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debate this week. senate and house, democrats and republicans, in an attempt to revive a grand bargain. and the white house may now be open to tweaking social security and medicare in exchange for tax reform. now, the timing could be right this time. senator patty murray is pushing democrats toward passing their first budget in four years. on the house side, congressman paul ryan will unveil his plan this week, but it includes something that's highly unlikely. repealing obama care. >> that's not going to happen. >> well, we believe it should. that's the point. this is what budgeting is all about, chris. it's about making tough choices to fix our country's problems. we believe that obama care is a program that will not work. we believe obama care will actually lead to hospitals and doctors and health care providers turning people away. >> i want to bring in ed o'keefe, congressional reporter for the "washington post" and matt welch, editor in chief of

"reason" magazine. good to see both of you. ed, let me start with you. president obama just had lunch with paul ryan and the fact that he would come out and start talking about obama care again, something that's not going to happen, its repeal, does it make things harder going forward or is that just kind of what we expect at this stage of the game? >> well, remember that the house republican caucus, many of them were elected and re-elected on the promise of doing something to repeal or cut back on obama care. so for ryan not to include it would be troublesome for his own standing as budget chairman. but you're right, it would certainly seem that this could potentially upend the talks that the president hopes to have with house and senate republicans and house and senate democrats, especially considering the fact that obama care was at the heart of so many of their disagreements in recent years, but we'll see. we say this a lot in washington, chris, but this really is the week that could set the tone for the rest of the year, certainly for the rest of the fiscal year, and whether or not budget negotiations can go smoothly or whether they'll be just as nasty

as they have been in recent years. >> and we have seen the president trying to set a different tone with these lunches and dinners, what's been called the president's charm offensive. here's some of the response from the sunday shows. >> and i think he's genuinely reaching out. >> i'll certainly give the president the benefit of the doubt. the other side is not going to go away. >> i hope that he's genuine but i don't think we're going to be doing the harlem shake any time soon. >> matt, is this likely to help? >> help what is the question. i think the grand bargain has been a long shot for a long time now. and i don't think it's anywhere closer just because the president is having some more interesting or at least bipartisan dining dates these days. i think the focus is going to be rightly on this year's budget and we're actually going to see this week something that we kind of thought we'd never see, which is the senate budget committee actually talking about a budget for the first time in four years. so i think the focus is going to be on this fiscal year coming

up, this budget. the president hopefully will unveil his tardy budget at some point here, and we're going to be wrangling on values, competing values between the two parties. i don't think we're going to see anything in the long term. i don't think ryan talking about whatever he's going to talk about in that ten-year budget document is going to be all of that relevant to those discussions kpepexcept for just laying down some markers on long-term values. >> let me bring in senator bob casey, a pennsylvania democrat, and a member of the finance committee as well as the foreign relations committee. senator, good morning. >> good morning, chris. >> let's talk a little bit about this year's budget. we know that the president is going to come to capitol hill and meet with your caucus. what do you want to ask him? what do you think is important here? >> well, i think anything that's in furtherance of an effort to bring the sides together to reach bipartisan agreements for the near term, meaning this

year's budget and beginning work on next year's budget and maybe even a larger agreement, but i think it's -- we're going to have to take this in steps and i'm glad that the president spent a good deal of time last week reaching out to republicans. that can only help. >> yeah, there's been this talk about the possibility of a grand bargain in addition to the talks about this year's budget. let me ask you some specifics. are you open to reducing the cost of living increases for social security or open to means testing for medicare if it's part of a bigger bargain? >> well, here's the problem. when you're talking about earned benefits, the earned benefit of medicare, the earned benefit of social security, we've got to be real careful about how we approach those, because too often in washington these terms get thrown around as if they have no impact on people's lives. there are a lot of ways that we can arrive at savings and even in major programs like medicare. but i'm afraid that we're

getting into this back and forth already that somehow if you just have one proposal about these programs that somehow we solve our problems. this has to be balanced. one of the best pieces of news i've heard most recently but also over the last couple of months is the determined effort that people on both sides of the aisle have to bring about tax reform. that's the key here. if we can have real tax reform that not only makes the code simpler and fairer for americans, that lowers the corporate rate that our companies pay and to do it in a way that will actually yield revenue as well, then we can get an agreement. but i think too often people go right to some proposal that maybe chairman -- budget chairman paul ryan has and i don't think that's going to move the ball down the field very far. >> senator, let me switch gears here because we did just learn this morning about two u.s. service members who were killed in afghanistan in what appears

