Safire to retire

Via TPM, Safire is going out to pasture...

Part of me says "About time!" but another part of me is sad to see the old coot go... not for any sentimental reasons though: as Josh Marshall once pointed out, having Safire represent the right in the their Op-Ed pages is perhaps the greatest example of liberal bias for which one could accuse the NY Times...

Update: Over at Altercation, Eric Alterman shows why he is The Man...

Lucky for me,Colin Powell and William Safire decided to announce their respective retirements on the same day; it saves me the trouble of having to write the same thing twice. “It is more in sorrow than in anger that I note the retirement of this once much-admired conservative who, unfortunately, sacrificed the respect of liberals and centrists alike with a fealty to right-wing plots and machinations under the Bush administration—including but not limited to—the Iraq war that destroyed a career’s worth of credibility and honest achievement.”

That's pretty awesome... side note: I never got to experience Safire The Admired... I only have ever read Safire The Hack. Anyone know about a good Safire read (book, column collection, etc.) worth a few bucks?