Free Republic

Prominent Washington aide John Wheeler was assassinated by a hitman in a targeted killing, his widow has claimed. Katherine Klyce said the way her late husband’s body was dumped at a landfill site could only have been carried out by a professional. The 66-year-old suggested his work with the Pentagon over his decades-long career could have made him enemies who wanted rid of him.

Former top Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist, and there is never a better time for right-leaning columnists to lean left than in the last weeks of an election season. (See George Will trashing Sen. George Allen in the last weeks of 2006.) His rant also may have granted Gerson a seat on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. Gerson not only denounced Christine O'Donnell as a wacky candidate like Alan Keyes, he denounced "the childish political thought of the Tea Party." He insisted conservatives were like Bolsheviks. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and talk show hosts like...

Tin Goeglein has resigned his position at the White House after a blogger caught him plagiarizing the work of others in his occasional newspaper column that ran in a local Fort Wayne, Indiana newspaper. Goeglein acted as a liaison to the social and religious conservatives in the Republican Party and assisted in the formulation of policy to act in those interests, the New York Times reports, but he has done that so quietly that most people have probably never heard his name, until now (via Memeorandum): A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown...

WASHINGTON When President George W. Bush shakes 1,000 hands, Blake Gottesman is ready with a hand sanitizer. When Bush is in his daily intelligence briefing in the trailer on his ranch, Gottesman is on site to dog-sit Barney, the president's Scottish terrier. When a member of the White House senior staff wants a word with the boss, Gottesman is there to recommend yes or no. "People will say, 'Is this a good time to raise something?"' said Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff. "And Blake will say, 'Well, he's reviewing a speech right now,' or 'he's got...