RIP, Jack

Jack Anderson, muckraking journalist nonpareil and one of the top names on Richard Nixon's enemies list, has died at the age of 83. Jack was relentless in his investigations, always a good read and has been sorely missed since Parkinson's disease forced him to quit writing in 2004. If there were only a few more journalists like him around these days, perhaps we'd have been spared a whole raft of trouble these past few years, like the debacle in Iraq, the government spying on its own citizens, Plamegate, and the "re-election" of Preznit Extraordinary Rendition. Alas, too many so-called reporters these days are of the Chris Wallace-Judith Miller-"Jeff Gannon" school of sucking up to the powerful and performing what amounts to simple stenography for their every pronouncement. Investigative journalism is a dying art.

Goodbye, Jack, we miss you more than ever now.