This is a painful story to write because I've considered Juan Williams a friend since we covered Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign back in 1984, when Juan was with the Washington Post and I was with Time magazine. 

We attended the same Episcopal church in Washington before I moved to Richmond, Va., a few years ago, and my wife and I were guests at his daughter's wedding reception. Most important, I admire much of his work, especially his history of the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize, and his magisterial biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, which I praised in a book review for its warts-and-all portrait of the first black Supreme Court justice.