Free Republic

HARRIS FAULKNER : Senator, your reaction, first, to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. FRED THOMPSON : It is a tragedy, of course. It reminds us that things can happen in faraway places of the world that can affect the United States. I think this should be of great concern to us. It is almost a perfect storm in a very bad sense because two forces are operating against each other that are both desirable. One is democracy: they were making progress in that regard in that country. Former prime minister Bhutto was an important part of that process. But the...

When Fred Thompson makes his long-delayed entrance into the Republican presidential race, he will not tiptoe quietly. Instead, he will try to shake up the establishment candidates of both parties by depicting a nation in peril from fiscal and security threats — and prescribing tough cures he says others shrink from offering. In a two-hour conversation over coffee at a restaurant near his Virginia headquarters, the former senator from Tennessee said that when he joins the battle next month, he "will take some risks that others are not willing to take, in terms of forcing a dialogue on our entitlement...

In a move that suggests he's not worried that backing convicted perjurer Lewis "Scooter" Libby will hurt his presidential chances, former Sen. Fred Thompson is planning to host several fundraisers to help the former Cheney aide pay his legal fees. In fact, allies of Thompson are trying to bring attention to the Law and Order actor/politician's move and call for a presidential pardon as a demonstration that he sticks with friends no matter what the political outcome. "Give Fred props on the pardon advocacy," says one pal. "And he's raising money for the www.scooterlibby.com defense fund." Thompson, working with GOP...