Journalist Nat Hentoff recently passed away. He wrote a number of columns about the confirmation battles over Judge Charles Pickering including: The Senate: Advise and disgrace and The other Pickering story and A Judge's Life: The Final Reckoning and Mike Wallace, the Redeemer.

Here is an excerpt at a look at working with Hentoff on his Pickering coverage in memory of his passing: Speech and all that jazz

Hentoff had taken a special interest in Judge Pickering’s confirmation and wrote a number of columns on the matter appearing in the Village Voice, the Washington Times, the Jewish World Review and others. The atheist Jew from Boston lambasted the left for their treatment of the Southern Baptist judge from Jones County. Hentoff wrote, “in some 50 years as a reporter, I have seldom seen such reckless, unfair, and repeated attacks on a person—not only by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee but also by organizations that gather financial contributions because of their proclaimed dedication to civil rights, civil liberties, and honest research.” He called the left’s efforts a “character assassination” and refuted point by point their criticisms of Pickering. Following the broadcast of a 60 Minutes piece by Mike Wallace who – like Hentoff – found Pickering the opposite of the left’s criticisms, Hentoff called Wallace and thanked him. He told Wallace, “You gave the man his reputation back.” Then Hentoff wrote another column recounting the Wallace piece and castigating New York Senator Chuck Schumer, whom he called “the Democrats’ hitman on Pickering.” “Paraphrasing what a defense attorney said to Joe McCarthy in the Army-McCarthy hearings on alleged communists in our land,” Hentoff wrote, “At long last, Sen. Schumer, have you no sense of decency?”