Robert Novak Stops Smoking

It is late and there's not much to say after this my day, which sprawled across the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in fierce, bright sunlight through to this evening's thunderstorm.

Robert Novak (above) died. A minor complaint: the New York Times described him as a "pugnacious columnist," when "obnoxious fascist" would have been the better description.

Some years ago, I started looking into a possible story about influential Irish Americans in and around Capitol Hill, and I came across the estimable Father John McCloskey, who, along with Novak, was, is, considered a powerful voice for in-yer-face conservative Catholicism (Kansas Senator Sam Brownback is another, also former Senator Prick Santorum).