The “godfather of neoconservatism,” Irving Kristol, died at 89 today. Although he has been quieter in recent years, Kristol’s personal political history is famous, and probably over-exaggerated, but goes something likes this: when he was an undergraduate at the “radical” City College of New York, from which he graduated in 1940, his small group of Trotskyite (or at least anti-Stalinist) leftists held ferocious debates from Alcove 1 of the college’s lunch room with the pro-Stalinist leftists in Alcove 2, about politics. MORE »

• Hollywood talkie star Patrick Swayze, who famously had cancer, has died from the aforementioned cancer at the age of 57. [New York Times]
• “Led by their most senior black lawmakers” (?), Democrats have decided to importantly vote on whether or not to sanction Joe Wilson and whether or not to make this an issue about race. [Washington Post]
• America has blown up a car in Somalia! But what counts is what’s inside the car, namely, Al Qaeda’s most talented terrorist. [WSJ]
• The American Medical Association never likes health care reform except just now it has announced that it likes Obama’s health care reform, perhaps because it stands to gain like $200 billion as cuts to Medicare are stopped. [LA Times]
• Today on Obama’s Everyone Should Be Taking Responsibility For Things tour: Midwestern auto-workers, whom he will tell to be responsible with their jobs and savings, should they ever have these things again. [AP]
• The Senate will NOT be giving Obama’s friends the ACORNS any federal housing money, and the US Census doesn’t want their stupid help either, in counting people. [Reuters]

The Summer of Celebrity/News Death continues! Don Hewitt, the guy who created famous old-people program 60 Minutes, is dead at 86. He, like all people who died this summer and got obits in the NYT, is/was a legend. Legend of what, you ask? TeeVee! Before this guy, we hear, there was no such thing as the TeeVee News Magazine. We don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing — well, on second thought, it was probably a bad thing. The television news killed the important newspaper industry, remember? And now look where we are! [CBS News]

ROBERT NOVAK, WASHINGTON REPORTER FOR 666 YEARS, IS DEAD: Didn’t this happen like a month ago? Oh, that was Walter Cronkite. Hmm! Well, Robert Novak is dead now too. Sail on, sail on, sailor. [Huffington Post]