Free Republic

At 7:57 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, while taping "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" for broadcast later in the evening, Fred Thompson finally said: "I'm running for president of the United States." The studio audience responded with thunderous applause. Thompson rejected the notion that he has waited too long to get into the race for the White House. "People treat politicians sort of like the dentist -- they don't have anything to do with them till they have to," he said. "A lot of people have been, of course, running for some time. Everybody kind of changed the rules. "...