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Hello, and welcome to the Slate Political gap fest for the 11th of February 2011.

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

Emily Bazelon is in her perch up in the ivory towers of New Haven.

And before we get to our three topics, the first of which will be Egypt and the strange behavior of Hosni Mubarak.

We will then go on to Chris Lee and his strange behavior.

And finally we'll finish with the AOL Huffington Post merger.

But David's first going to have an announcement.

So at long last, we've got details for you about the live show.

We're going to do in West Lafayette, Indiana. It's going to be on April 7th at 6 p.m. It's going to be at University Church in West Lafayette, which is right across the street from the Purdue University campus. And the show is going to be free, brought to you by T-I-A-A-Creff.

And we are really looking forward to being there.

And you can go to slate.com slash Indiana for more information and to buy tickets.

That's slate.com slash Indiana.

Not to buy tickets, to get tickets, which are free, as I said.

It's going to be a great show.

Come drive miles and miles, drive across time zones, drive across state lines, speed across state lines, and come join us in West Lafayette on April 7th.

It's now, as we get into our first topic, we're recording this on Thursday right after

Hosni Mubarak gave a kind of confused and meandering speech that we're still not quite sure exactly what he said, but we think he, what he didn't say is that he was stepping down. There were a lot of reports, including the Egyptian military, had told protesters you will get everything you want. And so when Mubarak went to speak, people thought he might step down.

He did not do that.

He spoke at some length, said that he wouldn't take orders from the outside, said he would

stay president until September, although he was handing off some powers so that he would,

it seemed at some point that he might just be a sort of titular head.

...