News of the Year

A look at the stories that shaped the past year | Mindy Belz

On a Wednesday morning in February, with the homeland security threat level at yellow (elevated), one snow system just past and another, an Alberta clipper, on its way through the northeast, William F. Buckley Jr. sat down at his desk in the study of his Stamford, Conn., home to write a column. He never got up again. Christopher Buckley later discovered his father, who founded National Review 53 years ago and became confidante to President Ronald Reagan and captain to conservatives everywhere, slumped at his desk. He was dead at 82.

Reagan once said of Buckley: "You didn't just part the Red Sea—you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism." And then, "as if that weren't enough, you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom."