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Andrea Mitchell asked a Villager health-care panel on her show today to discuss how Harry Reid can get to 60 votes with the public option since the "Gang of Four" refuses to budge and threatens to kill health-care reform entirely.

Mitchell: And Ruth Marcus, what do they do, how do they water down the public option to make it acceptable to some of the moderates but placate some of the more liberals?

Marcus: Well, it's the "and still placate some of the more liberals" is the hardest part. You're dealing with a very complex Rubik's cube really at this point because every time you change something to please someone, you're annoying someone else and potentially losing his or her vote.

But the public option, I think, could be scaled back. There is already something that Sen. Carper from Delaware is working on in terms of allowing it to take effect perhaps more quickly in states or immediately in states which have very high costs and other states could opt in. There is Sen. Snowe's old trigger option that one could still pull the trigger on, so there are ways of doing it.

I think that in the end it is possible to mollify enough of the centrist Democrats, perhaps even a Republican -- now that seems awfully remote. The president, I think, is going to have to tell the left wing of his party and the balking liberal Senators that it is crazy to pull down the entirety of health care over this one issue which the president has already said is not the be all end all of health reform.

It's always the liberals who need to compromise their positions to the conventional wisdom of the Villagers. The Gang of Four are all righteous and virtuous while liberals are out-of-control hippies who act like barking dogs. How dare they want to produce a real reform measure that could eventually provide true competition for the health care industry and that will help lower overall health care costs? Outrageous!

Remember, Marcus was being a concern troll the day after America elected Obama to the presidency with a mandate to overhaul health care and wrote a column telling him to not to govern from the left.

Yet the experience of President Bill Clinton's rocky early months -- remember gays in the military? the BTU tax? -- suggests the steep political price of governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left. This risk is particularly acute for Obama, whose opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist. The good news is that his advisers seem exquisitely aware of this trap and determined not to fall into it.

As David Sirota wrote:

The standard lie about Clinton's failures aside (it was NAFTA, stupid), the last sentence is particularly odd. Obama's "opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist." Yet, that supposed "leftist extremist" won the largest presidential mandate in the last generation.

And somehow, having done that, we are supposed to believe that means he should tack to the right.

Say what?

Email Marcus and ask her why the Gang of Four aren't the real problem, since 56 other Senators are fine with the public option: marcusr@washpost.com

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May 14, 2009 CNN's American Morning.

LENO: Governor Schwarzenegger said he's trying to get marijuana legalized here in California. He wants to legalize it.

(APPLAUSE)

I believe the campaign slogan is "Change we can breathe in." "Yes, change we can breathe in."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: Well, late night having some fun with the debate over legalizing marijuana, but Washington taking the drug very seriously. It's because pot is by far one of the most abused drugs in America and today, it's even more potent than ever.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

MESERVE: John, Kiran, this is a Mississippi marijuana grow room, and it is all absolutely legal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): In a vault -- barrel upon barrel of high- grade marijuana.

(on camera): What would the street value of this be?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot.

MESERVE (voice-over): This facility at the University of Mississippi is the only one in the country licensed by the federal government to grow large quantities of marijuana for research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the female flowering buds.

MESERVE: But that isn't all scientists do here. Marijuana samples from seizures all across the country, thousands of them, are sent here every year.

The dope is put through a sieve to remove seeds and stems. It's weighed to put in solution and chemically analyzed. The results, today, the government is announcing that for the first time ever, the average level of THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana now exceeds 10 percent. The lab has found some samples higher than 30 percent.

That means it takes less dope to get high. Experienced users may adjust their intake and smoke less, but inexperienced users may not.

MAHMOUD ELSOHLY, UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI POTENCY MONITORING PROJECT: They'll get paranoid. They'll be irritable. And that's just the opposite of what they were looking for.

MESERVE: The government says high-potency marijuana is sending more people to the emergency room and to drug treatments, but will kids listen?

DR. LAWRENCE BRAIN, CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST: Telling them that, you know, 10 percent, and three times more potent than what their parents smoked is not an argument that they'll likely to buy into or to even utilize in any constructive sort of way.

MESERVE: In fact, researchers say after years of decline, there's been a recent uptick in marijuana use.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Scientists here predict the average potency of marijuana will go up another five percent in the next five to 10 years as growers become even more sophisticated.

John and Kiran, back to you.

ROBERTS: Jeanne Meserve for us this morning.

Jeanne, thanks so much.

December 26, 2008 News Corp