All of us on the center right of the blogging world gasped with unbelief when we saw the sad news that Dean Barnett had died this afternoon. I knew that he had been ill, he’d suffered from cystic fibrosis all his life, and recently had taken a turn for the worse but I had been praying and was hoping that no news was good news. Dean wrote about his disease in 2006, when he was blogging at Hugh Hewitt’s blog.

Now this evening we are grieving. I am grieving an individual who wrote like an angel, a man who never failed in his quest to write with enthusiasm, words that persuaded, exhorted and pinned any doubters against their ideological wall. And Dean did it with a smile on his face. I linked him and linked him and linked him. He never failed to respond to an email. And Dean linked to me a few times.

Dean Barnett treated an unimportant blogger from Arkansas like a big time blogger. That was just the way he was.

Dean was a prince and one of the bravest men on this earth. He will be so missed.

He already is.

May God be with his family and all of his friends.

UPDATE:

Roger Simon pens a tribute to Dean Barnett that brings tears to the eyes.

Another UPDATE:

Gateway Pundit has posted a photo of Dean Barnett that he took of him at Blog World Expo last year. Dean had those smiling eyes.