to be an insider attack. yesterday president karzai met with chuck hagel for the first time. but karzai threw out some allegations that the taliban and the military want to keep that country up stable so the military can stick around. what's your take on what's going on there, senator? >> well, i'm afraid what president karzai said doesn't make any sense. it's contrary to our strategy. there's no effort by our forces and by our military to do what he suggests. unfortunately, he does this every couple of months. i do think, though, it's important that we emphasize the critical nature of our working together to get our troops out of there as fast as we can and to do it in a way that doesn't undermine or diminish the golal we've achieved. so far we've had great progress, but i think that if we keep engaging in arguments with president karzai, we're probably

not going to get very far. as much as he seems to want to engage in those. it makes no sense, and i think he knows that. >> senator bob casey, good to have you on the program. thank you. >> thanks, chris. you know, matt, if nothing else, i think you could say this is pretty dicey political timing. sunday there was that joint press conference between karzai and hagel and then it was cancelled. there was supposed to be a big handover of the bagram prison from the u.s. to the afghans and that didn't happen and you have the comments about the u.s. and the taliban. what's your take, matt? >> i think we're seeing the folly of basically the decision in 2001 to not declare victory and go home. the you broke it, you own it philosophy of colin powell and other people have led us to try to take over or try to help control a failed state. i would really hate to be the commander in chief who has to write letters to the surviving families of servicemen who are

trying to kind of protect or help a regime that is spitting on their service right now. it's really a folly and it's a policy dead end that we've been in now for 12 years. >> well, let me play part of what defense secretary hagel said about all of this. >> i was once a politician, so i can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under. >> you know, i wonder how much of this is the reality of the situation, how much of this is politics, as you might take from what he just said, that he's suggesting? >> well, if anything, it's probably more afghan politics than u.s. politics. remember, karzai is in a very difficult situation. he understands that the u.s. is leaving. publicly he says that they should go, but in reality we're there in part to keep him and his government safe, so he faces a very difficult political situation there.

and for hagel, look, this was his first trip. certainly it probably didn't go as smoothly as the pentagon would like. i know our headlines this morning suggested that it was a bit of a blunder and this was an early test for him as he now begins traveling the world and visiting these hot spots. i think, you know, like the senator said earlier, this has happened before. karzai has a way of saying and doing things every few months that sort of set back the progress, but in the end the u.s. is leaving and karzai has to figure out how exactly he plans to lead as that drawdown continues. >> yeah, on the american side, matt, do you think this was a tough first trip for chuck hagel? >> oh, yeah. >> was it a bad first trip? >> sure. it's a thankless job. it's going to be -- no matter what happens when america leaves afghanistan, it's going to be ugly for america and it's going to be ugly for afghanistan. so anyone who's going to be presiding over that transfer of power, it's going to look bad and difficult for them. i don't know if there's a diplomatic magic wand that you

can wave to make that process look any prettier than it actually is. >> matt welsh, ed o'keefe, always good to see you guys. thanks so much. >> have fun at the vatican. >> thank you so much. u.n. ambassador susan rice, meantime, said to be a front runner to be president obama's next national security adviser. rice faced criticism over her account of what happened on the september 11th terror attacks at the u.s. embassy in benghazi. of course ultimately that led to her losing a chance tor the next secretary of state. the national security adviser, does not need senate confirmation. i love making money. i try to be smart with my investments. i also try to keep my costs down. what's your plan? ishares. low cost and tax efficient. find out why nine out of ten large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing.

