• Background: Socially conservative Republican with J.D. from Vanderbilt University.
• Career: Attorney, actor, senator.
• Senate: No notable legislation.
• Criticism: "Lazy", lobbied for abortion legislation, support for Scooter Libby.
• Biography Links: Wikipedia, Campaign, Congressional

Background

• Fred Thompson is from Sheffield, Alabama and grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.
• Florence State College (now the University of North Alabama) and then transferred to Memphis State University where he studied philosophy and political science. He earned his J.D. degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1967.
• Thompson is popular among social conservatives, receiving an 86.1% lifetime voting rating from the American Conservative Union. He opposes abortion rights, gun restrictions, equal rights for homosexuals, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and federally funded universal health care schemes. He strongly supports capital punishment, strict border control, the invasion of and continued U.S. military presence in Iraq. Thompson believes that the sun, not humans, are responsible for global warming and has voted to defund renewable energies and repeal fuel efficiency standards, while preserving the budget for oil drilling in Alaska.

Career

• Campaign manager for the re-election campaign of Republican Senator Howard Baker, 1972.
• Thompson was appointed as co-chief to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of the Watergate scandal, 1973-1974.
• Private attorney, 1970-1994. Thompson represented major corporations such as a German mining firm and Toyota Motors Corporations. In 1977, he represented a Tennessee state employee who filed wrongful termination in a case that eventually exposed a cash-for-clemency scheme leading to the removal of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from office.
• Actor, 1985-2007. Thompson was first cast as himself in the move Marie, which was about the Tennessee employee he represented. He later appeared in many more films and television shows, including the NBC television series Law and Order.
• U.S. Senator, 1994-2002.
• (Post-Senate) Appointed by President Bush to help guide the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts through the Senate confirmation proceedings in 2005. He chaired the International Security Advisory Board, an advisory panel that alerts the Secretary of State of strategic threats. He has also been active in the Republican Party and in promoting the Iraq War and its connection to the 9/11 terror attacks.

Senate

• There is no major legislation bearing Thompson's name, despite spending 8 years in the Senate. He sponsored 90 bills since Jan 21, 1997, of which at least 56 did not make it out of committee and only 4 were successfully enacted. Thompson has co-sponsored 223 bills during the same time period.
• China Nonproliferation Act, introduced by Thompson in 2000, confronts proliferation by �key supplier� countries like China and Russia to rogue nations like Iran, Iraq, and Libya. The bill requires an annual review of these countries� proliferation activities, establishes clear standards, reasonable penalties, adequate presidential waivers, congressional oversight, and transparency. This bill never went to vote.
• Government Information Security Act of 1999, authored by Thompson as Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, is intended to protect Federal government information systems from cyber attack.

Criticism

• Media sources have characterized Thompson as "lazy" during his time in the Senate for both his lackluster legislative record and ducking out of Senate debates. (Source: Newsweek)
• The L.A. Times reported that a 1991 document (the minutes of a board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn.) and several people familiar with the matter gives substantial evidence that Thompson accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction. Thompson's spokesman denied the senator did the lobbying work and Thompson has said he has "no recollection" of accepting or performing the job (Source: L.A. Times). This revelation has upset Thompson's socially conservative, anti-abortion supporters and has undermined his credibility.
• Despite having never met him, Thompson joined the advisory board of the legal defense fund for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. Thompson was convinced he was innocent but Libby was eventually convicted of lying to federal agents during their investigation of the Plame affair. With Thompson's efforts, the Fund raised over $5 million to support Libby defense. Thompson released a statement expressing his happiness and relief for Libby after his sentence was commuted by President Bush in 2007.

Biography Links

• Wikipedia
• Campaign Biography
• Congressional Biography