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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, March 19th.

I'm David Plotz.

I'm here in Slate's New York office with Emily Bazelon.

Joining us from Washington, where he will discuss what it's like to be at the Red Hot

Center of a political controversy is John Dickerson,

Slate's political correspondent. And on this scab fest, we're going to have three excellent topics.

First, we're going to talk about health care, which is going to be reaching its crescendo this weekend in

Washington. And it is one of the most interesting political fights of our lifetime.

So John is going to fill us in a lot about what's going on there.

After that, we're going to talk about Israel and the domestic squabble between the United States and Israel.

Not domestic.

International and disastrous.

International disaster, but domestic in the sense of it's a family fight.

And then finally, our third topic will be, our third topic will be Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and her new Tea Party activism.

And we'll have some cocktail chatter.

First, John, there's so much drama in Washington.

What is happening with the health care reform fight?

Is it going to culminate this weekend? Is it going to push forward to next week? What's going on? Are the

Democrats going to get their bill? If so, how are they going to get it? Fill us in. Okay.

Well, we have Thursday, though, the Democrats on the Hill got some very good news. They got their SAT scores.

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