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. welcome back to "jansing & co." we are live at the vatican with just 24 hours before the

cardinals go into the supersecret conclave to vote for the new pope. they held their last general meeting today and then go into seclusion after mass tomorrow. now, over the weekend rome kind of had the feeling of the new hampshire primary in january with cardinals celebrating mass at their assigned parishes all across rome. people were flocking. check out new york's cardinal dolan. this was outside his pass, filled to overflowing. he was mobbed by the international press and asked about whether he's ready. >> italians have a beautiful saying, you can only make yaki with the dough you got. so we want we want to be good dough for the holy spirit to work through. >> i'm joined by father robert baron and monsignor christopher nalty pastor at stooichbt church in new orleans who used to work at the vatican as a lawyer and nbc's anne thompson who has been

here since pope benedict announced he was stepping down. great to see all of you. thanks very much. this papal election, we talked about this yesterday and it's being compared to the iowa caucused, to the new hampshire primary. what's the parallel. >> i just had this feeling as i was rushing from cardinal o'malley's mass to cardinal dolan's mass, you had to see these events because you wanted to judge the crowd, you wanted to judge the energy in the crowd. i was stunned at o'malley's mass. first of all, a side altar was completely filled with cameras, like three rows of cameras that you see in the last days of a presidential campaign. and the people in the pews were italians. they wanted to see cardinal o'malley, who's been a big hit over in italy, because he comes across as a very humble person. they like his robes, they like his sandals. they think that might be a good change in the leadership of the catholic church for show more

humility. on the other side you have cardinal dolan, like this gregarious irish paul six and charmed his parish. they gave him a big round of applause afterwards. as all the reporters rushed out, all the italians stayed in the church and he kissed every baby, shook every hand, took a million pictures. it had that campaign-style feel. >> he actually hugged and kissed a nun and i tried to talk to her on the way out. she was crying and there were italians shouting, dolan, you're one of us. so we saw those two masses. they were almost a little crazy. but father, baron, you're the chicago priest and so you were actually on the altar with cardinal george, right? >> i was indeed, at his church here in rome. and the island right in the middle of the tiber. it's dedicated to the martyrs of the 20th century, catholic,

orthodox and protestant. a lot of little kids around singing and clapping. not quite cardinal george's usual style but it was a very vibrant, lively place. probably not as many cameras as you were but enough cameras too. there's a kind of buzz and intensity about this process i don't think we've seen for a while. >> i think part of it is, and monsignor, you and i were here eight years ago, it's different when you don't have a mourning period. we were grieving, the entire world it seemed like was grieving this extremely popular pope. now it just is like everybody is taking their favorite and rooting them on, sort of like an election. do you sense that? >> you do. the first thing the cab driver wanted to talk about was what i thought. i said i was here for the conclave and he wanted to talk about the different candidates. he said what do you think about this guy from new york? and he was the rector of my seminary when i was here.

and i think cardinal o'malley is a great example. if you look back among the saints that the romans have really loved, they have always been ones that had a deep sense of humility. you go back to st. lawrence, there are more churches in rome to st. loerawrence because of h love of the poverty. you go down to st. francis of assisi, the romans love that simplicity. they have the big church all around them. they're used to that. when they see a humble servant come in, i think that's probably a lot of the attraction to cardinal o'malley. >> i think you can really sense as it gets closer the enthusiasm is growing. but you know that saying, if you go into the conclave the front runner, you come out a cardinal. there really isn't a front runner, anne. this time it does seem like it's open. >> it does. and in fact the italian papers this morning, one of them said that they thought that if there was anybody who was kind of a front runner, it's cardinal

scola, the archbishop of milan but he's nowhere near the 77 votes that are needed. so i think a lot of people anticipate it's not going to be like 2005 when joseph ratzinger was elected on the fourth ballot after a day and a half. this is going to take a couple of days. i was struck by something else cardinal dolan said yesterday in that horrible media scrum. he said a week ago i wouldn't have told you we were ready. now he says he feels that they are ready to make this decision. >> we forget that so many of these cardinals were appointed by pope benedict so they really don't necessarily know each other. they're from all around the world. so they have had this time together to get to know each other, to have some conversations, and of course back home what everyone is talking about, father baron, is could there be an american pope. could there be a north american pope. the way one vatican insider put it to me yesterday was i think we've gone from a very long shot to a long shot. is that about right? >> the single most interesting thing about this period, two

weeks ago i was interviewed and said any chance for an american pope. i said slim to none. i love timothy dolan but slim to none. now we're talking about two american viable candidates. something has happened that's made that possible and it's fascinating. to me that's the most interesting part of this. >> and there may even be a third candidate because i'm also hearing talk about cardinal wuerl from washington, d.c. the one thing the americans know how to do, two things. one they know how to convey the message and, two, because the last ten years have been so atrocious for the catholic church with the clergy sex abuse scandal, there's a sense the americans have gotten past that, they have dealt with it, they have put a zero tolerance policy in place and maybe that's something the rest of the church can learn from. >> also cardinal wuerl has a lot of experience here. speaks italian fluently. so he's got the american efficiency in let's get something done and a sense of

