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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 19th of February.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in New York.

She is, you might hear a slight hiss coming from her.

She's sitting on an enormous Pilates ball that is slowly losing air. And that's what accounts for that. Our first topic today is going to be about the retirement of Evan Bai, Senator from Indiana. Our second topic will be Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff. Should he be fired for sins both large and small? and is he to blame for everything bad that's

happened to mankind since the Bronze Age? And topic three will be the conservatives. They were

in Washington this week at the conservative political action committee's convention. Also some

Tea Party activists were meeting with the Republican Party. And there were also some other

conservatives who signed a manifesto, the Mount Vernon manifesto, which I know most of our listeners have read and committed

to memory. David Plotz, beginning with you, what does it mean that Evan Bay decided not to run

again? Well, it means the Democrats have lost another seat because there is no way in hell

that they are going to hold onto the Indiana seat because

they have, I think, not a strong candidate to put up. And the Republicans, it's a state which

naturally wants to be Republican and the Republicans are going to take that seat pretty easily.

It's, you know, Bai did this kind of more in anger than in sorrow. No, he did

one of these sorrowful. Yeah, more

in anger than in sorrow. Yeah, this, you know,

this angry exit

...