Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 25th of February.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

And today we're going to talk about Wisconsin, the continuing fight between the Governor Scott Walker and the public employees unions. And then we're going to talk about Libya and the continuing fight between the Governor Scott Walker and the public employees unions, and then we're

going to talk about Libya and the continuing fight between Omar Gaddafi and everyone else.

And then we're going to finish by talking about the President's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act,

and then we'll have cocktail chatter. But before we do any of that, before we even begin our first

assessment of the topics of the day, David Plotz has an announcement.

Well, as you know, we're coming to West Lafayette, Indiana on April 7th, and we're going to do a live show.

And it's courtesy of our friends, our sponsors at TIACREF, are bringing us this live show. It's going to be free,

thanks to TIACREF. And we're going to be in West Lafayette, April 7th at 6 o'clock in the

University Church. And we really hope you make it. We hope you drive in from near and far to come

see us or walk on over from your home or your dorm room on the

Purdue campus. You can go to slate.com slash Indiana to register for tickets, which are, as I said,

free. All right, Wisconsin. It continues to be deadlocked between the governor who wants to not only have unions contribute, union members, public union members, certain public union members, not the cops and firemen, contribute more to their health care and their pensions and also give up their collective bargaining rights, and also do a few other things as a part of his effort to limit their ability to organize and raise money.

Unions have been protesting and their allies have been protesting in the state capital,

and the Democratic lawmakers are still in a television studio, an undisclosed television studio, out of state,

where they are not able to

provide the Senate with a quorum but are able to do interviews to keep their voices heard.

Now, David, your reaction to this, well, this stalemate.

And you haven't mentioned, John, that this issue is now spilled over so that we have the legislature in two other states.

Well, we'll get to that.

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