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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, June 17th. I'm John Dickerson

with Emily Bazelon in New Haven and Chris Beam is here with us in Washington, sitting in for

David Plotz, and we can already feel more of a sort of empathetic fellow feeling among the gathering.

I feel like I should have hitched a ride to D.C. with all those New Haven firefighters.

I know. Yeah. You're going to go, yes. Emily and a bus full of New Haven firefighters.

It's like the beginning of a bad joke. We're going to talk about the New Haven firefighters and why they were in Washington this week at the confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor, whose name was pronounced differently by each of the 19 senators on the committee.

And then we're going to talk about health care.

It went through a series of gyrations this week on its way to perhaps disaster or success.

And then we're going to talk about Dick Cheney, who had a secret CIA program we are still sort of learning about and that Congress wasn't notified about while it was ongoing, or at least while it was in the planning stages.

So, Emily, start us off.

We, Sonia Sotomayor has made it through this long process of the hearing.

What's your sum up the whole business for us go? In six words.

I would say there are two ways to think about this hearing. One is as a ritual. And if you think

about it that way, she emerged unscathed. She said what she needed to say to get this job. And she

didn't say anything that gave people, Republicans,

on the committee and in the Senate more reason not to vote for her. So from a kind of purely

pragmatic point of view for the Democrats, it was a success. The second way, though, that I

couldn't help but try to watch the hearing, since I actually am really interested

in law and care about the way it's presented, was as a completely missed opportunity for a

teachable moment. Now, I mean, it's even naive to talk about this because ever since the Bork hearings...

...