Hello and welcome to the slate of political gab fest for May 23, 2008.

I'm John Dickerson here with Emily Bazelon and David Plotz.

We're going to talk about politics again as our first topic.

Our second topic is going to be the diagnosis of Ted Kennedy.

And our third topic we may not get to because we're not sure what it is at the moment. And then, of course, cocktail chatter at the end, the one thing you need to know about something important for your weekly – for your Memorial Day, barbecues and cocktail chatters. The first – cocktail parties. The first question is, is the Democratic race over? Have you been drinking your later? Yeah. What is going on with you? I started my, my, I started my, uh, memorial day early. I don't know. I think it was, uh, it's just a little jitters. The beginning of the show, I'm always a little nervous. Don't really know. We have it easy. We just sit back while he does all the work, except when you take over and host. perhaps Maybe I should hope for that. Yeah, that would be fine.

But wait, before we start, we have to all the work, except when you take over and host. Perhaps I'm actually for that.

Yeah, that would be fine.

But wait, before we start, we have to correct an error for last week.

I'm going to go into a little disquisition here.

Last week, we were talking about the California court's legalization of gay marriage.

And David, I believe, I would like to think it was David, although I was roundly blamed, said that both the California voters and the California legislature had voted against

legalization of gay marriage. This is not true. What in fact was true was that in 2000,

the voters, yes, they did pass a ballot initiative that was against gay marriage,

although it was not a constitutional amendment. But the legislature in California in both 2006 and

2007 approved a pro-gay marriage bill that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger then vetoed. And the reason

this is important and that we got lots of legitimately protesting emails

about our error was that we had portrayed the legislature as being against gay marriage

and making an argument that this makes the court seem even more out of step with the people

of California and their representatives and even more activist. And in fact,

the legislative part of the puzzle sort of plays out on the other side. So, okay. Okay. Emily,

your commitment to accuracy makes you a beacon for journalists everywhere. Thank you for doing that.

Okay. Thanks for blaming me, too. When it seemed to be your error as far as I can go. I don't understand why I'm getting blamed at all. Why were people writing to you? Because you made the error. No, I think they wrote to all of us to be in. Oh, really? I'm the one who's supposed to. And she took the time to read the email. I would go to it was embarrassed. All right, enough of that. Enough of that. Everybody is terribly sorry and got it wrong. And we appreciate all of our readers who pointed that out to us. Listeners. Them too. Sorry, listeners who pointed that out to us. And good for everyone who did.

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