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Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for the 15th of January 2010.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

Today we're going to talk about the sad destruction in Haiti.

Then we're going to talk about a variety of political goings on in Washington and elsewhere.

And then we're going to end with a Supreme Court ruling about gay marriage.

Well, not about gay marriage, but that's very important in the gay marriage context.

Welcome, Emily.

Well, I thank you.

And we will actually talk about the gay marriage trial as well.

Good. All right. John has like like, got some weird voice thing going on today. I know. He's also grimacing. Well, I don't, you know, because, well, you know, it's a, you're in a safe space, John. You're in a safe space. I appreciate that. And I've never felt more ensconced in the womb of comfort than now. But the problem is that, you know, our show is kind of a jokey show, and this Haiti thing is so deeply depressing.

And, I mean, I just can't basically deal.

So I'm having difficulty with that, which you, if you. It is. There is a dissonance.

There's a dissonance. Well, let's try to handle it. Well, that's my point. You've correctly identified the tension in my voice. And so now solve our problems. I can't solve the problems.

I mean, I think, you know, we're the political gab fest. And so, like, the search for a

political angle to an earthquake, which is just a massive tragedy, international tragedy,

is, uh, seems kind of fruitless. I mean, there are, we could talk about the point scoring that

people are trying to make that, uh, over, over the, the Haiti earthquake. I don't know where we get with that.

I mean, it's clearly, you know, this is a country which has had so many problems and it has

another problem of epic scale.

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