what's going on here. cardinal o'malley speaks about eight languages. if he comes out he'll address the crowd effortlessly in five or six language, so it's an extraordinary moment. >> monsignor, i'm going to ask you the very hard question, which is if you think those cardinals are going in with one thing at the top of their list, because there's so many things you could be looking for, somebody who's a great linguist and somebody who could clean up the mess, that kind of thing, is it the ability to go out and be john paul ii, be that pastoral figure? >> you know, you talk about the three roles of a bishop, they're called munises of a bishop. the role of sanctifying, the role of preaching and governing. so you'll see attention between all three of those things. pope benedict had such a great love of the lit your gee. the governance is something you here talked about a lot. but i think the eev nachangelii

is what the people want to hear. they want to hear sound bites and having the pope on twitter with a little sound bite that just becomes part of the message of the day. when the bishops of new york, cardinal dolan goes out and does something, the papers pick it up. they see the sound bites. they put little blurbs of him. and john paul would be, as you say, one of these great evangelizers who went out and preached to the world, traveled the world. he saw -- more people saw him personally than probably any other person in human history. so that's such an important role. but you do the other back end which is the reform of the curia, the culture they have of secrecy and the american bishops i think just have a great transparency about them from the lessons, as you said, of the last ten years. >> it's great to talk to all of you about this. this is going to be really interesting. we're just getting started. thank you all for being here, i

really appreciate it. father baron, minister nalty and anne thompson as always. the u.s. and south korea are starting a new round of military drills. about 3,000 american troops are involved. this comes amid growing tension with north korea, which today says it, quote, completely scrapped its 1953 armistice agreement that ended the korean war. north korea also cut its communications hotline at the e demille taerized border with south korea. ur mom let you take her car out. this is awesome! whoooo! you're crazy. go faster! go faster! go faster! go faster! no! stop...stop... (mom) i raised my son to be careful... hi, sweetie. hi, mom. (mom) but just to be safe... i got a subaru. (announcer) love.

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raunand run? >> for me, i feel like i'm doing all the leaning in i can do right now. >> speaking of women running for office, the "huffington post" reports ashley judd has told some top democrats she is going to run for senate. the rumor mill has been swirling that she'll take on senator mitch mcconnell. howard fineman reports a formal announcement is expected in late summer. no deal yet on gun legislation, but an interesting note from history. the a.p. points out richard nixon wanted to ban handguns altogether. oval office recordings show president nixon wanted to take on the nra but another recording shifted the focus to watergate. president obama is expected to name thomas perez his next labor secretary according to multiple reports. right now he's the assistant attorney general for the justice department's civil rights division. if confirmed, he would -- it would also make him the only latino in the cabinet. and no cameras were allowed, but it's worth reading you. one of the president's jokes

from the gridiron club dinner over the weekend, and there were a lot of them. quote, as i was saying, we face major challenges. march in particular is going to be full of tough decisions, but i want to assure you i have my top advisers working around the clock. after all, my march madness bracket isn't going to fill itself out. he probably delivered it better than i did. and if you read only one thing this morning, in my opinion you have to work really hard to get a bad meal in rome, but my must read from "time" magazine is about what happens when the world's top restaurant serves up the norovirus. it's up on our facebook page at facebook/jansingco. there's new neutrogena® naturals acne cleanser. acne medicine from the wintergreen leaf treats breakouts. no parabens or harsh sulfates. for naturally clear skin. [ female announcer ] neutrogena® naturals.

