Mr. Thompson has a problem with the truth. The LA Times came
at him with it once. The New York Times follows it up
today.
Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours
working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal
rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he
did not recall doing any work for the organization.According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where
Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization,
the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000
for work he did in 1991 and 1992. The records show that Mr. Thompson, a probable
Republican candidate for president in 2008, spent much of that time in telephone
conferences with the president of the group, and on three occasions he reported
lobbying administration officials on its behalf. … ..
I never understand why people, let alone politicians, try to duck the provable.
Billing records and such always show up. From the same article above:
After his work for the family planning group was made public earlier this
month, Mr. Thompson sought to distance his own positions from those that he
took on behalf of clients he represented as a lobbyist and a lawyer.In a column published on the conservative blog Powerline, Mr. Thompson wrote
that in light of lawyer-client confidentiality, it would not be appropriate
for him to respond to those who are “dredging up clients — or
another lawyer’s clients — that I may have represented or consulted
with” 15 or 20 years ago.
The wingnuts are making light of it for one reason. They’re desperate to find
a candidate that conservative primary voters can stomach and from which the
wacky right fringe won’t bolt. By wacky I mean the far right-wing anti freedom
folks who think the government should have control over a woman’s body, but also believes that telling people around the world to abstain from sex is a sensible way to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Could anything be dumber or more dangerous? Captain’s
Quarters goes on and on trying
to provide Fred cover, while Powerline thinks it’s a sleepy, little story
with a title "more
ado about nothing." But I particularly like this line: What’s interesting,
I think, is that the news outlets that are pushing this story are not conservative.
Once again the wingnuts seem to have no clue about journalism. Facts don’t
take political sides. The other issue is that if Fred had just told the truth
in the first place this story would not be news at all. However, when
a politician running for president tries to hide something in his or her past,
reporters tend to get more inspired to find out why a newspaper is saying one
thing, with proof to back it up, while the candidate is denying the obvious.
Republicans are slowly but surely running out of acceptable candidates from
which to choose. That is since the litmus test seems to revolve around abortion
rights and a sensible international policy that would abolish the
gag rule.
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