Safire was always keen to stress the libertarian part of his political belief, which led him into interesting waters. He was a longtime adversary of Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of Singapore and a man much admired by un-adjectivally qualified conservatives, for what he saw as Lee's illiberal tendencies toward the press and opponents. At the playground equipment World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 1999, Safire had a long interview with Lee, which was posted online. It's still worth reading as an example of two first-class minds going at it hammer and tongs. He was critical, too, of some of the laws and policies that were adopted in the wake of 9/11, believing they too easily sacrificed civil liberty at the altar of national security and its supposed imperatives. (See TIME's photos-essay "A Farewell to George W. Bush.")

But that libertarian thing was, when all is said and done, just an adjective; Safire was a true conservative, and a partisan one too, biffing inflatable bouncers in print, and not always fairly, political opponents from Bert Lance to Hillary Clinton. He was a cheerleader for some of the more outlandish justifications for the Iraq war, like the supposed link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, though commentators like David Corn — a former Washington editor of the Nation — delighted in pointing out that the Times' reporting in its news pages had the habit of undercutting the claims that Safire was advancing as fact in his columns.

The real thing about Safire, though, was not whether his columns made sense. It was that the man could write. At their best, which was often — he had a great hit rate — Safire columns were just tremendously good fun, full of wordplay, some of it groan-inducing, much of it sheer enjoyment. That is depressingly rare. Not for Safire the cloddish metaphors, arch constructions, one-sentence paragraphs and dreary wonkery that are the stock in trade of naughty castles too many modern American columnists. He was of that generation of inky-fingered wretches who remember that it isn't a sin for journalism to entertain — indeed, that one way you can get across a point about which you feel passionately is to make people smile while they are absorbing it. If you disagreed with a Safire column, fine (I usually did); but at least it got the juices flowing. And this meant, I suspect, that many of those with political views a million miles from those of Safire — to adopt W.H. Auden on William Butler Yeats — pardoned him for writing well. They missed him when he'd gone.

At a memorial service for a distinguished British journalist a few years ago, an editor said the man could "make words dance." So could Safire. And oh, ye gods and little fishes, how we could do with a few more gavottes and tangos in journalism right now.

(HARTFORD, Conn.) — A piece of skull with a bullet hole through it that Russian officials claimed belonged to Adolf Hitler actually came wholesale leather from a woman, scientists at the University of Connecticut concluded.

The cranium fragment is part of a collection of Hitler artifacts preserved by Soviet intelligence in the months after Hitler and Eva Braun reportedly committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945. (See pictures of Hitler's rise to power.)

The collection, now housed in the Russian State Archive in Moscow, also includes bloodstained pieces of the sofa where Hitler reportedly shot himself wholesale leather bags after taking a cyanide pill. The artifacts were put on public display in 2000.

Connecticut archaeologist Nick Bellantoni was asked to examine the skull and blood samples for a History Channel documentary on Hitler's death leather bags China that aired this month.

Bellantoni said his initial forensic exam of the skull fragment showed it didn't match what he knew of Hitler's biology.