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i'm up next, but now i'm singing the heartburn blues. hold on, prilosec isn't for fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. ♪ oh what a relief it is! some mixed signals from republicans are highlighting the gop divide. now, some republicans have been giving president obama high marks for his new outreach to hammer out a, quote, grand bargain on the budget and the deficit. others now blame the president

for the recent gridlock. >> he won by in some ways dividing the country. i think he ran a campaign of them and us and it was quite effective, that somehow the republicans don't care about the large number of people. >> i'm welcoming with open arms. i think the president is tremendously sincere. i don't think this is just a political change in tactic. i think he actually would like to solve the problems of the country and it would be to his benefit and certainly every american's benefit if he did that. >> let's bring in democratic strategist and pollster margie o'maro and jonathan. jonathan, let me start with you. is there a republican divide here? who's right on this issue? >> i think that they're both right defending on the perspective you're coming to this question from. from jeb bush's perspective he's dead on in the global perspective. this has been a very partisan president who has very rarely thrown the ball to his

republican counterparts. if you look at jeb bush's brother, president george w. bush, like him or hate him, one of the first things he did as president was to throw the ball to senator ted kennedy on the education bill. we've seen none of that from the president so i think jeb bush is right globally. but in this case coburn is right and the republicans meeting with him are right because the president has done this outreach. this is the first week he's ever done this according to the "washington post." that's one week out of the last 200. yes, they're both right. yes, it's happened, but it hasn't happened much. >> margie, are they both right? >> jeb bush normally is a thought leader among republicans. i'm not sure this comment was really smart because it allows us to relitigate which candidate ran a divisive campaign and which one ran a unified campa n campaign. voters have made their decision and you could see that in jeb bush's own comments.

when pressed further he said, well, he has this us versus them and, you know, it's the wealthy versus everyone else. so he's criticizing obama for being, in jeb bush's words, of the 98% when you had by comparison mitt romney who was discounting about half of the electorate, both in private comments and his comments after the election. even a week or so ago when he did his fox news interview. and i think the other thing that i think is important to note is where the american people say -- what they say right now. right now according to the last nbc poll, half of americans say that obama is unifying the country. two-thirds of americans say that republicans are much more divisive and have a much more partisan viewpoint. >> let's talk a little more about jeb bush because he certainly has been making the rounds, he was on all the sunday talks shows and he was asked about 2016 on "meet the press." here's what he said. >> who's the hottest florida politician right now, you or marco rubio? who are we more likely to see in

the white house? >> man, you guys are crack addicts. you really are obsessed with all this politics. >> i've been called a lot of things. >> marco rubio is a great guy. okay, heroin addict, is that better? >> having said that, jonathan, i mean jeb bush, his criticism of the president, is it a lot motivated by sort of maybe testing outlines or getting himself warmed up for 2016? >> well, look, he was one of the more successful governors in the last decade in his work that he did in florida reempforming the education system. he has an incredible record. of course he's going to get those questions, but he's a major figure in the party and so is senator rubio. from florida we have two of the most charismatic and dynamic republicans so i think it's good to be out there and voicing his concerns about what's going wrong with the country and how to move forward. i think he's doing a good job

with that. >> there's another question, margie, about what went wrong with the last election and the republican national committee's report on 2012 will be out next monday. i guess when you look at somebody like jeb bush, is he the more moderate voice that the democrats would worry about? >> i think right now there's a leadership vacuum on the republican side and i think jeb bush at least for now can fill that vacuum. and certainly i think any democrat who's going to run for president should be worried about any of the leading presidential contenders. there will be a tough race just like we'll continue to have tough races for a long time. so i think jeb bush from time to time he sounds very moderate. sometimes, though, when he has to defend tmitt romney or isn't quite clear on his view on immigration, somehow it reveals the difficulty that the republican party has right now figuring out where it wants to go next. >> margie, jonathan, thanks to both of you. >> thank you. >> thank you.

checking the newsfeed this morning, lawyers for oscar pistorius are trying to appeal his bail, calling them unwarranted. a new bbc documentary portrays pistorius as a broken man and a friend says he's on the verge of suicide. pistorius is also selling his personal belongings to pay his mounting legal debt after losing key endorsements. police in india say one of the men on trial for the gang rape and beating of a woman on a bus has committed suicide behind bars. his family says it wasn't suicide but, rather, foul play. check out this terrifying video out of new jersey. it was a back draft from a fire causing a huge explosion at a building in harrison. five firefighters were hurt battling the flames. investigators say it all started in the kitchen of a ground-floor restaurant. well, it turns out heart

disease is a very old problem, going back 4,000 years. a new study has found one-third of mummies from around the world had hardening of the arteries. researchers say this could lead doctors to change their ideas about the causes of heart disease, since mummies were around long before supersized fries and fatty junk food. still to come live from the vatican, we will take you inside the sistine chapel. how does the conclave work? that's coming up in about 15 minutes right here on "jansing & co." it was a magical week at the box office for "oz the great and powerful." it brought in over $ain80 milli. coming in a distant second, "jack and the giant slayer" $10 million. "identity thief" with just over $6 million. "dead man down" and "snitch" rounds out the top five. into a .

