White House Easter Egg Roll Tickets Hard to Get

Whitehouse.gov gets flood of traffic

Free tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll are available online today. Sort of. Many blogs have reported that if you try to get tickets at www.whitehouse.gov/eastereggroll the site crashes.

So, while you’re waiting for the bugs to be worked out, perhaps you can tune in to the president’s digital news conference.

Obama holds virtual town hall meeting

A message at whitehouse.gov for the past few days has solicited questions from Americans. Questioners were asked to focus on the economy. President Barack Obama began responding to questions at 11:30 a.m. ET today. The whole thing could be watched live online, for free! No cash advances needed.

Questions about marijuana

More than 100,000 questions were submitted online. Subjects ranged from health insurance and education to home ownership. More than 3.6 million people voted on which questions they wanted the answer to.

Many of the voters wanted to know whether decriminalizing marijuana would help the economy.

Sidestepping the question?

Despite the high number of people who wanted to hear the president’s thoughts on legalizing marijuana as an economic stimulant, Obama laughed it off.

“I don’t know what that says about the online audience,” Obama said to a laughing crowd. “The answer is ‘no.’ I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

Why the marijuana question?

Many people have suggested that decriminalizing marijuana could bring in billions for state budgets in sales taxes. Others believe it will weaken drug cartels. Obama did not address these topics.

Acceptable topics

Obama spoke at length about health care. He talked about European countries who have universal health care and the efforts Congress is currently making to get all Americans health coverage.

Questions were submitted through online videos, and a group of college students asked what Obama is doing to make higher education more affordable. He says he plans to give student loans directly from the government instead of going through banks. He says this will allow for lower interest rates on student loans and more grants.

Still no tickets

I just tried to get tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll, and it says none are available right now. The live streaming video of the president’s news conference is working perfectly.