Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Your one stop pundit shop.

Richard Cohen lays out a rather compelling case against the nomination of Eric Holder for Attorney General.

Robert Kagan wants a new coalition of the willing to take over parts of Pakistan. And if that goes as well as the invasion of Iraq that Kagan cheerleaded for, we will soon be mired in three wars.

Bob Herbert, while admiring the people Barack Obama is surrounding himself with, is uneasy, and wants to know:

... who in the Obama administration will be listening to the young girl on the South Side of Chicago whose future is constrained by a lousy public school, and the factory worker in Toledo whose family’s future has been trampled by unrestrained corporate greed and unfair trade policies.

All the evidence is that the next administration will be competent and smart as hell. Now I’d like to know for whom they plan to deliver.

Clarence Page argues that far from helping Barack Obama stay in touch with people outside of his bubble, continuing to use his BlackBerry would actually increases his isolation from differing viewpoints, and that it's time to put down the CrackBerry pipe.

Tony Blankley whines that we still don't know who Barack Obama is, and it's the damn media's fault for not telling us before it got him elected.

Bret Stephens self-righteously claims that "Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies," and uses as an example, a 2005 Newsweek story:

...about the Quran being flushed down a Guantanamo toilet. Result: At least 15 people were killed in Afghan riots.

...and wraps up by saying:

Of course, it's always possible to fall for a well-told lie.

Indeed. From a 2005 Defense Department press briefing, General Richard Myers, the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

It's the -- it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan.  So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence.  He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of your outrage?

William McGurn joins the coordinated chorus of union bashing.

Michael Canfield argues for a $25 billion loan to Detroit.

Derrick Z. Jackson, reacting to another one of George Bush's last-minute rules changes, wants another kind of bailout:

Obama helped bail out gluttonous Wall Street and is working on incompetent Detroit. He worked hard to bring rival Hillary Clinton into his administration. Now he needs to publicly and personally urge Bush to not utterly abandon the American worker. The Joes and Janes of America need their own press conference. Obama should stand before them to declare that if Bush institutes the "industry-by-industry" toxics regulation, he will move as swiftly as Bush did in 2001 to kill it. It would be a strong sign that his White House will be one where the working stiff is not stiffed.

Susan Taylor Martin gives a brief primer on Secretary of State.