On this week’s episode of Gabfest Radio from Slate and WNYC, Political Gabfest panelists Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss President Obama’s season of scandals and his prospects for second-term governing. Then, they talk in more detail about the Justice Department’s snooping on AP journalists.

On this week’s episode of Gabfest Radio from Slate and WNYC, Political Gabfest panelists Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz – in a special live taping hosted by WBUR and the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts – discuss the malleability of the “red line” President Obama defined for an intervention in Syria, and a possible ratcheting up of the surveillance state after the Boston Marathon bombings. They also debate whether New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's lap-band surgery is purely about improving his health, as he says, or whether presidential politics also played a role.

On this week’s episode of Gabfest Radio from Slate and WNYC, Political Gabfest panelists Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the morass at Guantánamo Bay, including the ongoing prisoner hunger strike, a prisoner’s memoir excerpted on Slate, and what President Obama can do to finally close the detention center. They also discuss retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s recent expression of regret about the landmark Bush v. Gore case.