JohnBovenmyer wrote: "This is the same Fred Thompson who's Senate committee did that bang up job nailing Bill and Al for their Chinese connections?"
You should blame John Glenn and Joe Liberman for that, not Fred Thompson:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/3-34.htm
"We should realize that not only is Minority cooperation in investigations and hearings desirable and appropriate, it is actually an absolute necessity if the Committee is going to carry out its obligations to the American people."may correspond to how he thinks things work in Washington. For counterarguments watch all the forthcoming hearings in the Pelosi-Reid Congress. Does John Conyers think he'll need minority cooperation? Fred's side had a much greater margin than Reid has now. My recollection was that his leadership was very weak and that he accomplished much less than Freepers at that time thought was possible. He was the Chairman. If he couldn't control his majority on the Committee and use them to control his party's majority in the Senate, when investigating what many here thought was treason, why should I trust him to out duel Democrats on other issues? Their only real defense against Fred then would have been for Glenn and Lieberman to threaten to filibuster actions that required support of the full Senate and for Clinton and Gore to stonewall any subpoenas. As the allegedly best media connected Republican, Fred should have been in a great position to apply public pressure to any such obstructions. He failed his audition.