The Gabfest for June 29.

The Gabfest for June 29.

The Gabfest for June 29.

Slate's weekly political roundtable.
June 29 2007 3:38 PM

The Gabfest Assignment Desk

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Friday, June 29, 2007

This week we're back to the classic Gabfest crew: John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon, and David Plotz. They gathered in the D.C. conference room to discuss this week's Supreme Court decisions, Dick Cheney's attitude problem, and the final fate of the immigration bill. And Plotz couldn't stop hatching great story ideas.

Here are some of the stories the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

Walter Dellinger on the importance of Brown v. Board of Education
Emily on the Roberts Court's decisions
Kausfiles
SCOTUSblog's stats on this term's Supreme Court decisions
The Bowles opinion Emily chattered about
Once, the movie David raved about
Vitiate, the word John had trouble with

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 3:38 p.m.

Friday, June 22, 2007

To play the June 22 Gabfest, download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

This week, regular panelists Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson were out of the office, so David Plotz rounded up a pair of pinch hitters: Slate senior editor Timothy Noah and foreign editor June Thomas. They discussed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's departure from the Republican Party, Rudy Giuliani's short stint on the Baker-Hamilton committee, and the tumult in the Gaza Strip. In Cocktail Chatter: Michael Moore's new movie, Gay Pride, and why some summer camps have a strict no-care-package policy.

Here are some stories related to this week's Gabfest:

Fred Kaplan on Rudy Giuliani
John Dickerson's slide show on Giuliani's passion for cross-dressing
Mitchell Prothero's dispatch from Gaza City

And the book title Tim couldn't remember is The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, by Fareed Zakaria.

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 12:14 p.m.

Friday, June 15, 2007

To play the June 15 Gabfest,  download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

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This week, the panelists discuss Scooter Libby's potential pardon and how the case affects presidential politics, the latest on Alberto Gonzales, and the chaos in Gaza. In Cocktail Chatter, David raves about his new guru, Emily reflects on the Mike Nifong trial, and John ponders a poll about Hillary Clinton's likability.

Here are some of the stories the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

John predicts a pardon for Scooter Libby
Bruce Reed on a
crazy New Hampshire poll
The end of the Gonzo-Meter
Shmuel Rosner on the end of the two-state solution
David's 2003 series, " Iraq's Progress"

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 12 p.m.

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Friday, June 8, 2007

To play the June 8 Gabfest, download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

This week, the panelists discuss presidential politics, Scooter Libby's sentence, and the growling Russian bear. In Cocktail Chatter, Emily discusses Bush's nomination of Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, David wonders what's up with Alaskan politicians, and John once again ponders the Iowa straw poll.

Here are some of the stories the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

John on the Democratic debate in New Hampshire
John on the Republican debate
John on why John McCain needs to be mad
Matt Labash on presidential candidate John Cox from the Weekly Standard
Fred Kaplan asks if
Russia is our enemy
Excerpts from Death of a Dissident, a new book about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko
New York Times
piece on Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska
Washington Post
piece on Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska

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Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 6:36 p.m.

Friday, June 1, 2007

To play the June 1 Gabfest, download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

This week, the panelists discuss the depressing situation in Iraq, Barack Obama's health-care plan, and whether Fred Thompson is the Republican messiah. In Cocktail Chatter, Emily has an interesting angle on Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Supreme Court's employment-discrimination decision; David ponders the mania for executive power; and John raves about the Iowa straw poll.

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Here are some pieces the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted by June Thomas at 10:13 a.m.

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Friday, May 25, 2007

To play the May 25 Gabfest, download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

This week, the panelists discuss Congress' progress on Iraq and immigration, Monica Goodling's appearance before the House judiciary committee, and The Sopranos as it nears its conclusion. In Cocktail Chatter, David's daughter has her first pop-culture crush, Emily recommends a book, and John looks at an Iowa poll.

Here are some pieces the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

The "Gonzo-Meter" update that Emily and John were working on before they headed to the conference room.

Here's the exact quote from Monica Goodling's testimony: "At heart, I am a fairly quiet girl, who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way. "

The book Emily recommends is The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin.

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 11:44 a.m..

Friday, May 18, 2007

To play the May 18 Gabfest, download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

On the May 18 Gabfest, we talked about the Obama skin-whitening story. One link I forgot to mention is a sociological study of skin whitening and the psychological effect it might have on American society from roughly the period in which the Esquire piece was written. The study, which I thought gave some insight into how even the topic of successful, painless skin whitening could be psychologically fraught, is: "Ability To Alter Skin Color: Some Implications for American Society," by Richard L. Henshel. It appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 4 (January 1971), Pages 734-742. We also got an e-mail from Rick Bates, a listener who made this interesting point:

On my way to work today (May 18, 2007) I listened to this week's Gabfest. Your discussion of Senator Obama's perhaps false memory of a magazine article about skin whitening jarred me into a recollection of a similar tale. Here's my thought—Senator Obama may have gotten two things confused—one, the article that you guys discovered, and the other, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I have a very vivid memory of Malcolm X describing the pain that he endured in the process of chemically straightening his hair ("conking," I seem to recall that it was called). I was in high school when I read that book, and, even as a middle-class white boy from a virtually all-white state (Vermont), I was deeply impressed by his description of the intense pain that he put himself through in an effort to look more like a white person. I'm now 58, and that segment of that book came back to me very clearly this morning as I listened to the Gabfest, although it was roughly 40 years ago that I read it.

Posted by John Dickerson at 11:53 a.m.

This week, the panelists discuss the wild midnight ride of Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card to John Ashcroft's bedside and what it reveals about Washington; Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank; presidential politics; and Sen. Barack Obama's memory. In cocktail chatter: the WashingtonCity Paper's Murray Waas piece, Maria Montessori, and the Fred Thompson-Michael Moore beef.

Here are some pieces the panelists mentioned in this week's Gabfest:

Marty Lederman's blog post about James Comey's testimony to Congress

The City Paper's Waas story and the story about the writing of the story

The Fred Thompson video

The Esquire piece John and Emily mentioned is "A Whiter Shade of Black," by Lawrence Lasker, from the July 1968 issue.

Our e-mail address is podcasts@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Posted by June Thomas at 10:45 a.m.