Hurting an innocent person and then moving on as if nothing happened? Are the DC Police sure it wasn't Valerie Plame?

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Politico:

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning.

“I didn’t know I hit him. ... I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. "He's not dead, that's the main thing." Novak said he was a block away from 18th and K streets Northwest, where the accident occurred, when a bicyclist stopped him and said he had hit someone. He said he was cited for failing to yield the right of way.

You didn't know you hit him? Well I guess you must have just grazed the guy, right?

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a "Walk" signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “This car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said. 

I'm sorry, but I think most normal people would notice a 66 year old man rolling across their windshield. I'm just saying...

Update: John Amato: Why wasn't Novak given a field sobriety test? This is very weird. You hit someone, leave the scene and then the police aren't suspicious?

TP notes:

Politico notes that in a 2001 interview with the Washington Post, Novak said, “I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don’t run the country, all I can do is yell at ‘em. The other option is to run ‘em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that.”

UPDATE: ABC 7 is reporting that the victim is worse than first thought:

The pedestrian who was struck by prominent Washington columnist and commentator Robert Novak is in worse shape than first thought, a hospital source tells ABC 7 News.

The victim, a 66-year-old man, appeared somewhat incoherent, said the source who had seen the victim. The man appeared to have casts on his neck and back. The victim was X-rayed and a surgical team plans to evaluate him, the source said.

The Prince of darkness returns! Novakula dusts off his old weather beaten type writer to give us his idiotic tirade against the very popular Sebelius. Here's their response to Novak.

Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran condemned the Novak piece as forwarding his "personal agendas and hyperbole." She pointed out that Novak's column failed to mention the 8.5 percent decline in the Kansas abortion rate since Sebeliushas been in office and added: "Clearly, the people of Kansas don't share Mr. Novak's narrow view of Governor Sebelius, having overwhelmingly voted to re-elect her in 2006 in an endorsement of Governor Sebelius's centrist, mainstream approach."

Wow, she supports women's rights. What a shocker. C&Lers may remember the odious wild man named Phill Kline.

Kline was one of those over the top an anti-choice lunatics that O'Reilly just loved. His positions finally drove him out of a job in Kansas, but he's still hanging around. He was also being investigated for some money issues. Click here for the video.

Anyway, back to Novak, here's a blast from the past Daily Show clip that has been a big favorite here.

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Stewart: ..for that Douchebaggery, Robert Novak is hereby awarded the highest civilian honor awarded to douchebags: The congressional medal of douchebag…

It's an honor well deserved.

'Cause even the quote thingy with your fingers won't get us to listen to you, Bob.

Ben Smith:

Obama, whose campaign jumped on Robert Novak's suggestion earlier this year of Clinton dirty tricks, mocked Novak's column today that Michelle [Obama] has nixed Clinton as a vice president...

 [Senator Obama] dismissed it with a flit of his hand. He nearly didn't say anything, but then offered: "My wife does not talk to Bob Novak on a regular basis."

Dang, and I was gonna call Michelle Obama to find out if her new confidante Bob Novak got a subpoena in the Plame lawsuit.   

The Huffington Post:

The annual Gridiron dinner occurred this past weekend in Washington D.C., and while the main focus was on the entertainment, here's a tidbit we were struck by in the Washington Post's "Reliable Source" column: Ann Coulter attended the event with Bob Novak -- as his date. The Prince and Princess of Darkness? Sounds like a match!

No word on whether the couple was espied holding hands, or gazing into each others' eyes, or making a mad dash for the backseat of a cab. So, you'll just have to use your imagination.

We don't have a category for Ewww, so I chose torture instead. Can you imagine the dinner conversation? A nightcap perhaps? Novakula and Coultergeist sittin' in a tree... *shudder*

 ...out there that Meet the Press just has to put Robert Novak on their round table discussions? I guess outing an undercover CIA operative that launches a sensational investigation---gets Scooter Libby convicted and ruins Valerie Plame's career doesn't qualify as a problem for Russert.

