Arkansas Blog

Reminder: Lawyers and even lobbyists sometimes take on clients with views that do not accord with their own. You don't pick a lawyer because you agree with his views, but because you think he will be an effective advocate. Same with lobbyists.

You are dead on with that assesment Casimer Pulaski.

Ed Morrisey comments - ...If the Times and its sources want to launch attacks on Thompson, they'll have to do better than this. Lawyers represent clients, and sometimes they do so for ideological support -- but most of them do it to earn a living. Even if Fred had done work for NFPRR, his political position on abortion has been rather clear. According to Project Vote Smart, Fred got solid zeroes from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, while the National Right to Life Committee have Fred a 77% rating.

Besides, one has to question where this information got sourced. The law firm, Arent Fox, hardly qualifies as a conservative bastion in the legal community. They contributed over $12,000 to Hillary Clinton's exploratory committee. Their employees appear to heavily favor Democrats so far in this cycle as well, with at least three attorneys at the firm donating the maximum to Hillary already.

News flash to the Times: attorneys represent clients. It doesn't have a great deal to do with their political positions, if in fact Fred ever did any work for NFPRR at all. His voting record on abortion has enough clarity to make this innuendo appear a non-starter. We'll keep a close eye out for the article to check its sourcing, but I already suspect that it will primarily be "sources close to the firm" who prefer to remain anonymous.

More on the hit piece by the Times at the link

Oh and by the way Max, it looks like there is no "evidence to the contrary"

More updates from Ed at Captains quarters - UPDATE: I have sources, too. One of them insists that Fred never did any formal work for NFPRR and never represented them. He did a lot of meet-and-greets for Arent to help them boost their client list, and it's possible that he met and spoke with people from NFPRR, but that's as far as it went.

UPDATE II: Here's the story; it looks like the LAT put it out on the Internet after the story got attention in the blogosphere. The sourcing for the Times is the NFPRR, specifically one of its members and a Democratic Congressman -- who naturally might have some animus to a Fred presidency:

More at the link

Just a little defensive there are ya CJ? Or maybe a little paranoid?

No, just noting the lack of journalistic integrity at the Times.

God help us if this GOOBER (Fred D. Thompson) is 'selected' our next President. Only the R-Wing-Nuts could find someone worst than G.W. Bush!

CJ.........If anybody would recoginize "a lack of journalistic integrity" you would. You wrote the how to book didn't ya.

Maybe it don't bother the young'uns but being a mole for Nixon during the Watergate hearings would be plenty to get me off Thompson lickety split.

I think CJ must just be in "defend all Republicans" mode, cause a slick Hollywood actor married to a snaky young blonde doesn't sound like the Republican Jesus to me.

I think maybe because all the R's suck, CJ is just leaping on the next new name thrown out there.

Fred Thompson was a lazy Senator and the last thing we need is a lazy President...again. Fred is packaged better than Huck, but neither will be there at the finish line to then go head to head and have their ass handed to them by the Democrat.

CJ, your team is losing and haven't come close to hitting bottom yet. The worst is yet to come, babe and won't it be fine......Get a new hobby, it will be decades before the R's return to the stage with half a chance of winning.

Whether the story is true or not, it *may* well be the staunch anti-abortion forces -- those who honor (no matter the political cost) their belief that abortion is murder -- who get to the bottom of it.

And if these folks conclude that it *is* true, I doubt they will be comforted by the suggestion that the pro-choice group was "only a client." They surely are aware that lawyers and lobbyists are free to decline clients whose cause is "repugnant" to them.

So, if this story has "legs," perhaps it will be these True Believers (whose sincerity I do not question) who provide them. By the same token, if they discredit the story, there won't be much point in anyone else paying attention to it.

Nixon on the white house tapes.... said Fred Thompson was "Dumb as Hell."

And I just thought he was a Nixon rat.

more at the link at my name

Nixon on the white house tapes.... said Fred Thompson was "Dumb as Hell."
E.S.

Oh my once again I find myself at odds with Richard M. Nixon. If don't find Thompson "dumb". I find him boring, dull, and grrrraaaay. He hasn't germinated a new idea in 45 years and I really don't think he wants the job. He simply wants the adoration and attention one gets for the first couple of years, sorta like Bush. So, I suggest we begin looking around the Thompson Tree,. to find out who will be managing this dull, boring man.

We know Huck thinks he's smart enough to run the show, Hillary will have Bill coaching, Obama is still enjoying the rock show status and hasn't given thought to how he would run anything and McCain will seek diversity and plurality, Rudy will turn it all over to contractors from Jersey (for a cut).

