Shazam!

Barack Obama may have just delivered the ultimate embarrassment yet to the outgoing Bush administration. This announcement actually took me by surprise, but he plans to name as his Secretary of Veterans Affairs retired General Eric Shinseki. Shinseki, you will recall, is the Army chief of staff who said tat the military needed to deploy more service personnel than George Walker Bush and Donald Rumsfeld were planning to use to pacify Iraq once the country was occupied and Saddam Hussein was gone. For his honesty, Shinseki was subsequently fired. The fact that the President-elect is appointing Shinseki to his Cabinet shows he seriously he takes both the active military and those who have already served.

NBC, meanwhile, made news I pretty much expected. David Gregory is the new host of the Sunday morning political talk show "Meet the Press," which remains the gold standard for such fare. He takes over from Tom Brokaw, who took over temporarily following the unexpected death of the legendary Tim Russert.