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Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for January 8th, 2010 Friday.

Happy New Year, everyone.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz in Washington.

Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

We're back.

It's the political gab fest.

And our first topic is going to be, well, we're going to have

three topics. The first is going to be the Christmas Day bombing in Detroit, or attempted bombing,

I should say, thank God. The second will be the political landscape and some retirements from

Democrats this week announced this week. And then the third topic will be Britt Hume of Fox News's

counsel and guidance to Tiger Woods with respect to his life troubles.

So the first question is, since we last met, there was this attempted bombing on Christmas

Day by Omar Fruke Abu Muttalab, who got caught and didn't blow up the plane.

And now there is both a round of finger pointing about who messed up where, when,

and why, and also a lot of political fallout. Emily, the first question then to you is,

what's your feeling about all of this? Are you newly frightened about the terror in our lives?

Is this just kind of another round of what we've come to expect since 9-11?

Sort all of this out for me.

I'm not newly frightened.

I'm just depressed about the bad consequences.

...