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.
Oh, so you do say that I can’t believe my lying eyes.
See Post #282.
I hate illegal immigration as much as anybody, but that should have been taking care of on the front end.
We barely have the capacity to patrol the boarder. Who is going to apprehend 12 million people who now will be driven in to hiding.
The point is that they will come in for processing on the road to citizenship but will run like hell and become a large criminal underground if we go after them.
Lock down the boarder and never get in this position again, but work with the ones that are here. Fine them from their first real paycheck if that’s what will work as punishment, or delay their full citizenship, I don’t know. But logistically getting them back would be a nightmare, it would launch 12 million fugitives into our countryside. As it stands the majority are working and contributing, albeit without legal status.
It’s real easy to say “ship ‘em back” but doing it is a whole other ball game. Prevention in the future is the only real solution. I think that's where Thompson is comming from.
You can re-read your own statement.
A lawyer in that type of firm usually are expected to bill 2500 or more hours a year. 19 out of 2500 hours is less than 1% of his yearly work.
That's exactly what they are right now.
Either he’s for it or against it....there’s no in-between. Since when are Fred’s own words considered “lying” about him?
If you stop letting the employer make any tax deductions for illegal aliens, verified through bogus SS numbers, they won’t be hired.
No work, no incentive.
Since Republican and Democratic politicians want them here, it won’t happen.
DK
My secret is that I’m not going to fall for the son of the South routine. I witnessed firsthand how disastrous that line of thinking could be with George Dubya. Fred has to explain his vote on NAFTA, his membership in the A.I.E., this evolving abortion position and a host of other questions. Moreover, where are the major pieces of legislation that Fred authored during his tenure as senator? What makes Fred Thompson an worthy Republican candidate in 2008, besides his role on Law & Order and the scarcity of real conservatives in the race?
Correct.
Since when are Fred’s own words considered “lying” about him?
Fred's own words did not appear in that post.
OK. You enforce the employer laws to the hilt, get serious about deportations as the current laws allow, build a border fence, go after the cities that provide “sanctuary” and within a few years, the number of people we need to deport will drop precipitously.
It’s a 7 to 10 year process, in my estimation.
Let's just take a look at the Right to Life Act Hunter introduced into the 109th Congress, back when Republicans still maintained majority control.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00552:
Click on Congressional actions, and it shows that it got referred to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, where it got mired.
Lots of cosponsors, but apparently enough of the right people aren't interested enough in seeing it come to a vote.
He said he opposed BLANKET amnesty. (Pro-illegals and OBLers like Bush say, We can’t round them all up and deport them all, Fred said that too)
He said we must determine who is here, (Pro-illegals and OBLers like Bush say, We must bring them out of the shadows so we can determine who is here) and
He said we must give them aspirations of citizenship, but it should not be unfair to those waiting in line legally. (Pro-illegals and OBLers like Bush think that the ‘touch back’’revolving door’ scheme is fair to those who’ve been waiting in their home country to immigrate legally).
Bottom line, making ANY ILLEGAL ALIEN eligible for ‘aspirations of citizenship’ without deporting them home and home to the back of the line, is AMNESTY.
Step 1: Build the fence add more border agents. Instead of locking them up, allow them to do their jobs.
Step 2: Cut off ability for employers to hire illegals. Punish banks or other institutions that allow illegals to open accounts or conduct business. Punish any city that declares themselves a "sanctuary" for illegals.
Until that is done, Fred's idea of 'self-deportation' will never happen.
Why are you so threatened by the seductive appearance of a beautiful woman? You can say it. A lot of people are very accepting of that stuff these days.
Maybe the boys at mymanmitt can help you.
Phony polls might be important for those who don’t have much to run on, but not a guarantee for victory.
Reagan didn’t win in two landslides by pushing polls....he won by promoting conservative values.
I'm all for deporting everyone that we reasonably can, but I think you've stepped beyond the realm of reality, and are asking for something that beyond being unworkable will be wildly unpopular and would result in a candidate pushing for it to lose the election.
ejonesie22 explains it well in post 302.
I am sorry you feel that way. Part of the problem - I think - is that Fred Thompson tends to be fairly vague in a lot of his statements. So, someone like myself who is more skeptical will honestly interpret Thompson’s statement differently than a Fred supporter who is confident that Fred is a strong conservative who agrees with us on Immigration and abortion. It is true that occassionaly someone posts mean things about Fred but I think you will find that most Hunter supporters are nice people with geniun concerns about Fred’s positions on the issues.
However, announce tomorrow that we are clamping down, and down hard, we are coming after all of you, close the businesses that have them working and cut off the jobs and watch the burglaries, prostitution and other such crimes skyrocket. They are not just going to walk back. Even petty criminals in the US live better then a hard worker in Mexico.
Of course all that is beside the point. The logistics have to be dealt with in the real world. We have a prison population that is rapidly heading past 2 million with another 7 million under some form of supervision. Most major and medium sized cities are releasing criminals for lack of jail space. Exactly what do we do with this 12 million?
Get the fence in and just don’t let it happen again.
“Fred has to explain his vote on NAFTA”
He believes in a global market economy.
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