Dean Barnett, Rest in Peace

Bill Kristol has the news here; this was the end of a long battle with cystic fibrosis. I’ll repeat what I said earlier: Dean was one of the good and decent guys on the web, from his start as a pseudonymous baseball and politics blogger at SoxBlog to his tenure blogging with Hugh Hewitt to his gig at The Weekly Standard. I didn’t always agree with Dean – he’d been a driver for Mitt Romney during Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign and was a big believer in Romney as a presidential candidate – but I always respected his opinions.
Some samples of his writing:
*Defending the Federalist Society.
*Savaging Dinesh D’Souza’s book “The Enemy at Home”.
*Defending The Weekly Standard against George Will.
*Wondering – oh, how long ago this was! – why John Kerry kept invoking John McCain. And arguing here, here, here and here about the idea that Kerry was a smart guy. I believe it was his posts on the topic of Kerry’s intellect that put Dean on the map.
*Reflecting on the Red Sox World Championship in 2004.
*This December 2004 post and the ones above it, on cystic fibrosis.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt offers a eulogy. And Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey remember Dean here.