Round Up: Catching Up on the Morning's Columns

A round up of today's columns on debates we covered yesterday

HEALTH CARE

• Tom Coburn, Wall Street Journal: What I learned from the town hall. "The folks I met with also don't trust politicians in Washington to address mounting long-term challenges to our economy."

• Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal: Democrats should argue that health care is a public good. "One reason government got involved is that our ancestors understood something that escapes those who brag so loudly about their prudence at today's town-hall meetings: That health care is not an individual commodity to be bought and enjoyed like other products. That the health of each of us depends on the health of the rest of us, as epidemics from the Middle Ages to this year's flu have demonstrated."

• Michael Gerson, Washington Post: Plan B for President Obama. "We can't get everything we want in this fiscal environment, but we will cover more of the poor while making sure no one in America is bankrupted by catastrophic health costs."

• John Dickerson, Slate: What went wrong on health care. "Obama and his aides are going to have to decide how persuasive the president can be, and where they draw that line will determine the next stage of the health care story."

AFGHANISTAN

• Bill Kristol, Washington Post: George Will should make an opinion on Afghanistan based on facts, not sentiment.  "It would be better to base a major change in our national security strategy on arguments--especially if you're advocating a change from a policy that's been supported for eight years by a bipartisan consensus, and that involves the area that was the staging ground for Sept. 11."

• David Ignatius, Washington Post: In Afghanistan, we'll have to cut a deal. "This may be one of those messy situations where the best course is to both shoot and talk -- a strategy based on the idea that we can bolster our friends and bloody our enemies enough that, somewhere down the road, we can cut a deal."

40 YEARS OF GADHAFI

• Bernard-Henri Levy, Wall Street Journal: "Gadhafi hasn't renounced his contempt for democracy. That contempt is the true root of terrorism today."

RESHAPING CIVIL RIGHTS

• The New York Times: Obama's justice department has a lot of work to do. "The Bush administration declared war on the whole idea of civil rights, in a way that no administration of either party had since the passage of the nation's civil rights laws in the 1960s."

CHENEY

• Washington Post: Holder was right to investigate. "We trust that special prosecutor John H. Durham, a respected Justice Department veteran, will review all of the facts, apply the law without fear or favor and bring good judgment to bear in making a decision. This is, unfortunately, more than we could say about the Justice Department during Mr. Cheney's watch."