The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, March 4th, 2011.

I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate here in Washington, D.C., with Slate's chief political correspondent John Dickerson.

And joining us from the wilds of New Haven, as always, Slate senior editor, Emily Bazelon. And you'll notice

something different, which is that I'm hosting this week because we're going to try something.

How have we ever agreed to this? This is, you know, the idea that you now have control is I didn't quite internalize it.

I don't have control.

John didn't have control when he was the host.

I don't have control when I'm the host.

All right.

I feel better.

So I just have the, I'm just the guy with the two flashing things on the runway directing the airplanes, the gigantic airplanes that are Bazelon

and Dickerson to intelligent commentary. So we're going to have three topics this week. We're

going to talk about the budget and the potential shutdown of the government, which was averted

at least briefly this week. We're going to talk about the accelerating race for 2012 Republican presidential nomination, which really got underway

this week. And we will talk about the fascinating Supreme Court decision in the Westboro Baptist

Church case, which Emily is going to have a great riff on, I'm sure, and we'll have cocktail

chatter. But before we go to topic one, an announcement, which is that we are coming to West Lafayette, Indiana, April 7th.

Thanks to our friends at TIA Cref.

We're going to do a live show at University Church on April 7th.

We hope you can join us there.

Tickets are free.

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