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DANVILLE — Jeff Blue was taking his last walk in the woods before the end of spring gobbler season Monday morning. "I made one last call on the top of the hollow," he said, "and was calling a hen turkey sound." Eighteen yards away, and downhill, stood Michael Todd Kelly, with a borrowed Mossberg 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun. Blue heard a loud noise, and was knocked to the ground. "I may have been unconscious for 10 seconds, but realization set in," he said. "I yelled, 'Don't shoot. Don't shoot. You shot me.'" There was a pause. Then Kelly yelled at him,...

I wonder how many people rang in Memorial Day this year sitting in a darkened room watching HBO's documentary of the slaughter of the World Trade Center and weeping. This was a different sort of Memorial Day; these are different times. It is hard to always remember really how different they are, and that catches and sometimes trips up even people whose business it is to be sensitive to fresh rhythms. The other day, reacting to not much of a story about not much of a warning that President Bush was given before Sept. 11, Democratic congressional leaders went a-shrilling...

Michael Kelly was one of the best writers of his generation and an extraordinarily gifted observer of politics and culture. Despite having grown up in Washington to become a member of the media elite, Kelly was also one of the few writers willing to turn a scathingly critical eye at the press itself. I've often wondered what Kelly's reaction would be to the atmosphere in Washington these days; what he might have written about the coverage of the war and, more recently, how he would have viewed the flap over Karl Rove and the CIA leak investigation. As it turns...

<p>I believe the senator. I have always believed him. I believed him when he said he supported the war in Iraq, and I believe him now when he says he was really opposed to it all along. I believed him when he said he would take care of our troops regardless, and I believe him now when he says he was only showing them just how much he cares by voting to cut off their funding when the going got rough. I believed him when he said he was caught in the crossfire in Cambodia in 1968 and I believe him now, when he reportedly admits he wasn't.</p>

The first American journalist to die covering the war, [Michael] Kelly left behind a grief-stricken family and millions of words. Max Kelly spent months going through his writings for an anthology, just published, titled "Things Worth Fighting For."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/kelly112900.asp

Paul Greenberg writes for Tribune Media Services, so I'll excerpt the relevant paragraphs about Clinton.... [snip] I thought of Michael Kelly when I read a comment of Bill Clinton's at one of those terribly serious confabs on foreign policy in New York about a month ago. Addressing Marvin Kalb, the former newscaster, the former president fell into one of his I'm-so-misunderstood moods: [snip usual Clinton whining] Shocked and grateful. Sometimes all the self-pity gets mighty thick. Now our former president -- and former commander-in-chief! -- has been reduced to reciting anonymous praise of himself. Pathetic. More and more, Bill Clinton...

I've written the Family Almanac for 25 years, not because I'm so wise but because I'm so interested in the questions I get. Parents have the most exhilarating, amusing, creative job in the world, and the most exhausting, demanding, relentless one, too. Somehow they are expected to do their best, day after day, even when they're scrambling to pay the rent or hold their marriage together or work for a wretched boss. I've answered questions on everything from addictions to bed-wetting, day care to college, self-confidence to sex, but this time I'm the one with the problem and I don't...

Washington -- Last Saturday, after awakening at 5:00 a.m. in Virginia's Shenandoah Mountains to hunt wild turkey, I showered and dressed in black tie for one of my favorite Washington evenings, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. If I did not see any turkeys during the matutinal hunt, I was guaranteed to see them in abundance during the vespertine melee that this distinguished gathering has become. In all of New York there is nothing quite like it, though you can find an approximation of it on the Virginia countryside. I have in mind the county fair, at least the county...

<p>April 27, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - President Bush skipped the usual jokes last night at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner and instead paid warm tribute to two journalists who died in Iraq: columnist Michael Kelly and NBC's David Bloom.</p>

One of the larger news features of mid-February was the arrival in Baghdad of some 200 peace missionaries from around the world, who had come, they announced in appropriately grave tones, to serve as "human shields"—to put themselves between the targets in Iraq and the bombers of the mad George W. Bush. The British contingent of the mission, traveling photogenically in two old-fashioned red double-decker buses, got the lion's share of the press, thanks in part to the media talents of sixty-eight-year-old Godfrey Meynell, who has an interestingly counterintuitive résumé for this sort of thing (he is a former Foreign...

