natural law begins with Bentham. To be sure, the classical authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas were not simple thinkers on the subject, but their work tends not bog down with specialized jargon or abstruse theory. One person stands out for rescuing the older tradition of natural law: Hadley Arkes, author of Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution. In this conversation, Steve

With John Yoo away this week on a junket to South America, Steve and Lucretia reverted to old times and scheduled a live taping where we fielded questions and comments in a webinar format.We talked about the reasons to be bullish about the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, along with discussion of the strategic challenges facing Israel and the United States, and more—always more—on the rot in our universities.In between these three main topics we took up listener questions about social contract theory, whether the U.S. could realistically find itself in a real civil war some time soon, and whether the general challenges of political leadership in a time of deep polarization can be overcome.A real crowd-pleaser, we hope.

The only thing more predictable than a sunrise in the east is a Hamas claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital and that the Western media would report it as dictated because the story was just too good to check, though we always thought the mainstream media employed—or so they told us in 2004—"layer and layers of fact-checkers." Once again, we see whose side our media is on. And it's not ours—or Israel's.Topic 2: Time to "decolonize" all the academic departments that won't shut up about "colonialism." Full stop.And has anyone in DC figured out yet that the move by renegade Republicans to oust Speaker McCarthy and leave the Speaker's chair empty was a clever plot to get Democrats to vote for a de facto government shutdown, and stymie aid to Ukraine? Who are the dumb guys now?And what to make of the plea deals of Sydney Powell and Kenneth Cheesebro in the Georgia prosecutions of the supposed Trump RICO conspiracy? We speculate that both Powell and Cheesebro might reprise the great star turn of Frankie Pentangel

Never mind Hamas in Gaza: what do we do with Hamas ideology on American college campuses? On top of the pusillanmous responses of college presidents we can clearly see the emerging theme of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, out of which the next step is certain: any attempts to curtail Hamas ideology on campus will be called "cancel culture," and will be said to prove the hypocrisy of everyone who has been attacking cancel culture over the last few years. And thus nothing will change. At the least, Jews should boycott Harvard, and perhaps the entire Ivy League. Steve suggests a more robust alternative way of thinking about the problem, but John and Lucretia are not convinced.Topic two is the domestic political scene. Who needs a Speaker of the House anyway? But more curious is the case of RFK Jr., who has now decided to run as an independent nex year. Is there a chance he could actually win, say, for instance, if Biden tumbles down the stairs of Air Force One in early October, and can't be replaced

Lucretia, freshly back in the U.S. from her adventures with Steve in Budapest, is in the host chair for this week's episode, and she's not in a good mood. And it's not jet lag. Looking out at the concurrent disasters at home and abroad at the moment—high inflation, an undefended southern border, and now war in Israel—she poses a straightforward question: Would any of this be happening if Trump was still president? And more acute to a certified dog-lover: While Trump has many personal flaws, would he kick a dog? The evidence accumulates that Joe Biden is not just a terrible president, but a terrible human being.From there we take up the inner desires of Kamp Kommandant Hillary Klinton, the good news (for John) of the return of the McRibb, and the demise of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Which somehow leads to a discussion of President James K. Polk, whom John thinks is an executive to be highly esteemed, drawing immediate 50-cal fire from Lucretia. And we also marvel afresh at the feral genius of Trump's method of co

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

This circuitious episode, hosted by Steve in Budapest with John Yoo in Dallas and Lucretia in her undisclosed desert location, starts off with the entirely predictable news that David Brooks drinks his whisky on the rocks (insert shudders and horror here), and quickly moves on to the news that hasn't broken yet, so we'll fix it: Gavin Newson is running for president. We know—he hasn't offically announced, but he's behaving like a candidate more and more every day. And why has no one noticed that Newsom would also solve the Democrats' Kamala problem? (See the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, especially the passage that reads, "The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves." That rules out Kamala as Newsom's running mate, which is okay because Newsom and Harris hate each other.We also devote too much time to the sartorial severity that is the Fetterman Senate Dress code, and you'll jus

Lucretia hosts this week, as the fearsome threesome give a brief summary of a recent law school seminar on natural law and the Constitution we presented last week at Berkeley Law before a group of somewhat skeptical students, and then moving on to assaying the Biden impeachment inquiry and Hunter Biden's smoking gun charge, asking why all the White House spokespeople seem to have come from Nerd Central (we mean you, Ian Sams!), and explaining the fundamental asymmetry of the Administrative State in Democratic and Republican presidencies.And isn't it nice that Virginia Democrats have offered us a whole new definition of a "working family"? Who knew that Only Fans might become a new source for campaign contributions. Also: once again the question—are Biden and Harris both on the Democrats' chopping block for next year?Get this: the latest rationale for federal government censorship of the internet is protecting "cognitive infrastructure," which sounds beyond the perverse imagination even of Orwell. And you know

