Posted on 07/19/2007 7:33:24 AM PDT by pissant
This may be the political version of Evolution. The New York Times is out this morning with a story about billing records that show Fred Thompson did indeed charge for his time while helping a pro-choice group. Details from the article below:
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.
Mr. Thompson's work for the family planning agency has become an issue because he is positioning himself as a faithful conservative who is opposed to abortion.
Read the whole article here. The Brody File has a call in to Thompson's people. Check back later for an update. Already, email is coming into The Brody File about the story. Here's one:
"The significance of this is not what Fred did 16 years ago. Had he been candid and honest, and explained himself, all would be well. The issue is that Fred lied for political expediency, and allowed others on his staff to do so on his behalf."
Lied may too strong a word. It seems like Thompson did what most politicians do. They beat around the bush and try to avoid an outright apology. Let's review shall we?
When this story first broke, Thompson's spokesman Mark Corallo said the following:
"Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period."
Then it became Thompson had "no recollection of doing any work on behalf of this group. He may have been consulted by one of the firm's partners who represented this group in 1991".
Days after the story broke, Thompson told radio talk show Sean Hannity:
"You need to separate a lawyer advocating a position from the position itself. They will probably come at me, in 35 years of law practice, with some people, I represented criminal defendants. I was a prosecutor. I had a general law practice. So that in and of itself doesn't mean anything anyway. … I'm not going to get down in the weeds with everything they dredge up over the next six months."
Thompson also sent in a column to the Powerline blog where he seemed to suggest he did some work:
"A lawyer who is a candidate or a prospective candidate for office finds himself in an interesting position because of the nature of the legal profession and the practice of law. … I've experienced another gambit of those schooled in the creative uses of law and politics: dredging up clients - or another lawyer's clients -that I may have represented or consulted with and then using the media to get me into a public debate as to what I may have done for them or said to them 15 or 20 years ago. Even if my memory serves me correctly, Even it would not be appropriate for a lawyer to make such comments."
Any way you slice it, what we have here is an "evolving story". This isn't really about the abortion issue. Because of Thompson's consistent pro-life record in the Senate, pro-family groups will probably give him a pass on that aspect. But Thompson needs to be careful. He wants people to see him as a plain spoken, tell it like it is southerner. But evolving stories like this are normally left to "inside the beltway" Washington insiders. For his campaign to be successful, he needs to be seen as a Washington outsider not just another politician who is spinning his way out of a mess.
No way I can support someone who says we need to give “aspirations of citizenship” or “make a deal” (’as long as it’s not easy’) for those here illegally...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkN2fYnMTBs
...that was what Bush/Kennedy/McCain were pushing and it already failed TWICE!
Sola, the fact that this hit piece is from CBN does not change its nature. I have been preaching for conservative churches now for thirty years, and I have known many who wear the name "Christian" that are no strangers to fabrication.
There be something to this hit piece, and then again there may not be. Thompson's voting record is solid pro-life, so I will wait to see what comes of this new charge before drawing a conclusion from it. I won't automatically give it credence just because it comes from CBN. They have an agenda too, especially Brody.
He billed them for approximately three hours of meeting with Bush Administration contacts on their behalf. He then billed them for another 16 hours of communicating with the president of the family planning organization. As to what was discussed at those meetings, I can only point you to the previously released minutes of the family planning organizations meeting which indicated that Fred Thompson had been hired to lobby the administration to loosen the restrictions on family planning organizations recieving federal money when they also performed abortions. Now that the billing records have been found there is no reason to believe that the minutes of the family planning organization are anything other than accurate.
I personally tend to agree with the position of keeping the Federal government out of people's daily lives and giving more decision-making power back to the state level. I feel this way about most areas from education, to abortion and other moral issues, to taxing/spending, and so on.
Well, the bottom line is that Mitt, Rudy, Paul, McCain, and even Hunter have endured searing heat here. Fred will be no different.
“Fred looks like he should be doing commercials for Levitra.”
With a wife like Jeri and two young kids, I think Fred has that angle covered.
but providing legal advice is NOT advocacy - especially if he was telling them they had no chance at what they wanted. I can surmise that's what he told them because had he told them anything else, it would have resulted in more than 20 hours of work.
“Even if he’s sincere and he wants Roe v. Wade overturned, abortion would still be legal in most of the country.”
