Hello and welcome to the Slate political gab fest, the greatest gab fest in the history of the Earth edition.

For December 23rd, 2011, I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate.

I'm alone in Washington, D.C.

John Dickerson has fled. He's fled Washington

for the safer confines of somewhere in the Midwest, John. No, I'm in the South. I'm in Tennessee.

Does Tennessee the South? I guess it is the South. It's a border state. Come on. All right. You're in the

South. John Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent

and political director for CBS News was there. And then joining us as ever from New Haven is

the inimitable Emily Bazelon Slate senior editor. So no one will try to imitate you, Emily.

Few. I'm so relieved. It's one will try to imitate you, Emily. Few.

I'm so relieved.

It's a problem, usually.

We are going to, didn't you have a fake, wasn't there a fake Emily Bazelon on Twitter?

So someone did try to anticipate you?

Yes.

So apparently you are imitable.

Yeah.

It didn't go that well.

Remember it was like posts about the goddess Demeter?

Oh. Huh. She's a good goddess. She's a pretty good goddess as goddesses go. So you could do worse than having a fake Emily Bazelon better than posting about like, you know, Aphrodite or something. True. So we're going to have three topics today. We're going to talk about the payroll tax standoff in Congress. We're

going to talk about the state of the Iowa race as we approach the caucuses in the fall of

Newt Gingrich this week. And we will talk about more Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich's views about

...