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we are following breaking news out of afghanistan where an apparent insider attack has killed two u.s. troops. three afghan policemen and seriously injured several others. it happened just a few hours ago in warkak province. it occurred when a single gunman opened fire during a group briefing. this deadly attack comes at a time when the u.s. military is deciding what to do with more than $36 billion worth of military equipment that needs to be either moved, scrapped or left behind by the time u.s. forces full out in december of 2014. let's bring in msnbc military analyst, retired army colonel and medal of honor recipient jack jacobs. colonel, good morning. >> good morning. >> the very little i know about the military, this sounds like a logistical nightmare. 750,000 pieces of major military hardware in afghanistan. we've got armored vehicles,

tanks, aircraft worth about $36 billion, and they're saying it might cost maybe $6 billion to move it. can you even sort of put in perspective how big a headache this is going to be? where do you even start? >> it's everybody's worst nightmare. it is a nightmare. don't forget it's taken us over a decade to move all this stuff over there and we did so relatively easily. it's much more difficult, of course, to take it home, even though we've lost lots and lots of equipment. it cost a lot of money, particularly by air, and that's why we've reached an agreement with the pakistani government so that we can take a lot of this stuff over land in exchange for the payment of a significant amount of hostage money to the government of pakistan so that we can use their road network to get it out. it's even cheaper to do it by land. so lots of this stuff is moving that way, but some of the stuff we're going to have to decide what's going to stay there, what we're going to leave with the afghans, what we're going to

destroy in place and not only that, of the remainder, which is a large proportion of it, when we bring it home, where is it going to go? all that stuff has to be decided well in advance. all that costs money and time too. so it really is -- it really is a logistical nightmare. they'll never get it all out, even the stuff they want to get out. >> i'm guessing part of the decision-making has to do with where it is in the country. for example, isn't the road to the bagram air base still pretty dangerous? >> yeah, it is. stuff is coming into bagram all the time and not exactly in a routine way which can be predicted. it's a land-locked country. it's mountainous, it's difficult to get stuff out. you can bring it in by air all you want but getting it out is much more difficult. there's a big log jam in bagram. it really is a logistical mess. no matter how many computers you can put to work using linear programs to figure out how to get this stuff out of there, a lot of this stuff is going to be

left behind and there's great danger in that. >> yeah. speaking of the danger, i mean the first thing that occurs to you is they're still fighting a war over there. >> it's the worst possible situation, the most difficult military operation of all of them. even frontal assaults, this is worse than that, when you're trying to extract, break contact at the same time -- which is what we're trying to do, at the same time that you're still fighting. what does that do for the security and the people that are left behind? we know from experience that the fewer and fewer americans that we're going to have on the ground means the fewer people we'll be able to use to protect the people who are remaining behind. a very, very -- not only is it a logistical nightmare but it's a very, very dangerous tactical situation. as we saw today, there are people -- americans are at risk all the time and increasingly at risk in afghanistan because of it. >> colonel jack jacobs, it's always a pleasure to have you on the program. colonel, thanks so much for being with us. >> my great pleasure, thanks.

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and you are looking at a live picture, st. peter's square. it's pretty empty right now but there are the drapes and that is the balcony where we will first see the new pope, whenever that is. we don't know when that is, but it does all start tomorrow. there's going to be a special mass celebrated with the cardinals at st. peter's basilica in the morning ajd tndn all 115 voting cardinals head into the sistine chapel to begin the conclave. 77 votes, two-thirds plus one, needed for the election of the new pope. all eyes will be focused on a chimney. they just put it up to learn if a new pope has been elected. there are a bunch of signs

