Last night I was kicking it at Rob Halford’s house in Miami after my Mets lost again, channeling my frustration at our fading chances into some kick-ass drum tracks for Rob’s new album. But then my Sidekick buzzed – it was my good buddy and former Senator Fred Thompson. “I’ve got bad news, Mike,” he told me. “Willy is dead.”

It was like I got kicked in the stomach. William Rehnquist is one of my all-time heroes, the Iron Maiden of modern conservative thought.

“Was it the liberals?” I asked Fred.

“Cancer,” he said.

Rob got Ted Nugent on the line and the three of us had a conference call that lasted deep into the night, discussing who should replace him (we all think it should be Fred) and sharing the encounters we had had with Willy over the years. Ted talked about how his dad worked with Rehnquist on the “˜64 Goldwater campaign, and how he and Willy had spent all of election day keeping minority voters from getting to the polls. “It might not look good now,” Ted said, “but at the time that’s how things worked.”

It’s to Rehnquist’s credit, we all believe, how much the bench has changed. When he was sworn in by Nixon in the early “˜70s, he was the most conservative justice by far. In the current court, he could arguably be called a moderate. That’s just how effective a leader he was.

I ran into Willy around the New York party circuit several times over the years. I first met him at the New York Post Christmas party – Rupert Murdoch was practically giddy at the thought of the two of us finally getting to break bread. Willy just wanted to talk baseball – being from Milwaukee, he was a loyal Brewers fan – and I had a blast finding out who in Washington was a drunk or gay or any of that other stuff that the liberal media is too cowed to print. We really got along well.

While Rehnquist had been suffering from thyroid cancer for a year or so, I think that it was the awful looting and lawlessness in New Orleans this past week that did him in. The destruction of New Orleans offered an opportunity for people who have been eating from the government’s hand for years – what would happen when that safety net disappeared? I loved the way the Bush administration handled it. It was almost like a science experiment: allow three or four days to see if black Americans can pick themselves up by their bootstraps the way the rest of us have. Put them to the test, and allow them to learn a valuable lesson.

The result was not what we would have liked of course, but we weren’t surprised either. A lot of Nuge’s buddies have been heading down since Monday to help restore law and order, using this as a “dry run,” so to speak, for when the United Nations finally gets the balls to take us on. And so we were all dismayed when Bush cracked under the NAACP’s pressure and decided to take minimal action down there. It hit Rehnquist hardest, because, as he told Fred several times this past week, once and for all America was showing what it was all about.

I never got to spend that much time with Rehnquist. It’s one of my life’s regrets. But anyone you talk to about him says the same thing about him, from the opinions he offered on the Court to how he could chug a Tom Collins: that’s just Willy being Willy.

I’m Mike Piazza, and I approve this message.