To close out the year the 3WHH barflies recorded a special Boxing Day edition, in which, following the obligatory McDonald’s news for John and a breaking story that indicates President Trump really does mean it about defending Western Christendom, we review our predictions for 2025 from a year ago (which, unlike the old McLaughlin Group predictions, turned out to be fairly good in most cases); then discuss what each of think is the most significant story of 2025, and offer predictions for 2026.

We couldn’t make the Substack livestream work, but we’re going to sort that out in the next week before our first show of the new season next weekend, which will be 2026!

Just how are you going to pass the time on Christmas Day after you’ve got the roast in the oven (at low temp, of course) and you’ve finished your obligatory annual screening of Die Hard? How about a special Christmas Day edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour!

Lucretia took time out from the kitchen to host this ad-free episode which features a discussion of the law governing religious symbols on public property, and why they are NOT violations of the Estasblishment Clause of the First Amendment (the phrase “separation of church and state” is not even hiding in any of the emanantions an punumbras of the Constitution, so don’t even look). Discussion also turned to wondering why liberals are increasingly hostile to religion—especially Christianity—and Steve offers his theory that the decline of patriotism among liberals, which also shows up in opinion survey data, is connected to the decline of religion among liberals, too. (He gave the full analysis of the matter in this Substack post a few months ago. One sentence summary: politics, the substitute diety for the left, isn’t going well for them right now, which makes them angry.) And did you know that Christmas itself is now a”far right” plot? That’s what Politico thinks. (Yes, we know: “Politico thinks” is an oxymoron.)

It’s conspiracy theory week at the 3WHH, as host John Yoo guides us through the mysteries of the shootings at Brown University and MIT, the mystery of why an article about the corruption of the DEI world should suddenly go viral just now, what conspiracy theory could explain why White House chief of staff Susie Wiles would call VP Vance a “conspiracy theorist” (among other things), and last but not least, how Candace Owens stole Lucretia’s tin foil hat right out from under her nose! After all this, we expect Santa will be delivering fancy new tin foil hats to us next week.

It’s the usual brawl at the bar with the three barflies of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, where we take note of Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson sayiing the quiet (progressive) part out loud, likely flattered by the New York Review of Books recently saying of her: “Ketanji Brown Jackson is proving to be the sharpest justice on the Supreme Court.” (No, seriously—they really printed that sentence.) But did she really just give away the whole anti-democratic impulse of progressives? It looks like she did.

We actually agree that Humphrey’s Executor is going to get executed because Slaughter (the party to the case against Trump) ha set it up for the slaughter.

Lucretia hosts this week’s episode with the running theme that there’s too much pearl clutching going on among the hand-wringers in Washington and the media. We flop our pearls of wisdom on the Tennessee special election, the J6 bomber arrest, the double-tap bombings on Venezuelan “fishing boats,” the Minnesota welfare scandal, and the related immigration control issues it raises. We have some diversions into the latest Trumpian nomenclature, including his rehabilitation of “third world countries” and the “R-word,” as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz calls it, and how Sydney Sweeney might react to listening to an episode of the 3WHH (because it is the new Kantian Categorical Imperative that Sydney Sweeney must be kept in the news).

Exit music this week is “Clutchin’ Pearls,” by Ross Kleiner and the Thrill. Key lyric that does not apply to our hostess with the mostest: “She’s so mad/I left her clutchin’ pearls!”

Naturally the 3WHH bartenders can’t agree on the best way to cook a Thanksgiving turkey as well as the side dishes at the outset of this special Thanksgiving Day edition, but after that we get down to discussing what to make of prosecutions being dropped left and right—literally left and right in the case of the misbegotten Big Fani Willis case against Trump being dismissed in Georgia, and the Trump DoJ case against James Comey and Letitia James being dismissed in federal court. At least we still have trial by jury to be thankful for in America, as we hear Britain may abolish trial by jury for many crimes. Maybe the Labour Party is just trying to get out ahead of what’s coming for them.

We’ll be back over the weekend with a regular episode, just as soon as our tryptohpan-induced comas wear off.

You might want to think of this totally gonzo episode as the 3WHH-Squared, as it was taped live during happy hour Friday night in a very noisy Washington Hilton Hotel at the annual conference of the Federalist Society, where John and I are present and making a general nuisance of ourselves. Lucretia was supposed to be in Hawaii this week on some kind of junket or super-secret mission, but the government shutdown interposed itself.)

As we did last year, we simply invited a handful of legal luminaries to drop by our not-so-quiet corner, with cocktails in hand, to kick around whatever is on our mind. We were delighted to have Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals drop by briefly before having to run off to host a dinner for his clerks; Roger Pilon, long-time director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, hung around to heckle everyone; Ilan Wurman, one of the rising young stars of the conservative legal academy, fell into our snare as well, and Hadley Arkes, who needs no introduction here. (Would any such gathering be complete without Hadley dropping by? To ask the question is to answer it, of course, as any disquisition on necessary truths from Aristotle to Kant would know.)

Helen Andrews’ Compact article on “The Great Feminization” is causing a stir, provoking responses from left, right, and in-between. And I just know that everyone wants to hear David French’s take on it, because how can we form a judgment about anything without hearing from the Conscience of the World. (Actually, just go with the normally mild-mannered Charles Murray’s take: “I’m still waiting to read something by David French that doesn’t irritate me. Even when I agree with the substance, the sanctimony drives me nuts. In this case, I wholly disagree with his take on Helen Andrews.”)

John Yoo files a dissent of his own that Steve and Lucretia find worthy of certain members of the Supreme Court just now, but keep your eyes out on this one; Steve, naturally, has an analogy on offer.

Steve reached 2 million lifetime miles on United Airlines this week, which meant party hats and free drinks on his flight to Washington (yet still no invitation to join Global Services), but despite all that he botched the YouTube livestream of this episode, such that the 12 subscribers who tried to tune in live saw only Steve, could neither see nor hear John Yoo (this week’s hosts) or Lucretia. So we’ll try to get it fixed, hopefully before Steve reaches the 3 million mile mark in a month or two.

You can guess the topics: The Comey indictment (two-and-a-half thumbs up), the prospects for the upcoming government shutdown where, for once, Republicans have all the high cards, and then some extended discussion of Steve’s article on how to apply Max Weber’s famously dense lecture “Politics as a Vocation” to the deteriorating political atmosphere that contributed to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. More to come on that, including how Steve’s threat to grind up some Thomas Aquinas to put in John’s tea to see if it has any effect on him.