Hello and welcome to this late political Gab Fest for the 3rd of December.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

Today we're going to talk about the WikiLeaks, leaks, cables, the State Department cables

that were published on WikiLeaks and written about extensively in the papers.

Then we're going to talk about the tax cut that the president and Republicans are still fighting over, actually not a tax cut, an extension of the Bush tax cuts.

And then finally we'll talk about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and the Pentagon report that came out this week.

And then we'll have cocktail chatter,

and everyone will be able to go and light their Hanukkah candles. Light their Hanukkah candles

or what they do in my faith, which is sign up for their open enrollment in health care for the year.

So I guess we'll start, David, WikiLeaks, big deal, and if so, why?

You know, I was hoping that you guys would answer this for me, because I've been, I, like everybody, have been transfixed by the story.

And, you know, I sense that it's really important, but I can't exactly put into words why. If this

were one cable, if it were a single cable that came out, you would think it was interesting

and probably a good scoop for a newspaper. All mass, I don't think we've learned a huge amount

about sort of inconsistencies and U.S. policies or things that we didn't know.

We know that, you know, we know that Yemen is lying on our behalf about strikes we're doing

in Yemen. We know that, you know, we know that the Chinese were probably behind the, the

computer attacks on Google and other companies. We know that, what are some of the other,

the Arab states are secretly shrinking out of Iran.

...the Iraq, that the Pakistanis are afraid that if we help them get rid of some of their

depleted uranium or their enriched uranium, rather, that that will be perceived within

...