Like an old 80s sitcom, this episode was taped before a live audience of about 90 regular listeners who carried on a vigorous commentary and questions in the Zoom chat, and we had a special guest at the very end—John Hinderaker in the (virtual) flesh! And since we actually recorded during happy hour for a change (and not Saturday morning as has been the case for the last several weeks), we rolled out several whisky choices for the episode.

Listeners may know that Lucretia, this week's host, has been partial in the past to Glenmorangie, which the great Kingsley Amis noted "has been called delicate and mild, even faintly sweet." This is not a description anyone would ever use about Lucretia, making this a dubious match. Tonight she had two varieties of Glenfiddich on hand, which Amis called "fruity and well balanced." Maybe she's better matched with Macallan, which Amis says is "powerful yet smooth." That sounds more like it!

By popular demand, we took up a news items we didn't get to last week in the crush of shocking news stories, namely Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that special counsel Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel to torment Trump is unconstitutional. Steve invented a special judicial scale—the Silberman Scale from 1 - 10—for John Yoo to grade the opinion, and he gave it a solid 8, which is pretty darn good. 

From there—oh my! Lucretia unveiled her handcrafted tin foil cowboy hat, as we kicked around whether the loss of trust in key government institutions (cough, cough—FBI—cough, cough, or cough—Secret Service—cough) is because they are merely incompetent and negligent, or whether their carelessness is deliberate. From there John Hinderaker gave us an update on the FBI investigation of the firebombing of his office building back in January, and finally we all gave our predictions for Kamala Harris's running mate, but not until we rolled out the first of whiat is doubtless to be many weeks of ritual denunciation of Harris. So if you missed the live taping, pour yourself a nice, dry single malt and settle in.