Jeane Kirkpatrick, RIP

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, an unabashed apostle of Reagan era conservatism and the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died.

The death of the 80-year-old Kirkpatrick, who began her public life as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat, was announced Friday at the senior staff meeting of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

Spokesman Richard Grenell said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank here where she was a senior fellow.

Kirkpatrick's assistant, Andrea Harrington, said that she died in her sleep at home in Bethesda, Md. late Thursday. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was the John Bolton of the Reagan era. Except in that time the Democrat Party had not gone completely insane so she was able to get Senate confirmation.

Ms. Kirkpatrick had the intelligence, and more importantly the wisdom, to see the truth and the courage to speak it without fear of consequence.

She will be missed. We need her kind now more than ever.