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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...