Flaw And Ardor

I don’t suppose too many people reading about Fred Thompson from this site would be disposed to consider voting for him should be actually win the Repug nomination for president, but in case anyone out there does, I’d like to point out a few things (according to this Wikipedia article):

- He is a Visiting Fellow (love some of these academic titles) of the American Enterprise Institute (whose imprint is all over Bushco, particularly regarding the Iraq war and its fantasies of globalist domination).
- He was a Washington, D.C. lobbyist for 17 years (from 1975-1992, and one of his clients was G.E., helping him transition into a job with NBC on the show “Law And Order” later on – that’s a worrisome pedigree to be sure as far as I’m concerned).
- As part of this job, he lobbied for deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry in 1982, helping to pass the Garn – St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 which effectively killed the S&Ls in this country (thus ensuring that we would never see a 6 percent return on a passbook savings account again).
- Thompson was also responsible for investigating the supposed scandal of Chinese influence in American politics prior to 1996 (re: another attempt to throw mud at Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the hope that any of it would stick), which was no doubt another stupendous waste of our taxpayer dollars.
- The Wikipedia article also states that Thompson “was appointed to an informal position by President George W. Bush to help guide the nomination of John Roberts through the United States Senate confirmation process”…so we can thank Thompson also for, among other horrendous rulings by the Supremes with Hangin’ Judge J.R. in charge, this latest one that limited the ability of employees to sue in pay discrimination actions.

I give Thompson credit for trying to live his life as normally as possible while recovering from cancer, and I sympathize with the sorrowful loss of his daughter years ago, but let’s not get fooled again by another Republican actor, shall we?

Update 1 5/31/07: And gosh, Fred was so "spot on" concerning Scooter Libby, wasn't he? (and such an astute political observer also)

Update 2 5/31/07: Kos is absolutely spot-on with his observation at the end here.