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On this week's Slate Political Gabfest, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the federal budget showdown, the Republican presidential campaign acceleration, and the Supreme Court's ruling on the Westboro Baptist Church and hate speech.

Here are some of the links and references mentioned during this week's show:

An Associated Press piece on the stopgap spending deal signed by President Obama this week.
A Politico piece on Joe Biden's role in negotiating the spending deal in Congress.
A series of competing analyses on the impact of the proposed budget cuts from Moody's Mark Zandi, Goldman Sachs, and Stanford University's John Taylor.
Paul Krugman's New York Times column on the impact of cuts on the recovery, in which he calls the Republican theory an appeal to the "confidence fairy."
A Politico piece on Newt Gingrich's kinda-sorta announcement that he's kinda-sorta running for president in 2012, and the perplexing Web site he launched in the process.
David Brooks' New York Times column on the presidential prospects of Indiana governor Mitch Daniels.
A New York Times piece on the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the right to protest military funerals.
A SCOTUS Blog piece explaining the background of the case involving the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

John chatters on a sweeping new study of sexual activity among teens and young adults, which found that young people are having less sex than they were in 2002. That correlates with a drop in teen pregnancy since the 1990s.
Emily chatters on Nathan Heller's Slate piece about stuttering. She also endorsed this week's episode of the Slate Audio Book Club, covering Emma Donoghue's Room.
David chatters on a This American Life story about Lucy, a remarkable chimpanzee adopted by scientists and raised in captivity.

The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted on March 4 by John Griffith at 2:45 p.m.