Robert Novak dead at 78

[erik_t]

Per CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Conservative columnist and former CNN "Crossfire" co-host Robert Novak died after a yearlong battle with cancer, his family said Tuesday. He was 78.

Novak died at home, over a year after doctors diagnosed him with a malignant brain tumor in August 2008.

He was a veteran columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a regular commentator for CNN for 25 years, beginning when the network launched in 1980.

For most of that time, he was a co-host of the political debate program "Crossfire." But he also hosted a show with his longtime column co-author, Rowland Evans, and appeared as a panelist on shows like "The Capital Gang" and on PBS' "The McLaughlin Group."

Friends dubbed him "The Prince of Darkness" for his pessimistic persona, and he used the nickname as the title of his 2007 memoir.

Novak got his first newspaper job in 1948, when he was still in high school.

He served in the Army during the Korean War before turning to the news business, eventually starting his column with Evans at the now-defunct New York Herald-Tribune in 1963.

In 2003, he found himself at the center of the scandal over the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, when he published a column revealing her CIA status days after her husband challenged a key Bush administration justification for the invasion of Iraq.

The scandal ultimately led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators probing the leak.

Novak cooperated with a special prosecutor and was not charged in the case.

I can't say I'll be crying tonight.

[Edi]

Good riddance.

[Thanas]

The guy was a traitor and a rightwing fundamentalist.

Not a great loss to humanity.

[Pelranius]

Well, at least he was against the Iraq War and the abuse of Palestinians.

[Thanas]

Well, at least he was against the Iraq War and the abuse of Palestinians.

He was against the Iraw War? Eh? The guy outed a CIA Agent because her husband spoke out against the war.

[Invictus ChiKen]

An another down and another one down. Another one bites the dust! An another one bites the dust!

RIP Robert my your next time around you not be such a jerk.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

He was against the Iraw War? Eh? The guy outed a CIA Agent because her husband spoke out against the war.

He [Armitage] was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I had long opposed military intervention in Iraq.

Robert Novak in his column for the Washington Post 2008-06-02.

Also of note is this column for that rag the New York Post, "Carter's Clarity", on the Israeli occupation of Palestine: http://www.nypost.com/seven/11052007/po ... 438102.htm

Also, he wasn't a Fundamentalist Christian, he was a Roman Catholic (and before anyone jumps on this to claim 'lol fundie anyways', he wasn't, even though he was a conservative Catholic).

[Imperial Overlord]

He [Armitage] was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I had long opposed military intervention in Iraq.

Robert Novak in his column for the Washington Post 2008-06-02.

That only proves he was against it in 2008, when a lot of right wingers were pretending they had never liked the idea.

[Thanas]

If the guy was against the Iraq war, why in heaven's name did he reveal Valerie Plame as a CIA officer? Why did he do that if he was no partisan hack, as you assert, Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba?

What possible reason could he have had for that that does not translate to "mindless defense of the GOP"?

[Knife]

My sympathy to his family.

He was an asshole.

[Elfdart]

Back when Pinochet's agents set off the bomb in D.C. that killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, this piece of shit wrote his column with Roland Evans claiming that Moffitt and Letelier were communist spies and implied that they got what they deserved.

To the bowels of hell with you, Robert Novak!

[Flagg]

My sympathy to hell. He's an asshole.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, look at it this way: when Novak's bodily matter eventually leaches it's way back into the soil, he will at last be making a positive contribution to the Earth.

[Guardsman Bass]

If the guy was against the Iraq war, why in heaven's name did he reveal Valerie Plame as a CIA officer? Why did he do that if he was no partisan hack, as you assert, Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba?

What possible reason could he have had for that that does not translate to "mindless defense of the GOP"?

Idiot carelessness? Of course, that's rather hard to buy, considering that Novak was an experienced reporter.