around the city and they say white means pope, black means nope. so what actually happens inside this top-secret conclave? i'm joined now by elizabeth lev, professor of christian art and symbolism at duquesne university's italian campus. it's good to see you. >> it's great to be here. what an exciting time. >> we were talking earlier in the program about how all of the cardinals were out in their little parishes. and when cardinal dolan from new york was going in, there were two little italian women who waved at him and he said do you think i could have some pasta coming out of mass? sure enough, after mass he went up into their apartment and had a little pasta. this is a different kind of start to a conclave. >> i don't know, i said when in rome, do like the romans. it was sunday afternoon, it's time for pasta. conclaves have always had a different feel to them but this one is so -- we don't have the mourning for a lost pope, we have this excitement for a new pope. that curtain open, that

expectation. now that we have that curtain there, you're just waiting for that face to come out. it's thrilling. >> we've got a little time between now and then, although we'll talk a little later about how long you think that's going to be. they have been here for about a week. we know from cardinal dolan and some other cardinals that they have been getting to know each other. how much can they really talk about it before they go into the conclave? how specific can they get? >> i think there have been plenty of occasions both in these more formal meetings that have taken place and also there are plenty of informal dinners. one thing we know about rome, the way the whole city is structured, we can get a lot of business done while sitting in a villa overlooking a view of a city. so i think there's been a lot of getting to know one another in formal settings, but also a sense of much more that almost like sensory feeling of who you find attractive shall who you find someone who you would follow, who you see as someone that could lead. >> so i was inside the walls of the vatican museum today and different parts of the vatican, walking down from the papal

apartments which are now closed off. i talked to one of the workmen who had just left the sistine chapel because they clean it, they actually get all the dust out before they, you know, let the cardinals go in. but once they get in there, it's locked down, right? it's been swept for bugs. what's going on inside that room? what do we know? what does history tell us about what happens in there? >> history tells us -- i think it's important to say first and foremost a lot of prayer happens in that room. we tend to think there's so much wheeling and dealing, but everything about the space of the conclave brings them into a closer and closer intimacy so think about how this is going play tomorrow. they start out in st. peter's basilica. the largest covered space of any church in the world, it's enormous. then from there they move into the sistine chapel where you have the large sense of the chapel. they pass this great and it gets smaller and smaller and more intimate and intimate and then they find themselves before the last judgment. so i think there's a great deal of reckoning with god and

prayer. >> can i just stop you there. if people don't know what the last judgment is, when they go up to that altar to cast their ballot, there is michael angelo's masterpiece but at the bottom is a depiction of something you don't want to face. >> first of all, the image is shaped like the ten commandments and tilts toward you. the cardinals are walking up to the altar. there's a giant painting and it's tilting toward you. these cardinals have to make a solemn oath before that painting and standing before them is a christ crucified and behind them is demons in a cave looking like they're waiting to get out at you. as a matter of fact, there's an old saying that where the conclave is, the devil never stays at home. >> there is also to the left of the altar the room of tears. >> yes. and that's -- well, that space is going to be used considerably later on in the conclave. first we have that big public space. then the room of tears is a space specifically for the man who has just been chosen.

that man who has been told you are peter and saddled with this tremendous burden. that's the space for him to pray in private, to think about the incredible weight of the responsibility he's about to take on. it's a room for tears. you need a good rinse after that. >> no doubt about it. i'll let you weigh in on this. we have not had a long conclave in the 20th century. i think the longest was five days. two and three has been recent history. it seems like the consensus is friday. what do you think? >> i hope for -- i hope for a short conclave. because we're all sort of sitting on pins and needles. i would not take a longer conclave to be something that is a bad sign. the conclave that was five days to elect pius the xi and they had very important decisions to make about the vatican. and i think this conclave if they take a little more time to decide what are the major issues and who it is they trust to lead

them, i think it would be fine. i do secretly in my heart of hearts hope it will be friday as well. >> thank you. that's going to wrap up this hour of "vajansing and co." >> thank you. our agenda next hour, u.s. soldiers killed in a deadly attack in afghanistan as new defense chief chuck hagel ended what was a rocky, intense visit to that country. what does it mean for u.s./afghan relations as america prepares to draw down our troops. plus, this is how lunch with the president pays off, congressman paul ryan getting ready to introduce a budget that depends on repealing obama care. we'll talk to house members on both sides of the aisle. queen elizabeth making waves with plans to sign a charter that some see as a show of support for lbgt rights. it's not that simple. i'll be joined on that and much more coming up at the top of the hour. years in the city of baltimore. when i first started experiencing the pain,

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