I learned today that my friend and former co-blogger Stan Collender passed away on Friday. James Hagerty has a thoughtful obituary in The Wall Street Journal today.
It was very early on in my blogging that I discovered Stan's writing on the budget. There are many writers who are deficit hawks at heart and know about the budget in fairly general terms. Some of us can even write coherently for an audience on budget matters. Stan was a fellow traveler, but he brought so much more to the discussion -- an impressive command of the details, a keen sense of the political strategy underlying "Budget Battles," and a wit as sharp and quick as any you will find. He will be missed.