stephanie
10-28-2007, 03:20 AM
:laugh2::poke:
DEFINING MOMENTS: One in a series of articles on events that shaped each presidential candidate.
By Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 28, 2007
WOODBURY, TENN -- . -- The case appeared to be open and shut.
The county sheriff had been caught selling an illegal whiskey still from the back of the county jail. The buyers were a federal informant and an undercover federal investigator. The sheriff, to elude honest police, had even escorted the illegal still out of town.
But for Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Thompson, few cases would prove easy.
Today, as a Republican candidate for president, Thompson is cultivating an image as a tough prosecutor who, like the character he played on TV's "Law & Order," battled powerful criminals during his three-year stint as a prosecutor.
He was "attacking crime and public corruption," boasts a video played at his campaign events. During a candidate debate this month, Thompson said he spent those years "prosecuting most of the major federal crimes in middle Tennessee -- most of the major ones."
But a review of the 88criminal cases Thompson handled at the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville, from 1969 to 1972, reveals a different and more human portrait -- that of a young lawyer learning the ropes on routine cases involving gambling, mail theft and, in one instance, talking dirty on CB radio.
There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state's moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee's hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker's battle against the government's revenue agents.
Twenty-seven of his cases involved moonshining -- more than any other crime.
"Hell, I made whiskey and was violating the law, but I didn't do nothing wrong," said one of Thompson's many moonshining defendants, Kenneth Whitehead. "I would do it again if I had a still. I can't afford a still now."
Thompson had just turned 27 when he became a prosecutor. The public stage of the courtroom became a place where he learned to develop the strengths -- and to navigate around his weaknesses -- that would later boost him to the U.S. Senate and, now, to a top slot in the GOP presidential field.
The candidate who today shows an uncertain command of current events -- he flubbed questions last month about the death penalty -- was prone as a younger man to getting dates wrong in indictments.
The candidate who ended his first, unsteady debate appearance with a one-liner ("It was getting a little boring without me," he said of his decision to join the presidential race) would disarm tense situations with an offhand joke after he committed a mistake.
read the rest of this laughable article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-thompson28oct28,0,3516158.story?coll=la-home-center
GO FRED GO...:dance:
DEFINING MOMENTS: One in a series of articles on events that shaped each presidential candidate.
By Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 28, 2007
WOODBURY, TENN -- . -- The case appeared to be open and shut.
The county sheriff had been caught selling an illegal whiskey still from the back of the county jail. The buyers were a federal informant and an undercover federal investigator. The sheriff, to elude honest police, had even escorted the illegal still out of town.
But for Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Thompson, few cases would prove easy.
Today, as a Republican candidate for president, Thompson is cultivating an image as a tough prosecutor who, like the character he played on TV's "Law & Order," battled powerful criminals during his three-year stint as a prosecutor.
He was "attacking crime and public corruption," boasts a video played at his campaign events. During a candidate debate this month, Thompson said he spent those years "prosecuting most of the major federal crimes in middle Tennessee -- most of the major ones."
But a review of the 88criminal cases Thompson handled at the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville, from 1969 to 1972, reveals a different and more human portrait -- that of a young lawyer learning the ropes on routine cases involving gambling, mail theft and, in one instance, talking dirty on CB radio.
There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state's moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee's hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker's battle against the government's revenue agents.
Twenty-seven of his cases involved moonshining -- more than any other crime.
"Hell, I made whiskey and was violating the law, but I didn't do nothing wrong," said one of Thompson's many moonshining defendants, Kenneth Whitehead. "I would do it again if I had a still. I can't afford a still now."
Thompson had just turned 27 when he became a prosecutor. The public stage of the courtroom became a place where he learned to develop the strengths -- and to navigate around his weaknesses -- that would later boost him to the U.S. Senate and, now, to a top slot in the GOP presidential field.
The candidate who today shows an uncertain command of current events -- he flubbed questions last month about the death penalty -- was prone as a younger man to getting dates wrong in indictments.
The candidate who ended his first, unsteady debate appearance with a one-liner ("It was getting a little boring without me," he said of his decision to join the presidential race) would disarm tense situations with an offhand joke after he committed a mistake.
read the rest of this laughable article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-thompson28oct28,0,3516158.story?coll=la-home-center
GO FRED GO...:dance: