Just back from a glittering affair at the New-York Historical Society, where the 7th Annual Eric Breindel Award for Opinion Journalism was given to NRO’s own Claudia Rosett. The award is especially meaningful because it is given in memory of and in tribute to Eric Breindel, my dear friend and longtime colleague at the New York Post who died suddenly and tragically at the age of 42 in 1998. (I edited a compendium of Eric’s columns called <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060193271/qid=1117672484/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4363826-1735204?v=glance&s=books&n=507846″A Passion for Truth that was published the year after his death.) Claudia’s extraordinary investigative reporting into the oil-for-food scandal won her the $10,000 prize at a ceremony where my bosses Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch paid tribute to her and Eric (and where Mayor Bloomberg made a charming appearance as well). In her remarks, Claudia paid graceful tribute to Kathryn Lopez for being literally a tireless editor — something that NRO readers, accustomed to seeing a K-Lo posting at 11:59 pm and then one at 4:22 am, have come to take for granted. Claudia Rosett hasn’t, and it’s wonderful that the Eric Breindel Award means Claudia’s world-changing work hasn’t been taken for granted either.