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Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for Friday, May 8th.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon, we assume, is in New Haven, though we can't see her, so we're not sure where she is.

I am here.

Excellent.

We're going to discuss today three topics.

The first is going to be the replacement for David Souter, the Supreme Court Justice, who's retiring at age 69. The second topic will be Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was crisis a week in Washington with both leaders from those countries visiting the president for a two-day summit. And then the third will be about Elizabeth Edwards, who has a new book. But before we

dive into the topics. But the same husband. For the moment, anyway. Before we dive into those,

we will hear from David. So one last time, an exhortation, a, no, I used that word last week.

We're doing a live show this coming Wednesday, May 13th, 7 p.m. at 6th and I,

historic synagogue here in Washington. It's going to be a fantastic live show, and we'd love for

everybody who can make it to come. You can reserve your tickets at the GabFest page,

slate.com slash gabfest, or at 6thenei.org.

All those not numbers, just S-I-T-H-A-N-D-I.org.

Wow, I think I got that right.

So please, we look forward to seeing you.

And now back to you in the studio, John.

And, oh, look, there's Emily, just as we go to her topic.

That was all worked out better than it normally does.

So Justice Souter's retiring, Emily, tell us we're in this weird phase.

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