What Now? A letter from Kuwait City by Michael Kelly ..... One of the larger news features of mid-February was the arrival in Baghdad of some 200 peace missionaries from around the world, who had come, they announced in appropriately grave tones, to serve as "human shields"—to put themselves between the targets in Iraq and the bombers of the mad George W. Bush. The British contingent of the mission, traveling photogenically in two old-fashioned red double-decker buses, got the lion's share of the press, thanks in part to the media talents of sixty-eight-year-old Godfrey Meynell, who has an interestingly counterintuitive...

Seven months ago, in my very first column for WorldNetDaily, I told you why liberals find it so difficult to succeed at talk radio. I reviewed that column recently and saw that I failed to introduce you to a group of people called Democratic Talk Radio. Democratic Talk Radio consists of two stalwart Democrats, Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence, who have launched a syndicated Democratic talk-radio show and who use their website to cajole followers to lobby radio stations on their behalf. Their website really is worth a visit. Log onto one of their message boards and make a comment...

Sidney Blumenthal, One for the Books [original title] • The long-awaited, 800-page White House memoirs of former Bill Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal will hit bookstores May 20 -- a thwack accompanied by a drumroll of publicity and serialization. But the buzz around town is that "The Clinton Wars" will contain an unflattering portrait of Blumenthal's nemesis Michael Kelly, whose life was celebrated last Friday in an emotional Washington memorial service. The 46-year-old Kelly, a Washington Post columnist and Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large, was killed in Iraq on April 3 -- too late for Blumenthal to revise or soften his book in...

Journalist Michael Kelly died in a humvee accident while embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. Most of North America mourned his loss, but a disturbing few people didn’t. Instead, they were positively joyous about the Washington Post columnist’s death....

From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk, 4/10/2003, 9:52 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., April 10 (UPI) -- This here's the 345th Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina. I hadda nother column planned, but a friend ov mine died Thursday in Iraq. So that column is gone n this'n replaces it. This ain't a subjeck fer yer Congresscritter, so I'll turn this over ta ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq.. "I Believe" (1957-2003)I believe that Edward Bulwer-Lytton was right when he wrote, "The pen is mightier than the sword." I believe...

AMONG THE MANY thousands of victims of Saddam Hussein's villainy have been a handful of journalists who voluntarily risked their lives to record the military struggles against the Butcher of Baghdad in 1991 and 2003. The greatest of those journalists was lost on Thursday. Regular readers of this page will know Michael Kelly's excellent columns, which we have run for several years. Kelly was killed in a Humvee accident on Thursday while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. He left behind a wife, two small sons, and thousands of loyal readers who turned to him every week...

Editorial: 'Michael Kelly, 1957-2003' Apr. 5, 2003 "I am Catholic and my wife is Jewish, so in our house we celebrate both Hanukka and Christmas, which our sons, Tom and Jack, regard as an excellent thing. People sometimes ask me if it is hard to raise children in respect and love for two great faiths that have a slight doctrinal disagreement between them, and I say: Not if you give them presents every day for eight days of Hanukka and for Christmas. The more Gods, the merrier is Tom and Jack's strong belief." So wrote Washington Post columnist and...

WASHINGTON — Michael Kelly was a lucky guy. When he stumbled upon a column of Iraqi troops during Desert Storm, they surrendered to him, piling into his car with their white flags.He was the only reporter to find passion in the Dukakis campaign; he met his future wife, Max Greenberg, a beguiling CBS producer, on the bus.Michael always seemed to be in the right place at the right time to get the best quote and the best story, the best jobs and the best life."I've had one good break after another," he told The Boston Globe, in an interview last...

Farewell to a great newspaperman. MICHAEL KELLY was born into a newspaper family. His father Tom was a reporter on the Washington Daily News. His mother Marguerite writes the wonderful "Family Almanac" column for the Washington Post. Sometime over the past few decades reporters became journalists, but Michael never really made the leap. He shunned TV. He was not a natural at symposia and panel discussions. He remained, until his death in a Humvee accident in Iraq Friday, a newspaperman. In other words, he lived low but read high. He wanted and needed to be out where the action was....