Columnist Novak retiring from newspaper

BOSTON - Conservative political commentator Robert Novak on Monday announced his immediate retirement from the Chicago Sun-Times following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis that he described as "dire."

"The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak told the Sun-Times.

A week ago, Novak announced that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Novak, 77, fell ill while visiting his daughter and was rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he said he was diagnosed with the tumor.

A few days earlier, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a homeless man with his car in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak’s windshield.

Dr. Lynne Taylor, a neuro-oncologist at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, said residents at the hospital are taught to check for brain tumors in patients who report having a recent car accident in which they didn’t realize they struck something.

“People get spatial and visual neglect of a certain part of their bodies and they don’t realize they’ve done what they’ve done,” said Taylor.

25 years on 'Crossfire'
Novak is best-known as the longtime co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire,” where he jousted with liberal co-hosts from 1980 to 2005, when he left to join Fox News as an occasional contributor. Novak is also editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report.

Novak was criticized after he was the first to publicly reveal the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame in a 2003 column. His column came out eight days after Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, said the Bush administration had twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

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