It grieves me to report that our coblogger, and my friend, Stewart Baker died suddenly a few days ago at age 78. Stewart always wrote and spoke modestly, but he (alongside former District Judge Paul Cassell and former U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Gail Heriot) was the most accomplished of any of us: In addition to a long and successful career as a lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson, he also served as General Counsel of the National Security Agency (1992-94) and as Assistant Secretary for Policy in DHS (2005-09). At the start of his career, after graduating from UCLA School of Law in 1976, he clerked for First Circuit Judge Frank Coffin and then for Justice John Paul Stevens.

I invariably appreciated Stewart's incisive, knowledgeable, and thoughtful comments on many topics. His perspectives were usually quite conservative, at times more conservative than mine; but even when we disagreed, I always enjoyed reading his work and talking to him, and learned much from him. We also became good friends; I would often look him up when I visited D.C., and just had dinner with him two months ago.

It's shocking to know that he is gone. As the Russians say ("земля ему пухом"), and as the Romans said ("sit tibi terra levis")—may the Earth rest lightly on him.