Fred Thompson: male prostitute!

Wow, it was a bad campaign week for Freddy. From The LA Times (c/o Josh Marshall):

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.

You got that? Hollywood Fred actually lobbied Bush 41 against the gag rule! Thompson's goons are, of course, saying it never happened, but the man himself?

"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson, who is considering running for president as a social conservative. He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.

Wow, dodgy and an asshole!

Meanwhile, the power tools and other rightwing hacks are preparing another defense: lobbyists shouldn't be accountable to their patrons because they don't necessarily have to believe in someone's cause to lobby for it. Yeah, have fun with that defense, guys.