Free Republic

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) late last week and urged him to contact Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to withdraw his name from vice-presidential consideration, according to three sources familiar with the conversation. Lieberman dismissed the request, these sources agreed. Lieberman “laughed at the suggestion and certainly did not call [McCain] on it,” said one source familiar with the details. “Rove called Lieberman,” recounted a second source. “Lieberman told him he would NOT make that call.” Rove did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rove, President Bush’s former top campaign adviser and arguably the most...

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.

Syndicated Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is being treated in a Boston hospital. Novak issued a statement Monday saying the tumor was found Sunday after he'd been rushed to Brigham and Women's Hospital from Cape Cod, where he was visiting his daughter. Novak said he was suspending his journalistic work for an indefinite, "but God willing, not too lengthy period." His statement did not say if the tumor was malignant. Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a homeless man with his black Corvette in Washington. Novak kept...

While conservatives inside the administration are unhappy about intervention in markets, President Bush seems content with how the Federal Reserve and Treasury cooked up the deal with erstwhile colleagues in Wall Street. There is little conservative or Republican about the administration's approach to the fiscal crisis, as reflected in Room G-50. Uncritical Democratic senators were not even inquisitive. The closest a senator came to asking who set the price for JPMorgan was this apologetic question from Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd: "There's just reports -- I want to share them with you -- that JPMorgan Chase would make an offer of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Barack Obama's speech last week, hastily prepared to extinguish the firestorm over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, won critical praise for style and substance but failed politically. By elevating the question of race in America, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate has deepened the dilemma created by his campaign's success against the party establishment's anointed choice, Hillary Clinton. In rejecting the racist views of his longtime spiritual mentor but not disowning him, Obama has unwittingly enhanced his image as the African-American candidate -- not just a remarkable candidate who happens to be black. That poses a racial dilemma for...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Sen. Barack Obama nears the Democratic presidential nomination, a corruption trial of his former fund-raiser Antoin (Tony) Rezko on charges of influence peddling begins in Chicago today (Monday). Sen. Hillary Clinton's operatives have tried frantically, but not effectively, to interest U.S. news media outside Chicago in Obama's possible connection with his home state's latest major scandal. Obama bought a mock Georgian mansion on Chicago's south side on June 15, 2005, the same day Rezko's wife bought a plot next door from the same seller. Obama then purchased from Rezko another parcel at above-market value. Federal prosecutors...

Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton, in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and that the sooner she leaves the race, the more it will improve the party's chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November? In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin,...

Forget Mike Huckabee as a running mate for John McCain, his closest supporters say -- there's no chance he'll be on the GOP presidential ticket. So writes veteran political columnist Robert Novak, who reports that political insiders close to McCain's presidential campaign "have put out the word that there is absolutely no chance that his last remaining major opponent for the GOP presidential nomination, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, will become McCain's running mate." -SNIP- In a Feb. 14 e-mail to supporters, Huckabee stressed that possibility, writing: "A few weeks ago, I stood at Chuck Norris' ranch before a crowd...

From Rasmussen Reports on February 9: "… polling since Mitt Romney suspended his campaign shows John McCain leading Mike Huckabee 55% to 24% in the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination. McCain also leads Huckabee 724 to 196 in delegates and there is no viable path to the nomination for Huckabee. As a result, Rasmussen Reports will no longer conduct daily tracking polls of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination." From Rasmussen Reports on February 10: "In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, Mike Huckabee had a good day on Saturday. He won the caucuses in Kansas handily,...

I read in Robert Novak’s column this morning that Mike Huckabee held a fundraiser earlier this week at the Houston home of Dr. Steven Hotze. As Novak notes, Hotze is “a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.� Christian Reconstructionists, for those unfamiliar with the term, are Religious Right radicals who believe that America, and the rest of the world besides, should be governed in accordance with strict Biblical law. And yes, that includes stoning adulterers. Here’s a snippet from “A Manifesto for the Christian Church,� a 1986 document from an outfit called the Coalition on Revival that was...

Mike Huckabee campaigns as religious Baptist. Yet how religious is Huck? Robert Novak, in the Washington Post, questions the depth of Huckabee’s Baptist support: More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the “conservative resurgence” that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago. Ann Coulter goes farther, and questions both Huckabee’s intelligence and sincerity of his supposed religous convictions. Hat Tip: Allah Pundit: Hot Air, Huckabee is a liberal Arkansas politician, who would be a democrat, if the party was not...

