Of all the things to say about Tim Russert since his passing six days ago – from Dan Rather's "What a pro" and Bill O'Reilly's "My prayers go out to him and his family," to Chris Matthews' "Tough, regular, hardworking" and Jay Leno's "He never talked down to you even though he knew way more" – why do we find the least comforting thing to be Bob Novak's outing Russert as one of his sources?

In the Washington Post today, the Valerie Plame outer, who says he "talked with Russert on the telephone two or three times a month," offers the usual compliments for the late Meet The Press anchor — and then posthumously exposes Russert as a serial leaker.

"Tim and I disagreed on tax policy and other issues, but we never debated over the phone. Instead, we exchanged political information, and I usually was the recipient. He supplied for use in my column news tidbits he could not use. During my half-century of journalism, he was the only colleague who was a source."

Should anyone really be surprised by this? Certainly not. Prominent figures in the news biz are also privy to the biggest commodity in politics: information — and it'd be silly to think they don't share with others what they cannot on the airwaves. But now Novak is publicly fingering Russert as a talker, someone who, after you perhaps told him something in confidence, would traffic that information over to his pal Novak. And whether true or false, if Novak was indeed a friend of Russert's, it's not exactly the memory you want to put on the public record.