Hit-and-runner and brain tumor sufferer Robert Novak just retired. Like, just this month! But here he is, back in the public debate, because the potential of John McCain picking Joe Lieberman as his running mate is too critical an issue to lay in a hospital bed and keep quiet. Even Brett Favre waited longer to return from the dead.

In case you're not in the reading mood, Novak's perhaps penultimate column goes like this: McCain would love to pick Lieberman, but the party and the voters won't let him, and that is a good thing. Because while Lieberman risked life and limb to abandon to Democrats (who, to be fair, abandoned him) to get behind George Bush, McCain is already a liberal enough Republican that common thinking says his running mate needs to be even more hardcore.

Huh. Perhaps that thing growing inside his head hasn't yet turned Novak proper into a doppelganger of himself.