WHEN Mike Huckabee went to Houston Tuesday to raise funds for his fast-rising, money-starved candidacy, a luncheon for the ordained Baptist minister was arranged by evangelical Christians. On hand was Judge Paul Pressler, a hero to Southern Baptist Convention reformers. But he was a non-paying guest who supports Fred Thompson for president. Huckabee greeted Pressler warmly. That contrasted with Huckabee's anger two months ago when they saw each other in California. The Arkansas ex-governor took issue then with comments by Pressler that Huckabee had been a slacker in the war against secularists in the Baptist church. Warmth in Texas and...

Was that Mike Huckabee on "Morning Joe" today -- or John Edwards? The former Arkansas governor found an odd way to refute charges he's not a true conservative, indulging in some class-warfare rhetoric that would have been the envy of the former North Carolina senator. Mika Brzezinski hit Huckabee with an excerpt from Bob Novak's column of today. Here are the opening paragraphs from Novak's False Conservative: Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats...

If Alan Colmes turns up at your Thanksgiving get-together sporting a couple shiners and a re-arranged smile, don't press the poor guy if he claims to have walked into a door. The FNC host just got clobbered by a certified DC heavyweight -- Bob Novak. Novak was a guest on this evening's Hannity & Colmes. Colmes first questioned the venerable reporter about the item he published this week regarding the Clinton campaign's claim to have a scandalous story about Barack Obama. For the record, Novak stated this evening that since first reporting the story, "I've had substantiation from another source,...

Are the Clinton secret police back on patrol? It looks like they may be making a late campaign comeback. In a week-end column, Robert Novak alleged that “agents” of Hillary Clinton are “spreading the word that she has scandalous information” about Barack Obama, but decided not to use it. (How considerate of her!) Obama has come out swinging, accusing the Clinton campaign of trying to swift-boat him and demanding that Clinton either release the information or admit that there is none. The Clinton camp is shocked that anyone would ever think that it would use such tactics! Clinton campaign Communications...

David Shuster has hurled a hand grenade in the direction of one of Washington's most venerable political reporters. The MSNBC "correspondent" has alleged that many people don't believe Robert Novak has "any credibility as a journalist." Shuster sat in as a "Morning Joe" panelist today. His comment came in the context of a discussion regarding the Novak column from over the weekend that contained this item:

The Prince of Journalism by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 29, 2007 It contains more useful information than any journalism textbook we have seen but don’t expect legendary reporter Robert Novak’s memoirs to become required reading in communications classes anytime soon. “I was too much of a right winger for most of America’s institutions,” Novak writes in The Prince of Darkness. The title refers to a nickname that a colleague gave Novak early in his career as a comment on his trademark pessimism that has stuck for decades. When he does get on campus, Novak tells college students something they seldom...

It’s Wednesday and I’m posting, so those are two big fat hints right there. Of course: it’s the Prince of Darkness himself, Bob Novak. How could that be, when Novak has been pimping Fred Thompson for weeks? Well, acquaint yourself with Novak’s weird sense of humor. Loathe as I am to link to the Washington Times, it’s in their “Fishwrap” (snicker) blog that he is quoted as follows: When asked to rate the current field of Republican presidential candidates, Novak didn’t have any kind words for the current top-tier field of Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and John McCain....

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 Many, if not most, college commencement addresses are essentially special interest advertising. Politicians, political activists, judges and bureaucrats tell the graduating students how it is nobler to go into "public service" -- that is, to become a politician, political activist, judge or bureaucrat, instead of going into the private sector and producing goods and services that people want enough to spend their own money for them. Would anyone invite someone from McDonald's to be a commencement speaker and tell the students how it is nobler to eat hamburgers or to sell hamburgers? Parents who want to...

HH: Special half hour ahead. I’m joined by the Prince of Darkness himself, Robert D. Novak, author of a wonderful new memoir titled The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Of Reporting In Washington. Robert Novak, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. RN: Thank you very much, Hugh. HH: It’s a grand book, and I want to start with the most surprising line in it. “Poor Geraldine, she hated politics.” How could Robert Novak be married to a woman who hates politics? RN: (laughing) Well, you’re not the first person who asked about that. And I said we never talked politics,...

eteran Washington reporter Robert Novak doesn’t regret publishing the name of an alleged covert CIA agent that led to the imprisonment of Lewis “Scooter� Libby. “Judging it on the merits, I would still write the story,� Novak writes matter-of-factly in his newly-released memoir, The Prince of Darkness. “There never was a question about its news value or its accuracy. Novak has spent his 50 year career as a hard-charging political reporter making trouble and honing a journalistic philosophy based on, as he writes, telling “the world things people do not want me to reveal.� The first and last chapters of...

Reading Pat Buchanan’s superb appreciation of Robert Novak and his new memoir, Prince of Darkness, one is reminded of what a great writer and historian of Republican politics Buchanan can be. What a pity that, fifteen years ago, he headed off to the fever swamps of the conservative movement as he pursued a series of failed presidential runs. Although today he remains a staple of talking-head TV, his presidential campaigns, loaded with xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and protectionist messages, make him impossible to take seriously. But I’m also reminded of something I witnessed, involving Novak, in 1996. I was in Des Moines,...

