Dead Celebrity Alert

Former Hawke Government Minister John Button has died at the age of 74.

Mr Button served as a Victorian Senator between 1974 and 1993, and was a Senior Minister in the former Hawke Labor Government.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard today confirmed his death, saying that he was an honest and frank man. … Read full obituary

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Rep. Bill Dickinson, a Democrat-turned-Republican who championed a strong defense and helped make Alabama a two-party state, has died. He was 82. …

Dickinson, a former judge in city, juvenile and circuit courts in Opelika, was one of several Democrats recruited to change parties in 1964 and run as Republicans for Congress in a state that had been solidly Democratic for a century. … Read full obituary

MOSCOW (AP) — Joseph Stalin’s oil and gas minister Nikolai Baibakov has died at the age of 97. …

In a 1998 interview Baibakov recalled being commissioned to destroy oil wells in the Caucasus region during World War II to prevent the German army from seizing them. But he said Stalin threatened to shoot him if he destroyed the wells. … Read full obituary

Evan Mecham, the feisty, ultra-conservative Pontiac dealer whose turbulent tenure as governor deeply divided Arizona and prompted his impeachment in 1988, died [February 21] after a long illness. He was 83. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — David Groh, the handsome, hardworking character actor who was best known as the easygoing man Rhoda Morgenstern married and divorced during the run of Valerie Harper’s hit 1970s sitcom “Rhoda,” has died. He was 68.

Groh died Tuesday of kidney cancer in Los Angeles, his sister-in-law Catherine Mullally said Thursday. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Tom Lantos, who as a teenager twice escaped from a Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust survivor to win a seat in Congress, has died. He was 80. … Read full obituary

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) — Earl Butz, the U.S. secretary of agriculture who was forced to resign after telling an obscenity-laced racist joke in 1976, died yesterday in Washington. He was 98 and the oldest living former Cabinet member. …

Butz was named to head the Department of Agriculture in 1971 by President Richard Nixon. He remained in the Cabinet under President Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. … Read full obituary

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Former President Suharto, an army general who rose to power in Indonesia with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and ruled for 32 years over an era of rapid economic growth and extraordinary graft, died Sunday in Indonesia. He was 86. … Read full obituary

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said.

The death of the 54-year-old charismatic former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections into chaos and created fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. … Read full story

U.S. Rep. Julia Carson died at home this morning following a battle with lung cancer. She was 69. Carson’s death comes just weeks after she announced the cancer, which she had beaten before, was back with “terminal vengeance.” … Read full obituary

A former Republican Congressman who led the attempt to impeach former US President Bill Clinton has died in hospital in his home state of Illinois. …

His own reputation was damaged when it emerged during the scandal that he had had an affair with a married woman in his early 40s. … Read full obituary

See also:
Henry Hyde at Conservative Babylon

Effi Barry, 63, a regal first lady of Washington who endured her husband’s [Marion Barry] very public sex and drug scandal during his tenure as mayor, died early this morning of leukemia at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. … Read full obituary

Former Rep. Jennifer Dunn, who became the most powerful Republican woman in Washington state history during six terms representing Seattle’s east-side suburbs, died Wednesday after developing a blood clot in her Virginia apartment, said a statement from her family. She was 66. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — Representative Paul E. Gillmor, an Ohio Republican who represented much of the northwestern and north-central part of the state, was found dead in his apartment on Wednesday. … Read full obituary

Former Hamer government minister Walter Jona, credited with saving thousands of lives by ushering in compulsory seatbelt laws in Victoria, has died after a long fight with cancer. … Read full obituary

Kurt Waldheim, 88, a seemingly colorless diplomat who became secretary general of the United Nations and president of his native Austria only to be barred from the United States for suspected involvement in Nazi war crimes, died today at a Vienna hospital. He had been treated for an infection since last month. … Read full obituary

Samuel A. Garrison III, a congressional lawyer who argued against the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, has died in Virginia at age 65. …

Garrison later announced he was gay and became active in gay rights issues, the Times reported. … Read full obituary

ZAGREB, April 29, 2007 — Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan died in a Zagreb clinic early today as a result of kidney cancer. He was 63. … Read full obituary

Former President Boris Yeltsin died of heart failure in a Kremlin hospital on Monday. He was 76. The Kremlin’s top doctor, Sergei Mironov, said Yeltsin died at 3:45 p.m. at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. … Read full obituary

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., died early Sunday of cancer, an aide said. … Read full obituary

Jim Jontz, whose environmental activism sparked a political career that led him to three terms in Congress, has died, his stepfather said.

Jontz died Saturday afternoon at his home in Portland, Ore., said his stepfather, Paul A. Lennon of Indianapolis. He was 55. … Read full obituary

Port Jervis — A small city mayor who pulled off one of the biggest political upsets of the 1980s is dead. E. Arthur Gray died last night at age 82. … Read full obituary

Friends and family are remembering a state senator who died early Sunday morning. Friends say 79 year old Senator William Mescher died from a stroke. He represented District 44 — that’s the Berkeley County area. He was originally elected in 1992 and was currently serving his third term in office. … Read full obituary

HONOLULU (AP) - Tosiwo Nakayama, the first president of the Federated States of Micronesia, has died. He was 75. … Read full obituary

Tributes have flowed for popular South Australian Liberal Jeannie Ferris, who died on Monday of ovarian cancer.

Senator Ferris, 66, played a pivotal role in Parliament’s vote to overturn the law banning therapeutic cloning of embryos and permit abortion drug RU486. … Read full obituary