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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder - Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. More

Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal. He previously served as the politics editor, and is now a contributing editor, for The Atlantic, where he curated the influential Politics channel on TheAtlantic.com and contributed to the magazine. He was also a chief political consultant to CBS News. Earlier, at NJ's Hotline, Ambinder was the founding editor of "Hotline On Call," a pathbreaking political news blog. He also worked as a producer and reporter for the ABC News Political Unit and was one of the founders of ABC's "The Note." Born in New York City, raised in Central Florida, Ambinder is a 2001 graduate of Harvard and lives in Washington, D.C.

Obama Jokes About Pot-Brained Online Audience

By Marc Ambinder
Mar 26 2009, 12:13 PM ET Comment

Says the President:   "I don't know what this says about the online audience," he says... "No, I don't think legalizing marijuana is a good way to grow our economy."   Incidentally, a White House spokesman says that Obama was not given the questions that Jared Bernstein planned to ask him in advance...  The full quote (courtesy of CBS's Brian Montropoli) is below:

"Can I just interrupt, Jared, before you ask the next question, just to say that, you know, we -- we took -- we took votes about which questions were going to be asked, and I think 3 million people voted or 3.5 million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation.

And I don't know what this says about the online audience... (laughter)

... but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question. We want to make sure that it was answered.

The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy. So -- all right...


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