When I went to my office Monday, July 7, 2003, Joe Wilson was not in the forefront of my mind. Frances Fragos Townsend was. She had just been named deputy national security adviser at the White House though her background was in liberal Democratic politics, including Attorney General Janet Reno's inner circle during the Clinton administration. Her appointment was a political mystery of the kind I had been exploring for forty years in my column. I wrote the Townsend column Tuesday morning because I had a busy schedule the rest of the day, including a 3 p.m. appointment with Richard...

I asked one of the few conservative Republican senators who stuck with President Bush on immigration to assess how Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell handled the issue. Asking not to be quoted by name, he replied: "If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty." Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version that he supported, but he also abandoned his post, keeping off the floor during final stages of Senate debate.

George W. Bush's 2004 campaign fund-raisers and contributors are being bombarded with appeals for money by Sen. John McCain's heavy-spending, money-short 2008 campaign. McCain is concentrating heavily on the rich target of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, D.C. They have been invited to multiple McCain fund-raising events held in the nation's capital, currently a $1,000-a-ticket reception June 26 at the Capitol Hill Club with a potential "event co-chair" asked to raise $50,000. A large percentage of the Bush fund-raising team remains uncommitted, a signal that the Republican establishment is not satisfied with the present field seeking the party's nomination. McCain's...

Three months after his felony conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, 56, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and fined $250,000. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to impose a sentence of 30 to 37 months, on the grounds that Libby had lied about his role in leaking the identity of former CIA staffer Valerie Plame and impeded a serious investigation, and has not expressed remorse. Libby's lawyers argued for leniency, considering that no one was ever charged...

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia were booed at their respective state party conventions Sunday for supporting a compromise immigration bill. Their specific sin was collaborating with the liberal lion of the Senate, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. But behind the catcalls was Republican rage over undocumented foreigners, a sentiment GOP lawmakers must either appease or risk dire consequences. Why are the party faithful throughout the country so incensed by immigration? When I asked Graham, he quoted from a federal government report on the new arrivals to this country, "largely unskilled laborers" and heavily illiterate:...

OPENING in theaters Friday, a motion picture called "September Dawn" depicts a brutal American mas sacre that has been forgotten. On Sept. 11, 1857, in Utah Territory, Mormons slaughtered more than 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas. Retelling at this time the 9/11 carnage of 150 years ago does not help Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The basic facts about the Mountain Meadows Massacre are not in dispute. Mormons mobilized Paiute Indians, accompanied by Mormons disguised as Indians, to attack a peaceful wagon train. The settlers beat off the attack but were left short of food and ammunition. They disarmed themselves...

he White House is letting it be known on Capitol Hill that top presidential adviser Karl Rove will play no part in President Bush's forthcoming big push to pass a compromise immigration bill. Rove, renowned as architect of Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was named deputy chief of staff at the beginning of the second term and assigned additional duties dealing with issues beyond politics. However, he has been under intensive attack this year in the Democratic-controlled Congress with demands that he be subpoenaed to testify under oath about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Consequently, he probably would not...

In his prosecution of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald contended that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff was actively involved in a smear campaign against anti-war diplomat Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame and that he lied about what he said to whom during the early summer of 2003, thus obstructing the investigation to determine who “outed” Plame as a CIA agent by leaking her identity to the media. Libby’s lawyers countered that he was too busy with pressing national security matters to be involved up to his eyeballs in a conspiracy to...

WASHINGTON -- Pollster Frank Luntz for the past decade issued warnings to his fellow Republicans that they did not want to hear, but never has been so out of touch with them as he is today. "The Republican message machine is a skeleton of its former self," Luntz told me. "These people have no idea how the American people react to them"... ...He has clashed frequently with Rep. John Boehner, the current Republican leader of the House who stifled ethics legislation last year when he was still majority leader. Boehner, elected chairman of the House Republican Conference when the party...

Staring into the abyss of minority status in Congress, Republicans signaled dedication to pork barrel spending before recessing for midterm election campaigning. Behind closed doors, the GOP's King of Pork dressed down the party's leading foe of earmarks. In the open, the last bill passed before the election was filled with carefully hidden pork. In a caucus of Republican senators, 82-year-old, six-term Sen. Ted Stevens charged that freshman Sen. Tom Coburn's anti-pork crusade hurts the party. Stevens then removed from the final version of the Defense Department appropriations bill Coburn's "report card" requiring the Pentagon to grade earmarks. The House...

