Wherever you go in this life, there is some jerk telling you what to do. Almost always. But not always.

Stern but lovable news show host John McLaughlin has died at the age of 89. He hosted his iconic, low-fi political talk show for 34 years. Now he is presiding over Pat Buchanan- Eleanor Clift shoutfests in heaven. “Bye BYE,” John.

Merle Haggard, one of the finest singers (and songwriters) in American popular music history, died today, on his 79th birthday. Here are a couple good songs.

Actor and comedian Garry Shandling died Thursday in Los Angeles. Shandling, 66, was among the most influential figures in modern American comedy and television, thanks to two brilliant shows he co-created and starred in in the 1980s and 1990s.

Speed metal legend Lemmy Kilmister is dead at 70. “Everyone thinks that becoming an older guy is easy, but you never consider it fully,” he told Classic Rock magazine earlier this month. “It comes as quite a shock. But the thing is, I don’t want to give in to it.”

Ahmed Chalabi, a con artist who spent a decade convincing America’s foreign policy establishment to topple a dictator so the Chalabi family could resume extracting their home nation’s wealth, died of a heart attack today, about 15 years too late. If you haven’t read it in a while (or at all), now is a good time to revisit Jane Mayer’s 2004 account of how long and how hard Chalabi worked to make regime change in Iraq the main foreign policy priority of a bunch of deeply stupid but powerful people, who grew to believe, despite of the overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, that the deeply unscrupulous exile could be a credible leader of a secular and democratic Iraq.

Longtime ESPN anchor Stuart Scott died this morning at the age of 49 after a lengthy battle with cancer, the network reports.

In February of 2013, William Lopez was released from prison after serving 23 years for murder. In fact, he was innocent. He was exonerated. Now he's dead.

Veteran foreign correspondent, well-loved war reporter, and author of the extraordinary Iraq War book Black Hearts Jim Frederick died suddenly last week of a heart attack in Oakland, California. He was 42 years old.

Unstable cult leader Fred Phelps, the man behind the "GOD HATES FAGS" "protests," has died. Go make a donation to Human Rights Watch in his memory.

Left-wing British politician Tony Benn, a lord who rejected his title to take his seat in the House of Commons, died on Friday at age 88. Here he is on Margaret Thatcher's legacy.

Harold Ramis wrote and/or directed the greatest American movies of my generation, a generation that was smarter than it should've been and doomed to professional mediocrity. The only sane solution was to try to have a little fun in the process of being disappointed by everything.

Eight years after falling into a permanent vegetative state, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stopped breathing this morning at Sheba Medical Centre in Jerusalem. The former IDF general and politician, nicknamed "the Butcher of Beirut" for his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinian civilians, was 85. He is survived by two sons, Omri and Gilad.

Amiri Baraka, poet, playwright, essayist and critic, has died at age 79 in Newark, New Jersey. He was hospitalized in December for an unknown illness.

He's the one on the left. He died of pulmonary disease in Burbank, survived by his brother Don, wife Patti, two children, and—astonishingly—his mother. RIP Phil Everly.

Harold Camping, the infamous evangelical minister and doomsayer who used millions of his followers' dollars to promote a doomsday vision that failed to come to pass, has finally met his maker at the age of 92.

Ray Price, one of the great voices and storytellers of the Golden Age of country music, almost died over the weekend. His son, Clifton Ray Price, certainly believed that his father—who is 87 years old and is most certainly, and inevitably, dying of cancer—had passed away on Saturday. But after Price's wife angrily contradicted that report yesterday, the younger Price wrote on his dad's Facebook page that he had "been deceived by some cruel people" and that his dad was indeed "still hanging on." He's going to die, though. Soon. So listen to "Night Life," written by Price's old bass player Willie Nelson. It's the title track from the greatest concept record ever made, a louche, slightly slurred, lipstick-on-your-collar tour through the drunken disintegration of the middle-class American family.

William Weaver, the Italian translator who rendered Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco into English, has died at 90. If your obituary can include this sentence it's fair to say you led a good life: "Midway through our meal of pasta with lemon and cream sauce, Muriel Spark walked in with a basketful of forest mushrooms[.]"

Stanley Kauffman, The New Republic's film critic for half a century, died early Wednesday at age 97. Kauffman's last piece for the magazine was published in August.

Marshall Berman, philosopher and author of the great study of modernism All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, died yesterday in New York. He was 73. Here's his 2011 introduction to The Communist Manifesto.