Oh, if Obama wins the office will we become an Obama-nation?

People look at yoursefves. You are the very reason the republicans are in office today.

Damn the murders and the lowlifes that spread diseases.
Seek the truth,, somewhere else because it is not in you.

Damn the murders and the lowlifes that spread diseases.
charlieVirgin

Charlie if you left these pages, and I hope you don't, there would be one less disease.

.

Thompson is smarter than his campaign people. They flatly denied it. He declined comment. It appears there is plenty of proof he did it, and there is nothing to be gained by denying it--if Thompson is going to win the election, he needs to have more support than the 27% or whatever of the population who still want to believe the nonsense George Bush spouts. He has the unenviable task of positioning himself as an honest Republican who wants to succeed a prevaricating one.

This link to big tobacco came to my attention in the mail a few days ago. If nothing else it shows he is associated with people who have no qualms about pitching a deadly product.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/25/fred-thompson-the-philip_n_53736.html

Of course W. is against abortion also, except the one he paid for down in Houston in the early '70s for his girl friend while he worked on his dad's congressional campaign. But that is typical.....against things while they are doing it..

CJ,

I'm curious?

Perhaps you would care to expound on the ethics and integrity of a lawyer, part of a team investigating perjury, obstruction of justice, burglary, bribery and misappropriation of election funds. A lawyer who telephones an object of the investigation and reveals information gained in a private deposition because the objects of the investigation are of the same political party as the lawyer.

I feel sure you can rationalize to exculpate the lawyer as you have for Bush, the Younger and the Elder; Libby; Reagan; and Nixon.

And chasv,

This is not a blog where dogma and dogmatic assertion will convince, but if you just want to feel martyred, welcome!

CJ,

I'm curious?

Perhaps you would care to expound on the ethics and integrity of a lawyer, part of a team investigating perjury, obstruction of justice, burglary, bribery and misappropriation of election funds. A lawyer who telephones an object of the investigation and reveals information gained in a private deposition because the objects of the investigation are of the same political party as the lawyer.

I feel sure you can rationalize to exculpate the lawyer as you have for Bush, the Younger and the Elder; Libby; Reagan; and Nixon.

And chasv,

This is not a blog where dogma and dogmatic assertion will convince, but if you just want to feel martyred, welcome!

When anyone mentions abortion to me, I ask them why the Republicans controlled all three branches of the government for so long and yet abortion is still legal.

When they mention gays adopting children, I remind them that Satan Cheney's daughter just had a baby and ask them if she is fit to raise it.

I don't have a lot of Republican friends for obvious reasons, but I know this fact. Republican women have abortions.

So, I hope Thompson is pro choice. Not that he has a chance in hell of winning, but it would be a great debate between him and Huck, who also doesn't have any chance to win.

Have a great Sunday, everyone.

BR I don't see anyone, d or r, with a chance of winning. Who ever gets it it will be a mistake. Like a freak accident.. then america will be in the toliet.
This nation is like a egg that fell and cracked all over the place. There is no reason to go on. The borders are wide open.

NYT Editorial page

The Road Home

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

At my name

Another Repub bites the dust because he's a liar.

Do we REALLY want another President who we know is lying, going into the office?

Uh, no. We've had that for six years.

But here we go again. In the face of overwhelming evidence, Fred Thompson claims he didn't do any such thing.

Liar.

How uninformed does he think we are?

Thompson now joins the bottom of the political barrel.

The guy's candidacy is as over as Huckabee's.

I'm loving a has-been actor with a flip-flop lobbying record who scored a 25-year-old younger babe for a wife, though I'm sure they're deeply devoted to each other even though they're both deeply devoted to persecuting gays and women who need abortions, for whatever medical and personal reasons. Because, you know, Fred Thompson isn't a doctor. He's not a woman. He's not gay. All he knows is his religion trumps everybody else's deeply personal situation and he wants to tell you what to do.

Fred knows best. Voite for Fred.

Keep throwing money after these losers, Fred and Mike.

All they have to offer is, "I hate gays and I hate abortion."

Yeah. THAT'S gonna play in 2008, in a world as complex and dangerous as ours. Simplistic religious bigotry. That's what America needs MORE of.

Do these jerks not realize that America is yearning for an ADULT to be President, for a change?

Nope. They don't. They're convinced that we're all sheep who'll unthinkingly, unquestioningly, rally behind political shepherds who are serial adulterers, Mormon religious fanatics, Southern Baptist religious fanatics . . . hang on: it's time for my Prozac.

clearly CJ must be that Repub
from Arkansas that went to
work for Thompson. I forget
his name....not that it really
matters.