The publication of Hubris is filled with irony for David Corn, Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. He was present at the creation of the Valerie Plame "scandal," which the enemies of George W. Bush hoped could bring down a president. Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode. Yet Corn is coauthor of a book that has had the effect of killing the story. Thanks to Corn's intrepid coauthor, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, Hubris definitively revealed then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as my source that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA and suggested her...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

CIA agent's naming led to giant hoax by Bush foes Fred Barnes September 15, 2006 THE rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now that there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly there was no smear campaign against former US ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticising President George W.Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country - by the media,...

WASHINGTON -- When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge. First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. Second,...

This does get a little complicated. First, a holdover, liberal CIA employee, Valerie Plame, decided to undermine President Bush’s policies by pulling strings to get her like-minded husband, Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger to discredit the report from British intelligence that Saddam Hussein tried to purchase yellowcake for nuclear weapons development. (This British report was mentioned by Pres. Bush as one piece of intelligence we relied on in concluding that there was a significant risk of WMD in Iraq. The report turned out to be factual.)

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

.....Separating the men from the boysPosted: August 25, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern It was a shocking moment for me, and it took a few seconds for me to be sure I had heard him correctly. Had MSNBC's Tucker Carlson really belittled the argument that Islamic terrorists posed a growing threat to Western civilization as being "reprehensibly dumb"? I was on Carlson's bottom-ranked cable news show, and the once bow-tied anchor was lecturing me that my justifications for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq was nothing more than "administration talking points." It was yet another in an incalculably...

I'm trying yet another format change this week.  I have left the background links on the entry for each guest for each show, like last week, but I've broken the Sunday shows out into separate posts to try to make each one more easy to read and discuss.  The Saturday shows will still be posted as one message, then I'll do the ping.  Please me know if this works.And I've put my (expanded) witty commentary here instead of in the ping...The most interesting guest this week should be Secretary Rice, who is on Fox, CBS and ABC, but she probably...

by Mark Finkelstein July 12, 2006 - 20:09 Was it Robert Novak who jolted aficionados of the vendetta-against-Joe-Wilson conspiracy theory, or was the message coming from . . . a Higher Authority? You be the judge, after having a look at the screen capture from this evening's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC. Yes, that's a lightning bolt. No, it wasn't photo-shopped - it's the real thing. The bolt hit while the panel was discussing the implications of the just-aired interview of Bob Novak by Brit Hume. Hume questioned Novak about his disclosure of Valerie Plame's employment by the...

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret. I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a 64-year-old ex-high school wrestling coach, ordinarily is not a shouter. But according to Capitol Hill sources, he engaged in a high-decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Dick Cheney. The speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss. Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately (although Hastert aides said the meeting had been planned previously). The speaker toned down his volume on the hallowed ground and did more listening than...

WASHINGTON -- Everybody in Washington's Republican political community was well aware that any changes George W. Bush made in his White House staff would not constitute a shake-up. What nobody expected was that Josh Bolten, in essence a professional bureaucrat, would be promoted to chief of staff. Yet, this selection becomes understandable as a confirmation of Karl Rove's supremacy in the White House.Rove holds the mundane titles of senior adviser to the president and deputy chief of staff, but scarcely anything happens in the Bush administration without his approval. Now he is more influential than ever. Andrew Card, the departing...

BUBBA AN AGENT FOR DUBAI? IS Bill Clinton serving as a lobbyist and public-rela tions guru to the government of Dubai? It sure looks like it. He's been paid a pretty penny by Dubai's rulers... The whole affair raises disclosure questions for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, too. While publicly opposing the port deal, she privately benefits from her husband's Dubai-related income. Published reports indicate that that Clinton has been directly advising top Dubai officials over the past two weeks on how to overcome negative public opinion and congressional resistance to the takeover of six U.S. ports by DP World ......

<p>While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. Continues...</p>

My representative in the House is Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, IL, pictured below. Earlier today, Jan was probably at the Democratic Party of Evanston's slatemaking session. But rather pondering just who is the most qualified to gain the local party's endorsement for Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner, this Robert Novak column in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times probably dominated her thoughts. From that column: House Republicans, wounded by lobbyist scandals, have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate more than 10 Democratic members headed by Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Nydia Velazquez of New York. Schakowsky's husband, consumer advocate Robert...

WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had just finished a typically discursive floor speech shortly before the year-end adjournment when a very liberal member approached her second-in-command, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and whispered in his ear: "Steny, is it not time for a coup?" It obviously was not time to oust Pelosi and replace her with Hoyer. House Democrats do not get rid of their leaders with coups, as Republicans have during the last half-century. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with Pelosi's performance is pervasive across the ideological spectrum. Her colleagues grumble that under her leadership, the party lacks focus and a...