I knew him as most people did, through what he wrote. I'd met him and admired him easily, but the Michael I read I loved. And so today, without a particular right to, I feel heartbroken. When the news broke, Mencken biographer Terry Teachout expressed with concision what I felt and had not been able to articulate: "This is horrible, horrible news--[Michael] had evolved into a great force for journalistic good, not just as regards this war but in general, and his death will leave a black hole in the sky."

Peggy pays tribute to Michael Kelly's independence and inimitable style.  I feel much the same.

This program is a revealing one-hour interview with former U.S. Senator Gary Hart. Hart discusses the War in Iraq in detail, as well as hitting difficult domestic issues such as Social Security. Hart also talks about the 2004 Presidential Race.

Some of the questions on the show include, "What is your take on the war in Iraq?" "What do you really think Bush’s main motivation is with the war?" "Why don’t we have U.N. backing in this war?" "Has the US hurt itself internationally?" "How do we mend these relationships?" "With a war in Iraq underway, are we more vulnerable to a terrorist attack?" "What is the present value of all accrued Social Security liabilities?" "What would you do as President?"

For those in Denver that might be interested, Senator Hart will be on the Aaron Harber Show (a good local politics show for those not familiar with it) tonight at 9pm (repeats Sunday at 2pm) on KBDI - Channel 12.  Thanks to Katy for pointing it out to me!

Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

I didn't always agree with him, but I always enjoyed his writing, his Atlantic Monthly column "What Now?" and the direction he took the magazine.  His recent writings helped sway my thoughts on this war:

Hard and dangerous and damned courageous and self-sacrificing and so very lonely and really scary and rather repetitious, especially for the global Conscience of Our Culture. "War is always the worst of solutions," declared French President Jacques Chirac in late January, asserting once again a philosophical stance toward tyranny that French governments have applied with admirable consistency since the days when the wind blew from Vichy. "We have adopted a strategy of using inspectors," Chirac said, in the days before Colin Powell was to make the case for war before the United Nations Security Council. And we have still got a strategy and it is still inspections, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin declared, after Powell had conclusively demonstrated that Iraq was continuing to defy and cheat the inspection regime, in what was clearly defined as a "material breach" of Security Council Resolution 1441, sufficient as a cause for the immediate use of force. "Why go to war if there still exists some unused space in Resolution 1441?" said the admirably consistent De Villepin, whose con-sistency was helped by the fact that his statement responding to the pre-sentation of evidence that France had demanded was in fact written before the evidence was presented. "Consistent with the logic of this resolution, we must move on to a new stage and further strengthen the inspections." Also, we must surrender.

R.I.P.