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.
What’s next, cooties?
I was engaging in a raw societal observation about his wife. No more no less.
Right on the money Albion.....nobody, absolutely nobody, including myself, could pass the fine tooth comb test without some scars. I was pro-choice till about 1995.....things happen....eyes and ears open to Truth., at least to those who are open to it.
If he does make a public statement like that it will definately make me a lot more comfortable with his candidacy.
It was DU-quality.
It is not surprising to find that Thompson has no recollection of working for this organization. The fact is that he was working for a law firm and his law firm was billing the organization. Whatever work he was doing very likely had nothing to do with any advocacy position in regard to abortion. And quite frankly, since it was 16 years ago, I could care less.
Maybe there is a way to view the 14th Amendment as giving the state an interest in protecting life without automatically granting a federal right to life. I honestly used to think that repealing Roe would simply return the issue to the states until we covered it in my Constitutional Law class last year. However, the only easy way I see to do that would be to scrap the right to privacy altogether. Maybe you could just trim it back to Griswold?
The old fall back position when one is on the losing end of an argument.
“Oh yeah, well you stink, neener, neener, neener...”
Well said.
Yes, but if you were publically accused of something during a presidential campaign wouldn’t you be a little more carefull to do your homework before allowing your spokesperson to issue a blanket denial?
“The issue is that Fred lied for political expediency, and allowed others on his staff to do so on his behalf.”
Oh the issue is truth now?
WHAT’S THE NEW YORK TIMES’ EXCUSE FOR LYING TO ITS READERS?
That is a possibility. The Roberts/Alito style seem to be to chose the most narrow grounds possible to overrule something.
What was he "accused of"?
Working for a slimeball client? He was a lawyer. If you had to make moral judgments about every client you ever worked for, you'd never work. And most lawyers can bill 19 hours before lunch.
I don’t think Fred ever lied. He tapdanced and let his spokesman cover for him. But he’ll have to retract that now.
You just dodged my question. If Thompson wasn’t afraid of the political fallout why wasn’t his first answer along the lines of what you just said? Instead, he allowed his spokesman to flat out deny the allegation that he had lobbied for this family planning organization. Regardless of how you feel about the seriousness of the charge, if you were a candidate and were faced with a similar allegation wouldn’t you check your facts before you allow your spokesman to lie to your supporters?
Yes.
In other words, amnesty for them.
No.
“We don’t know what Romney will do at the federal level. He has a history of being a maverick at Bain Capital. Thats why I am reluctantly leaning to him. Unlike other republicans, I could care less that he wears magic undergarments or believes that each representation of the trinity walks on this planet in physical form. LOL I want leadership detached from the Washington & I am willing to gamble given the dire state of affairs.”
Well said.
Romney is running a campaign in which he promises to govern fiscally conservative, go after and win the GWOT, and support marriage, life and appoint judicial conservative judges. He is not a ‘movement conservative’ but he has a record of success and delivers what he promises. So there is risk he will be GWB II but upside that he will deliver a more conservative administration. JMHO.
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