I suppose, in the minds of most political reporters, the words “Clinton” and “triangulation” go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

But Bob Novak’s hit-job on Hillary Clinton today is not just wrong, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

Sen. Hillary Clinton faces tonight’s Iowa caucuses not as the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee but seriously challenged by Sen. Barack Obama, thanks in no small part to committing a strategic error: premature triangulation. The problem is reflected in what happened to a proposal for a simplified, though far-reaching, health-care plan.

One longtime Democratic consultant, not involved in any campaign this time, suggested that Clinton propose a genuine universal health-care scheme. Everybody would be covered by Medicare, except people who chose to retain their private health insurance plans. The consultant gave the idea to somebody close to the senator, but the intermediary refused to pass it on to the candidate. He said it would never get beyond Mark Penn and his strategy of triangulation.

This is ridiculous. Clinton isn’t guilty of “premature triangulation”; Novak is guilty of premature references to triangulation.

It might be useful to talk about what “triangulation” actually means.

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How could anyone go bonkers on a story that's as poorly sourced as Robert Novak's piece is and is designed to start infighting among the Democratic candidates? Well, we do have the "Villagers" on the teevee so that solves that question.

Digby takes you on the ride....

It just doesn't get any better for the Village Ladies press Club and Circle Jerk Society than this afternoon's Hardball. David Shuster ran down the story straight, pointing out that Novak has subsequently said that he allegedly heard his little nugget of defamation about both Clinton and Obama from some Democrat who isn't part of the Clinton campaign, but who knows someone or has heard from somebody who says it's true. That's apparently good enough for Chris Matthews anyway, and he's running with it as fast as his little legs can carry him.

This is what ensued:...read on

(guest blogged by BillW)

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Here's Bob Novak on Hannity & Colmes, interviewed by Ollie North and Alan Colmes, and by the number of lies he tells just in this interview (I lost count), it's a safe bet Joe Wilson was right.

North: Full disclosure here, unlike Valerie Plame, Bob, tell me, have you read her book?

Novak: Yes, I have.

North: And was she really, as she just said in that interview, pumping her book, was it really a very small circle of people who knew what her real job was?

Novak: Not at all. She was well known in many parts of the town that she worked for the CIA. She had not been a covert agent for some time. She wasn't really an agent ever, of course. She was covert at one time. The subtitle on the cover of the book is "My Life as a Spy." Of course she was never a spy....

The entire interview is Nofactula spewing complete BS. According to him: She was never a spy. ... Everybody knew she was in the CIA... Fitzgerald never found there was any crime... Novak never did anything wrong at all naming her in his column. ... Libby was innocent of leaking her identity. ... Joe and Valerie are just ultra-lefties critical of Bush. ... Valerie is just doing the TV circuit stretching the truth so she can sell more books. ... George H. W. Bush didn't ever call Joe Wilson "a true American hero"

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I don't think there are three more deserved awards. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the embodiment of all that is wrong with political discourse nowadays...the unapologetic rationalization and justification for treason, rank (and ignorant) partisanship and the victimization of private citizens and children for cheap political shots.

To this day, when it clearly has all come down, Bill O'Reilly has never apologized for those comments, nor the sickness inside him they represent, nor the pain they caused. Because he is not only not enough of a man to do so, but not enough of a human being.

None of them are, Keith. None of them are.

John Amato:

I broke this story about O'Reilly when it happened because it was so repulsive. BillO likes to say he's protecting the children, but when he had his chance he immediately attacked Shawn Hornbeck in as cruel and vicious a way as a person can. He blamed Shawn for not running away from Devlin. We got him kicked out of speaking to the Missing Kids dinner a while back because they were unaware that O'Reilly blamed Shawn for his own horrible situation. Now Devlin has just cut a deal and we get this heartbreaking account:

But then Devlin began telling the judge in graphic detail what he had done to their boy, his high-pitched and raspy voice devoid of any emotion. Devlin didn’t seem to notice when Pam Akers collapsed weeping into her husband’s arms.