As I said in my post to you. Then it is up to the anti-aborts to fight the local battles. Overturning Roe is a first step. Fred being a lawyer understands that.
That needed to be repeated.
I fully agree with you in this.
I finally saw the light. All it took for me was to see a graphic description of the partial birth procedure. Now I am far stronger on pro-life issues than I ever was on pro-choice.
Amen to that.
From the Holman Bible Dictionary we read on abortion . . .
“ABORTION
The Bible places a high value on all human life, including that of the unborn. Biblical teaching declares that life is a sacred, God-given gift (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7; Deut. 30:15-19; Job 1:21; Ps. 8:5; 1 Cor. 15:26), especially the life of children (Ps. 127:3-5; Luke 18:15-16), and condemns those who take it away (Exod. 20:13; 2 Kings 1:13; Amos 1:13-14). The development of unborn life is controlled by God (Job 31:15; Ps. 139:13-16; Eccles. 11:5; Isa. 44:2; 46:3; 49:5; Jer. 1:5; Luke 1:15; Gal. 1:15). The personhood of the fetus is clearly taught in Exod. 21:22 where the unborn is called a “child” (yeled) rather than a “fetus” (nephel or golem). Hos. 9:11 implies that life begins at conception, while Luke 1:41,44 recognizes the consciousness of an unborn child.
The high value placed on unborn human life in the Bible is consistent with the Mosaic law regarding negligent miscarriage (Exod. 21:22-25). This law can be compared to similar statutes in the Code of Hammurabi (nos. 209-214) in which the punishment exacted for acts of negligence that resulted in a woman’s miscarriage was dependent on the legal or social status of the mother, not the personhood (or supposed lack thereof) of her unborn child. Middle Assyrian law no. 53 (12th century B.C.) made a self-induced miscarriage (an abortion) a capital offense.”
ANYONE WHO VOTES FOR A PRO-ABORTION CANDIDATE (CLINTON, OBAMA, EDWARDS, ETC.) WILL HAVE THE BLOOD OF INNOCENT CHILDREN ON THEIR HANDS AND HAVE TO GIVE ACCOUNT OF THEIR HEINOUS ACTIONS BEFORE ALMIGHTY GOD ON JUDGEMENT DAY (Matthew 12:36-37, Romans 10:9-10).
Those who demand the all-or-nothing approach of a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion seem to forget that such would require a 2/3rds vote for passage, and ratification of 3/4s of the states. Which is unlikely at this point.
Whereas if Roe is overturned by a 5-4 vote on SCOTUS, you would probably get over half the states to ban abortion. Maybe you could even get that to 3/4rs some day, at which point ratification of a federal amendment could become possible.
But until that point, those who demand adherence to an abortion amendment simply are living in denial. Overturning Roe is the main battle now.
I think Fred has more faith than we do in the states. You already see a growing movement to limit abortion at the state levels. That is where it will have to come from. If we want an amendment it will have to come out of the states limiting it first, exposing the very liberal states as the minority, then we got ‘em, we can't do it from DC it appears, been 30+ years...
I also think as a lawyer Fred sees a host of challenges if the SCOTUS over turns Roe. Call it an end run. Go in from outside and put forth the amendment from the states, from the people.
you disappoint me by stooping to the shallow end again/.
This was compared to the options of 'driving them underground' or 'driving all of them out', both of which are unworkable; the first because it's destructive, the second because the sheer number of people makes it unworkable. The key to Fred's statement is that the correct response is something that is comparable to what legal immigrants must do.
Encouraging "aspirations to citizenship" doesn't have to be negative as you paint it. My grandmother had "aspirations to citizenship"... a HUGE and ESSENTIAL part of that is to cease being Mexican/Latino (or in my grandmother's case, Moravian) and becoming American, with all the assimilation that entails.
Seems Fred's billing records are much more important; they found them fast enough.
Honestly, I don't see the big deal. He was an attorney and lobbyist doing a job for someone who came to his firm. It doesn't sound like he was that hot to trot to do their bidding, because he sure didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. Again, if I'm looking for his views on abortion, I'll look to his votes in the Senate, which occurred AFTER this lobbying bit, and I'll listen to what he has to say TODAY about his position.
And Hunter’s Protection of Life bill would force the courts to rehear the arguments on abortion. Time to get that passed.
I didn’t force Fred to marry his trophy wife. And remember that I’m on your side. :) The other side is going to be merciless.
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