Robert Novak writes today that his column is celebrating forty-five years in syndication, it's the nation's current longest-running syndicated political column(a title previously held by William F. Buckley Jr, whose column preceded Novak's by thirteen months.) We suppose forty-five years at anything would give one a level view of things, though this struck a tad too level. Says Novak:

My most notorious leak was the 2003 revelation that the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA and arranged his intelligence mission to Africa. While this disclosure was far less important than many the column has made, the vituperativeness of the reaction to it was unmatched.

Hmm, call us dramatic, but we think it's sort of hard to overstate the importance of a leak that eventually lead to an investigation of the highest levels of government, the trial of a top White House official and the incarceration of a journalist for refusing to give up a source. Maybe it's just us. Who knows how we'll see things in another forty-four years.