After the boy, then 11, was abducted at gunpoint while riding his bike in rural Washington County, Devlin took him to his apartment in suburban St. Louis and repeatedly sexually assaulted him. Days later, Devlin took Shawn back to Washington County in his pickup truck, apparently intent on killing the boy.

He said he pulled Shawn from his truck and began to strangle him. Shawn resisted. “I attempted to kill (Shawn) and he talked me out of it,” Devlin said Tuesday.

Devlin stopped the choking, but then sexually assaulted the boy again. Prosecutors say it was at that point that Shawn told Devlin he would do whatever was asked of him to stay alive.

It was a “devil’s bargain” that kept Shawn under Devlin’s sway, even as the boy had phone and Internet access, said Shawn’s stepfather, Craig Akers. “We know now the details that made him not run away,” Akers said after the hearings.

Robert "The Prince of Darkness" Novak discussed his new book with Brian Lamb Sunday night and you knew his BFF would come up in the conversation. It's his tell-all novel and in it he gets all giddy over his long time pal---being the best damned leaker of all time...And to all those Libby apologists...This clip should remind you that Rove did leak Valerie Plame's name to him, thus destroying your Armitage cover story...

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I wonder why Novakula didn't mention that Rove was fired by Bush 41 in '92 because...

In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

I didn't say this, he did: "....but I hope I don’t end up in purgatory with my severed head in my arms."

E&P :

LAMB: [Concerning Karl Rove] you say, “never enjoyed such a good source inside the White House.”

NOVAK: That’s true. He was a confirming source on the Valerie Plame story. He revealed himself as having – he quoted himself of what he told me, so that the confidentiality was gone by his own statement.

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Scholars & Rogues:

Sometimes it's hard to tell, when our old buddy Bob Novak scuttlebutts, whether he's been interacting with actual people or talking to his fist like Señor Wences. And then, if there's good reason to believe he's not winging it on his own, you have to figure out if he's sharing legitimate insider analyses or just passing on Karl Rove's latest crateful of fat red herring to hapless readers. That's what makes him fun to peruse.

If we got no-bullshit Bob in his latest political newsletter, then Republicans are in for an even more miserable 2008: "The private outlook for ‘08 by Republican leaders is gloomy - not a Democratic blowout, but probable Democratic wins for President, Senate and House, with the best GOP chance being in the race for President. It may be premature, but Republican insiders are already talking about the outlook for 2010."

Got to love those lowered expectations...

Last week, the National Review’s Rich Lowry addressed an issue that it took him several years to notice: the Bush administration’s breathtaking incompetence.

“[Bush] has made a few key bad decisions about policy and personnel, compounded them by not reacting quickly enough when things go wrong, and failed to create a sense of accountability in his government,” Lowry wrote. He added, “Once inside the charmed Bush circle, people tend to stay there and rise to the level of their incompetence.”

Apparently, this “I-word” is finally making the rounds. Bob Novak noted it in his column today:

The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is “incompetent.” … The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?” [...]

The answer that is not entertained by the president’s most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and will not change while he is in the Oval Office.

The Bush administration, blinded by ideology and unmoved by facts, has a problem with incompetence? You don’t say.

  Last night The Daily Show opined on the Scooter Libby verdict and paid tribute to the man who got this whole scandal rolling -- "The Douchebag of Liberty", Robert Novak.

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  via 08/04/05. I had to re-post this again...It looks like he may testify in the Libby trial...Some clips I never get tired of seeing...

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MM:

"Carville said to host Ed Henry, describing Novak: "He's gotta show these right-wingers that he's got backbone, you know. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show 'em you're tough."

Novak responded: "Well, I think that's bullshit, and I hate that." He then said to Henry, "Just let it go." As Henry asked Carville a question, Novak walked off the set.

Update: Novak is on the stand now. FDL is live blogging it...