Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 24th of November. It's Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and we're not going to pretend it's not. Welcome, everyone. I'm here with David Plotz. Emily Bazelon is in New Haven. I'm John Dickerson. We're going to talk about the TSA and the pat-downs. Then we're going to talk about the Pope and his

evolving or not evolving views on condom use. And then we are going to end with a Taliban leader

who turns out was no Taliban leader at all, despite the fact we, the United States had been negotiating

with him for years. It turns out he owns a small chain of restaurants in Poughkeepsie.

That was a good joke.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You know that the brother of Hamid Karzai owns a chain of restaurants in Baltimore?

But this is not the one the CIA is paying.

This isn't corrupt the, this is the one he owns a really, a restaurant I was going to long before I'd ever heard of Hamid Karzai.

This is like a... I think it's called the Helmand.

Oh, I love those restaurants.

There's one in Boston too, I think.

I don't know.

I'm not, maybe it's, maybe it's, maybe it's across North America.

There is a small chain of Helmand Afghani restaurants.

So if you're talking about the thing, anyway. I know he knows the one that owns the one in Baltimore. So I don't know if there's one in Poughkeepsie. That would be cool if there was.

Well, you know, please write in if you live in Poughkeepsie and you've been frequenting the restaurants of fake Taliban leaders. Also speaking of which upstate New York and that that Hana once took a photo,

there was just, Hannah once wrote a great story. My wife once wrote a great story right after 9-11

about a guy who was, I think, in Afghan who had been, he was a pizza delivery guy in Poughkeepsie,

I believe it was Pekypsey, which is why it stuck in my head, who took a picture and in the

background of the picture was like a nuclear power plant

...