• ROBERT McNAMARA IS DEAD: Jesus, anybody else feel like dying in the next week or two? Because now is clearly the time to do it! Robert McNamara prosecuted America’s hopeless adventure in Vietnam on behalf of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; he also did many other things, which nobody remembers on account of the war. [Washington Post]

‘A BLEEDING HEART CONSERVATIVE’: Former Republican VP candidate Jack Kemp died over the weekend. He was sort of a loony supply-sider, but he actually cared about the working class and racial justice and all sorts of good things. A decent guy and one of the last of the big-tent Republicans. [Obit Magazine]

SO LONG, STUDS TERKEL: The great collector of oral histories has died at the age of 96. “I’ve met hundreds, no, I’ve met thousands of interesting people, and I’ve been so caught up with them and fascinated by them and intrigued with them, it’s almost like there’s no room inside me to be interested in my own feelings and thoughts,” he once told an interviewer. [New York Times]

• SAD NEWS: David Foster Wallace, a brilliant writer and from all reports a kind, generous, and decent person, killed himself on Friday. He recently published a standalone version of a 2000 essay about John McCain; the book is called McCain’s Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope and here is a good interview about it. [Los Angeles Times]

• OH NOES ESTELLE GETTY DIED: Yeah, no “hot DC gossip” angle on this one unless you want to make yet another dumb John McCain/old people joke. Farewell, Sophia Petrillo! [Estelle Getty's web page]

You’d never know it by reading National Review today, but that conservative magazine used to be an important, interesting and intellectual journal. That’s because William F. Buckley Jr., who died early this morning at the ripe old age of 82, was a hell of a writer (but a crappy novelist). He also had famous eyebrows, as the New York Times notes in its obituary. MORE »

“With her passing, Ethel’s final wish was ultimately granted when she did not have to see Hillary Clinton become president.” [Lowell Sun]

Evil Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim is finally dead at 88. The Nazi not only survived the “Jewish war” but thrived for another sixty years as a diplomat and politician, eventually becoming the head of the United Nations and president of Austria. MORE »

Henry Allen, we know you’re a Pulitzer-winning critic, a respected old newspaper veteran, all that jazz. But please — the death of Ken Lay does not call for a rewrite of Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obit. Ken Lay was a garden-variety crook, not the near-mythic villain of a generation. You are a Washington Post staff writer, not an iconoclastic, self-destructive legend. Here are some phrases that should not appear in the Washington Post: MORE »

* Lloyd Bentsen hasn’t even been dead long enough to turn over in his grave, and already he has a rap obituary. [Dealing in Subterfuges] MORE »

• What’s up with Condi’s new ‘do? Could her hairstyle offer clues to her future plans? [Baltimore Sun]
• John McCain tries to out-pander Hillary. [Queerty]
• Today brought news of the passing of two Reagan and Nixon Administration alums: Caspar Weinberger and Lyn Nofziger. [Hotline On Call]