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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 17th, Friday the 17th of April.

I'm John Dickerson here with Emily Bazelon and David Plotz.

We're all together in the Slate Bureau and we couldn't be happier.

We're just bickering. We've been bickering for the last 15 minutes.

And so we're going to start with the- Emily Bickeringa John and John defending himself.

Valiably, vigorous. Which everybody knows I do in a completely emotionless, non-defensive manner.

David, you have an announcement before we begin.

Just to remind everybody that we are going to do another live Gab Fest, and we're going to do it at 6th and I in Washington, D.C., great space that some of you went to for our first live event over inauguration weekend.

It's going to be Wednesday, May 13th, at 7 p.m. And you can learn more about the event and reserve tickets at the Slate

GabFest page, slate.com slash GabFest. So we really hope we're going to see you there.

And now we'll move on to our three topics. The first of which will be the torture memo,

so-called torture memos that were released by the Obama administration on Thursday afternoon.

Then we'll do, maybe we'll do Pirates, pirates second. I don't know. And then third, we will do the Obama this week. Do you think the Somalis have like a, they have like, is there pirate lingo if you're a pirate? Also, do they call themselves pirates? Oh my gosh. I think we should start on pirate first because it's, it's true. They're endless number of questions. I don't think, did they call themselves pirates? I don't know. That's a good question. But whatever they call themselves, please write in and tell us. And then the third topic will be, if you are a pirate. Well, that's one thing about the pirates is they have a spokesman. They're kind of, they seem organized even though they're not organized at all. But let's not get ahead of the bar cells of the pirates. Do you get paid and booty if you're the pirates supposed to? Are we talking about the pirate? Are we talking about the torture? And then the third topic will be the tax protest this week and the president's speech on the economy. He gave another update on the way things are going in a rather big speech. So now, Emily, set the table for us on these memos that were released.

What happened Thursday afternoon?

These are long-anticipated, eagerly awaited memos.

The ACLU started asking for them in 2005.

And the Obama administration, a couple of weeks ago, asked for more time.

And there's been a lot of

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