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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, June the 3rd, 2011. I am David Plotz. I'm the

Eddorf Slate. I'm here in Washington, D.C. with my trusty companion, Tonto. Tonto Dickerson, John

Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent, respl're splendid in a check shirt, as always,

and joining us from New Haven, not with us this week. Wouldn't you say that's checked?

It's a hound's tooth, actually. It's hound's tooth, sorry. Oh, my God. My vision is...

Oh, yeah. I try and get hounds tooth into basically everything.

Is it a shirt of a jacket? It's a shirt.

Wow.

It's hound's teeth. There's so many tooths on there.

I guess not.

It's just hound's tooth.

And joining us from New Haven, you heard.

Emily Bazelon, Slate, senior editor.

Hello, Emily.

Hello.

Before we get to our three topics, Emily, you have a quick announcement for us.

I do. David and I taped an audio book club for Slate recently with David's favorite historian in the whole world. David had a serious fan moment. And I'm talking about Yale historian David Blight. It's a book club about the Civil War classic, The Killer Angels, and we hope you guys go and listen to it since you've been listening to David go on and on about the Civil War forever.

This is really your chance.

And it was super fun.

David Blight.

...