Free Republic

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...

Just as resilient Yankee slugger Lou Gehrig eventually played his last game, just as every perennial Broadway hit one day rings down the final curtain, so Robert Novak has written his last newspaper column. The dramatic and unexpected end to Novak's newspaper career was announced Monday after a "dire diagnosis" of brain cancer. Novak's hugely influential run -- after the passing of William F. Buckley, he became the longest-running syndicated political columnist in America -- began May 15, 1963, in a column written with Rowland Evans Jr. Evans' boss at the New York Herald-Tribune had been pressing Evans to write...

Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis the Sun-Times' political columnist describes as "dire." "The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak said. Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak says he has brain tumor The Evans-Novak column was first distributed by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate on May 15, 1963, with the New York Herald-Tribune, the flagship newspaper. When the Herald-Tribune folded in 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times became their home newspaper.

Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis the Sun-Times' political columnist describes as "dire." "The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak said.

Robert Novak was admitted yesterday to a Boston hospital where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In a written statement given to his publisher, Novak said: “On Sunday, July 27, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I have been admitted to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where doctors will soon begin appropriate treatment. “I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period.”

Novak: In the contest for president, Barack Obama is a magnetic candidate supported by a disciplined, well-organized campaign. John McCain seems wooden, with a campaign that appears to be in shambles. Yet Obama's lead in the polls over McCain is fragile because he so far has not won the support of a majority of American voters. An effective and massively publicized foreign trip failed to push Obama above the 50 percent mark. Democratic hopes and Republican fears that he would get a major bounce in the polls when he clinched the nomination and then on his campaign trip abroad have...

Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, on July 8 introduced a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap on an opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon. But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House. Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The...