Free Republic

Bob Novak hired me away from HUMAN EVENTS in late 2001. “Poaching,” HE Editor-in-Chief Tom Winter called it. I was not the first early-20s reporter Novak would pluck from HE’s newsroom. Nor would I be the last.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak, one of the nation’s most influential journalists, who relished his “Prince of Darkness” public persona, died at home here early Tuesday morning after a battle with brain cancer. “He was someone who loved being a journalist, love journalism and loved his country and loved his family, Novak’s wife, Geraldine, told the Sun-Times on Tuesday. Novak’s remarkable and long-running career made him a powerful presence in newspaper columns, newsletters, books and on television. On May 15, 1963, Novak teamed up with the late Rowland Evans Jr. to create the “Inside Report” political column, which became the...

...Bob was Illinois and early in life was most at home in sports bars and, throughout his years in Washington, at unfashionable University of Maryland basketball games.... By day, however, Novak worked political sources like no other reporter. That is why so many people would be astonished when his political sources would become known. It was stunning when Novak revealed that the Democratic senator who dismissed the McGovern for President campaign as being about little more than “amnesty, abortion and acid” was none other than Thomas Eagleton, who McGovern would later (albeit briefly) choose as his vice presidential nominee. Who...

The Western world has never taken Islam with the full seriousness it has earned. Down through history, once Islamic armies have conquered a land, with very few exceptions, that land has remained Muslim. A Christian will wish in vain that the great circle of Christian lands around the Mediterranean (and on up into Syria, Iraq, Iran, and northwards into Georgia) had not fallen irretrievably into Muslim hands, most of them before 732 A.D. For Christians who think that the future of the world favors movement in their direction, a study of the latent dynamism of Islam is not a little...

Robert Novak recently sat down with Barbara Mutasow of the Washingtonian magazine for a deeply personal interview. This article was first published in the November 2008 issue of The Washingtonian magazine. Whether you like him or hate him, Robert Novak's combination of insider dope, political pronouncements, and glowering TV presence have made him a Washington institution. So the announcement in July that he was suspending his newspaper column because of a brain tumor came as a jolt. What other journalist has been tearing up the town with so much relish for the past 51 years? I spent some time with...

Whether you like him or hate him, Robert Novak’s combination of insider dope, political pronouncements, and glowering TV presence have made him a Washington institution. So the announcement in July that he was suspending his newspaper column because of a brain tumor came as a jolt. What other journalist has been tearing up the town with so much relish for the past 51 years? I spent some time with Novak five years ago for The Washingtonian, chronicling his journey from secular Jew to devout Catholic. Somewhat to my surprise, the scowling, sardonic columnist turned out to be a peach of...

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years? To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House. Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly. Even one...

No mandate for Obama, no lopsided Congress NO REALIGNMENT | No mandate for Obama, no lopsided Congress WASHINGTON -- The national election Tuesday was not only historic for the election of the first African-American president in the nation's history but also for how little the avalanche of Democratic votes changed the political alignment in Congress.

A year ago, Robert Novak mentioned secret vault of information of Obama's sex scandal hidden in the hands of Hillary Clinton. According to Robert Novak, Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed. The secret vault was never to be used, and Hillary Clinton retreated from the race for President candidate of Democrat Party. The issue has not gain much attention afterward by...

Can John McCain possibly win this thing? Can he actually win in November? The outlook is bleak: The polls are ugly, the Electoral College map is grim, the economy is getting worse, and McCain's choice of Sarah Palin may have energized the Republican base, but it has appalled and frightened many outside that base. Still, McCain's campaign has come back from the dead more than once: He survived his early support for immigration reform; he not only survived but has prospered from his support for the Iraq war surge, and he rebuilt a primary campaign that was in a state...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The main reason I am writing this column is that many people have asked me how I first realized I was suffering from a brain tumor and what I have done about it. But I also want to relate the reaction to my disease, mostly compassionate, that belies Washington's reputation. . . . . . When Zelda said to call 911, I again resisted, but she again prevailed. I promptly suffered another seizure in the ambulance, the second of three seizures that day. I gained admittance to the high-quality Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which has...

.........."There are mad bloggers who profess to take delight in my distress, but there's no need to pay them attention in the face of such an outpouring of good will for me. I had thought 51 years of rough-and-tumble journalism in Washington made me more enemies than friends, but my recent experience suggests the opposite may be the case. But Joe and Valerie Wilson, attempting to breathe life into the Valerie Plame "scandal," issued this statement: "We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak's typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys...

The main reason I am writing this column is that many people have asked me how I first realized I was suffering from a brain tumor and what I have done about it. But I also want to relate the reaction to my disease, mostly compassionate, that belies Washington's reputation. The first sign that I was in trouble came on Wednesday, July 23, when my 2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street in downtown Washington while I was on my way to my office. I did not realize I had hit anyone until a shirt-sleeved young man on...

Partisan Democrats and many members of the media consider John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate a terrible mistake. But McCain need not worry about their criticism. His unexpected selection satisfied the people he needed to please. Republican conservatives assembling in St. Paul for the party's national convention were "ecstatic" over the choice. Nor did the announcement Monday that Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant -- but would raise the child and marry the father -- perceptibly diminish the enthusiasm for her in St. Paul by Republicans, who regarded the news as irrelevant to the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Reports of strong support within John McCain's presidential campaign for Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Republican candidate for vice president are not a fairy tale. Influential McCain backers, plus McCain himself, would pick the pro-choice liberal from Connecticut if they thought they could get away with it. But they can't get away with it -- and this has been made clear to McCain by none other than Joe Lieberman himself.

Reports of strong support within John McCain's presidential campaign for Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Republican candidate for vice president are not a fairy tale. Influential McCain backers, plus McCain himself, would pick the pro-choice liberal from Connecticut if they thought they could get away with it. But they can't get away with it -- and this has been made clear to McCain by none other than Joe Lieberman himself. Lieberman surely doesn't know that much about Republican politics, but he has close Republican friends. One of them prevailed on Lieberman to tell McCain that a McCain-Lieberman ticket...

If you strip away the phony labels liberals affix to themselves about being tolerant, diversity loving, and all-inclusive, you see how malignantly antisocial, pathologically disturbed some of them really are. You see, the tolerant all-inclusive diversity love is reserved for other liberals, which kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it. So in the spirit of Daily Kos’s earlier KKK Torturing Michelle Obama Post, we have this new jewel of illiteracy. I am sure there’s a real diagnosis that applies to this condition. Sociopath maybe? If you would like to be added to The Patriot Room ping list, please FReepmail.

Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal Tue Aug 12, 2008 12:01pm EDT By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public. The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

The op-ed page of The Washington Post is full of type, but not enough to fill the gaping hole where Robert “Bob” Novak's column used to appear. Novak's column nominally originated from The Chicago Sun-Times, but he was the first to say that much of his success was the result of appearing in The Washington Post. If you write about politics it helps to do it where the politicians will read you. In Washington the best place for that is The Post, with its dominant circulation among the three newspapers published in the nation's capital. Now that Novak, 77, has...

Back in 1998, he made a comment on CNN — what it was is not material here — that I considered beyond the pale. I decided I could henceforth do without his opinions and insights. He impressed me as a distinctly disagreeable man. And that was well before he outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. When the news broke a few days ago that Novak had a brain tumor and would retire, I was not made prostrate by grief. What I felt was that whisper of common mortality, that sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God one usually feels when tragedy strikes someone who...