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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for January 18th, 2013, the elitist and hypocrite edition.

I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate, in a Washington, D.C. studio, unprotected by armed guards.

At any moment, someone could invade this D.C. studio, and we would be in big trouble and now I've just revealed that to the baddies out there who now know we don't have

any armed guards.

It's really surprising.

I've made us a target.

That's right, because most people would think of Slate as an armed stronghold bristling with

armaments. Well, maybe there's somebody in our staff who has a concealed carry permit, and we don't even know. That's also possible. No, not in D.C. It's very hard to get them. Is that right? Unlikely. Yeah. Unlikely. Huh. I have a concealed talent permit. You've done a very good job keeping it concealed. That was the joke. Does it involve your toes? That is making toe jokes from New York today. Slate's senior editor, author of the forthcoming Sticks and Stones. Emily Bazelon, hello, Emily? Hello, thank you, David. Oh, you get a little book shout-out in your intro. She's going to get so many book shout-outs. In a couple of weeks, it's going to be like the whole show is going to be about her book. We'll just talk about her book all the time. That other voice, of course, is Slate's chief political correspondent. John Dickerson, who's been having a hard week, haven't you, John? I have. I've been, I'm in a jury duty until March. I'm on a grand jury,

which is all I can tell you. Yeah. They take away his phone. They take away all your access to

electronics. It's not just phones. If you wanted to take in like a hand blender or you wanted to

take in like a belt sander, you couldn't take it in or a

hair dryer no electronics it's like going into the 19th century everybody's writing on on like

lamb skin and uh with quill pens and and wearing jodpers do you think there are places emily

this is the question for you those states where they're where you can conceal carry anywhere or do you think there are places, Emily, this is the question for you, those states where

you can conceal carry anywhere? Or do you think there are states where, for example, the courthouse could ban you from having a cell phone but couldn't ban you from carrying a gun in? That's a great question. I'm going to say the answers, no, that courthouses are the place where they could keep everything out, but maybe I'm wrong. Someone from a state in which you can take a gun into a courthouse, please write in.

We want to know where you are.

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