We're a day late and a person short this week, as we're missing John Yoo because of schedule conflicts. Over morning coffee instead of evening single malt, this shortened, ad-free epiode finds Lucretia and Steve wondering if the Branch Covidians can really be getting ready to impose a mask mandate on all of us again, and pondering whether the COVID case of the multiply-boosted DOKTOR Jill Biden should make us wonder whether anyone knows anything anymore.Could this all be a sign of the deepening panic among Democrats over the latest polls showing Donald Trump stronger than ever, and ever increasing doubts about Joe Biden? And speaking of Democrats, who knew that Democrats have become Carl Schmitt fans, as is seemingly the case with New Mexico Governor Grisham declaring that an "emergency" gives her the power to suspend the 2nd Amendment. This comes on the heels of the latest 5th Circuit Court ruling that the Biden Administration trampled the 1st Amendment with its Covid censorship regime.

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-Paulsen 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

This classic format episode of the Power Line podcast features Steve Hayward all by himself, and breaks some news: Steve is returning to Pepperdine University this academic year as the Edward Gaylord Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy. Steve will be filling the large shoes of the late Ted McAllister, who passed away earlier this year, leaving a big hole in the SPP program. Pepperdine's SPP Dean Pete Peterson asked Steve to offer the faculty address to this year's incoming class of graduate students during orientation last week, and he spoke on the relevant contemporary lessons from Max Weber's famous lecture "Politics as a Vocation," which intersects perfectly with Karl Rove's Wall Street Journal essay over the weekend on how America has sometimes been in much worse shape than today. True, but not exhaustive, and supposing natural cycles of history will take us out of our current funk is likely a mistake, akin to fiddling while Rome burns.In one sentence, Steve's message to incoming students is

Wondering what to make of the first GOP debate, Trump's arrest and mug shot, and the apparently deteriorating battlefield situation in Ukraine? Then you've come to the right place. John Yoo hosts this week while we break it all down in crisp fashion, partly because our schedules this week prevented us from recording at a time suitable to have our whisky glasses filled. Next week, we promise!

As loyal listeners know, yesterday Steve, John, and Lucretia took over the flagship Ricochet podcast in the absence of both Peter Robinson (still somewhere in the Witness Protection Program) and Rob Long (out walking a Hollywood picket line somewhere), and we made James Lileks' life completely miserable.We decided that a couple of issues we brought up deserved some extended discussion in this bonus episode, starting with the "trust" question: why do Americans now hold nearly all major institutions, both public and private, in such low regard? We run through a number of factors, from ideology, competence, and corruption, but also wonder about whether our ruling elites today don't have the same kind of noblesse oblige that characterized the elites of the 1950s (the Dulles brothers get a special shout-out).Next, we return to the question of "human rights" versus the natural rights of the American Founding, and the mischief that the rise of "human rights" has entailed in modern times. Steve had intended to nitpic

The late week news was so screwball that Steve surrendered to Screwball Peanut Butter Whiskey to cope while Lucretia the Lightweight settled for Irish coffee while John, out of place as usual, passed on a liquid lunch to have a real one. (By the way, the Screwball Peanut Butter Whiskey is not recommended.)And what a lot of screwball news, starting with the designation of a DoJ special counsel to deal with Hunter Biden's special needs, a trial date and mini-gag order for Trump, and the flurry over the proposal of two conservative law professors to ban Trump's eligility for the ballot under Section III of the 14th Amendment about "insurrection." (If you are a glutton for the punishment of a 126-page law review article, you can view the whole thing here.) There's just one problem with this scenario: Trump hasn't been charged with fomenting insurrection or rebellion. Maybe the special counsel is waiting for another bad news dump on Hunter?After some observations about the failed Ohio referendum this week we final

