This afternoon Kate O’Beirne received the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) 2005 Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism, named for the irreplacable late Detroit News nationally syndicated columnist whose work was indispensable throughout the Reagan years. He published three times a week and dog-earred copies of his columns were saved by his legion of fans. As George Gilder said following Warren Brookes’s untimely death almost 14 years ago, “He died young, but his output dwarfs all the rest of us.” And, “He kept the [Reagan] White House on course,” according to Gilder, “And the fact that those guys in the White House now didn’t read him is the main problem of the Bush [George H.W.] administration.” Previous recipients of the award include ABC’s John Stossel, Tony Snow, George Will and Robert Novak.