Fred Thompson, Rat

Well now, according to the Boston Globe Mr Law and Order, the clean conservative, Fred Thompson, leaked information from the Senate Watergate Committee to the White House, its target. He told the Nixonites that the Committee knew about the secret taping system before he was allowed to ask aide Alexander Butterfield about it at the hearing. He did so because "I wanted to be sure that the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action." Do you suppose the infamous 'gap' was the sort of appropriate action he had in mind?

Thompson was Howard Baker's campaign manager in 1972 and Baker brought him into the Senate committee as minority counsel. Baker was a staunch Nixon supporter as was Thompson. The question Baker insisted Thompson (who did not discover it) be allowed to ask launched his career with the public. You can make your own decisions about what it did for him in Republican circles to be a Nixon mole (my apologies to the other vermin - rats).

Do you begin to feel a little more informed about his stance on the Scooter's scooting? He had this to say, "shocking injustice . . . created and enabled by federal officials." which sounds less surprising from a 'law and order' kind of guy considering, "In retrospect it is apparent that I was subconsciously looking for a way to justify my faith in the leader of my country and my party, a man who was undergoing a violent attack from the news media, which I thought had never given him fair treatment in the past," Thompson wrote. "I was looking for a reason to believe that Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, was not a crook."

This is the ultimate crony, law and common decency be damned, he's our guy so we'll look out for him. Baker's shill, Nixon's mole, Libby's apologist & fund raiser, and lobbyist, the ultimate outsider, so far outside that the pick up truck he bought to burnish his "good ole boy" credentials is rusting away in his mother's drive way, undriven since the campaign. This is the undeclared candidate star of the Republicans - they're in worse shape than it looked.

You have to almost feel sorry for them, I have Republican friends who used to give me grief for being a Democrat, now they just look at me and shake their heads. And yes, I'm exactly polite enough to not kick sand in their faces. If you take the time to look at the crap floating around all their candidates (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) it is easy enough to see a Presidential General Election loss headed their way but the damage in Congress may be astonishing. Congressmen can do little to distance themselves from their Party's Presidential candidate and these guys should be easy meat - facts and their own statements, no Swiftboating.