This isn’t our normal 3WHH; John isn’t here, just Steve and Lucretia. So maybe a 2WHH. The occasion for today’s extra episode—since we moved up our usual weekly offering on account of the latest weekly Trump indictment, is to take note of two related items.First, did you know that Italy’s new and very popular prime minister Giorgia Meloni recently visited Washington and had a brief meeting with President Biden? I missed this too, as the meeting took place behind closed doors, probably to cover up the fact that Biden either fell asleep or sniffed PM Meloni’s blonde hair, and there was apparently no press availability or public photo op. Of course, Biden called Meloni a fascist when she was first elected, so I expect there was no enthusiasm for noting her visit.The second item is an article in National Review ("The Italian Option") recently on Meloni, where Dalibor Rohac argues that Meloni is a better model for nationalist conservatives than Hungary’s Viktor Orban, because Meloni’s positions on various matters

Our normal weekend rendezvous at the whisky bar was convened early this week to get out our fresh reactions to the Trump indictment for his role in the events of January 6, and our general reaction after reading the filing is—is this all there is? Where is incitement? Where is conspiring with violent groups like the Proud Boys and Barbie and Ken? There is very little if any new evidence or facts in the filing, and there are some stunning assumptions of fact that will surely fall apart in the courtroom.More seriously, John Yoo rightly describes this filing as the most serious political-criminal trial since the trial of Aaron Burr way back in 1807—a trial that, keep in mind—acquitted Burr on the charge opf treason. And the timing, coming amidst a lot of new revelations of Biden corruption this week—seems suspicious.Where do we go from here? Should the GOP House move right away to an impeachment investigation of Biden, before the Justice Department names a special counsel that would ironically lock down a House

After clearing the decks of the latest headlines from the week involving Biden trials and Trump tribulations, we get down to business discussing John's new book The Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (co-authored with Robert Delahunty). Naturally Steve and Lucretia have some issues to pick with John.Steve manages to annoy everyone by noting the Statute-That-Cannot-Be-Named-On-This-Podcast (rhymes with Lean Fair Fact) and connecting it to the "L-Word," meaning the Lochner case. You thought it meant something else? How old fashioned and quaint in this Age of Infinite Pronouns. And did Kamala Harris set a new low in hypocrisy and bad faith this week with her attack on Florida's African-American history standards? Let us count the ways. . .

I knew when I saw news of Vice President Kamala Harris claiming that Florida's new African-American history standards for public schools taught that "enslaved people benefitted from slavery," I knew instinctively that this was a lie of unusual medacity even for her. Don't take my word for it: read the curriculum guide for yourself, especially page six, where Harris and the rest of the race-obsessed educrat-complex twists one sentence in the most grotesque way imaginable. The real sin of the curriculum guide, from the left's demented point of view, actually can be seen page eight, where the curriculum mentions including the history of slavery before 1619. Ah—there's the rub. The real reason Harris attacks the Florida curriculum is that it dares to correct the distortions and omissions of the 1619 Project, which has become the platform for saying that America was, and is, purely a slavocracy, and that American capitalism practically invented slavery.One of my principal teachers in graduate school (and a past gu

Are the anticipated coming Trump indictments serious? Defrauding the federal government? Obstructing Congress? Violating the Ku Klux Klan Act? This is indeed John McEnroe territory—"You cannot be serious!" But is it going to work?Let's just say this episode revisits the events of January 6 with considerable disagreement among the panel about how it should be understood, what we still don't know, and how it is afftecting the next election cycle, concerning which, Luretia road-tests her latest outlandish theory. ("We're going to get comments on this one!", she promises.)Then we assay the state of the widening Biden scandals, with Lucretia scorning Steve's "eternal infernal optimism" that sooner or later the media is going to jump on this scandal. Lucretia and John are skeptical. . .Finally, are the dividends of the Harvard affirmation action admissions ruling already growing and spreading to the private sector? Have you noticed the news of the growing number of layoffs and shrinkages of corporate DEI offices? W

John Yoo is away overseas this week, so Steve and Lucretia are joined by Glenn Ellmers, author of the brand new book The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibilty of Political Philosophy. Do not be intimidated by the mention of Foucault or anything else in the title, as this crispy-written and very accessible book comes in at a reader-friendly 79 pages (Glenn admits that it began as an essay that grew a little out of control). It sheds a lot of light on our current culture war, which is really a continuation of the ructions in the country from the left that began in the 1960s but fooled us by receding briefly in the shadows for a time when the Cold War ended. More than that, though, the roots of our current contentions trace all the way back to Plato, and from whom we may also find some answers. As as we say, all this in 79 pages!Steve and Lucretia also dilate the Farce of the Week in Washington, the latest lower court rulings that look like promising attacks on the administrative state, and why the