The GabFest is sponsored by Audible, the Internet's leading provider of spoken audio entertainment.

GabFest listeners can download a free audiobook by signing up for an Audible membership at Audiblepodcast.com slash gabfest. Hello, and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, June 5th, 2009. I'm David Plotz here in Washington. Emily Bazelon is here with me in Washington. I am. I am. I am. I am. Is oddly not here with us. John is now remote from...

I think he's avoiding me, don't you think that?

He says he's sorry, but I think actually he deliberately chose this Thursday, this week, not to be...

I said I'm sorry about what?

Oh, that I'm not there.

But actually, you deliberately decided that you aren't going to be here this week.

I'm deeply downcast and upset.

Well, in any case, John will report to us from Tennessee,

and we're going to have three topics today.

Topic number one is going to be President Obama's trip to the Middle East,

notably his speech to the Muslim world given Thursday morning in Cairo.

Topic two is going to be the murder of abortion Dr. George Tiller in Kansas.

And topic three is going to be the ongoing Sotomayor confirmation preparation, which Emily is going to say really incredibly insightful things about. And then we'll

have cocktail chatter and, of course, an audible recommendation along the way. So let's start with

topic A, which is Obama's speech in Cairo on Thursday morning, extremely early on Thursday morning,

speaking to the Muslim world about the United States' relationship

with Muslim countries, with Muslims, and about the state of Arab-Israeli relationship, about

Iran's nuclear ambitions, about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about democratization in the

Arab world, about the status of women

in the Muslim world. It was a big speech. Emily, what was your sense about what John's going

to say about it? Let's see what John says, and then I'll answer that question. I wish I knew,

...