More Lawyering For Hire

Fred Thompson has said that Osama bin Laden ought to be captured and granted the due process of a trial. This isn't an outlandish thought; there was such a thing as Nuremburg. What is interesting to wonder is what side of the aisle Thompson would be on during that trial, the prosecution or the defense.

Add another interesting entry to the list of Fred Thompson's legal/lobbying clientele: Libyan terrorists.

The New York Times reports that billing records from the early 1990's show that Thompson gave advice to a colleague who was working on behalf of two Libyan intelligence officials implicated in the infamous Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, which killed 270 people.

At the time, Thompson worked for the Washington firm Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, and logged 3.3 billable hours giving advice to Arent Fox attorney John Culver, a former Democratic senator from Iowa, on jurisdictional issues surrounding the case.

Freddie has responded by saying he consulted about venue. Maybe this is why Thompson doesn't want to debate Mike Huckabee mano-a-mano; he doesn't want to have to admit all of this lobbying and lawyering. Or maybe it's because they both support crackpot ideas like FairTax, which was literally devised by the Church of Scientology when their efforts to be judged as a tax-exempt religious organization by the IRS failed. But even without "Lincoln-Douglas-lite" (make that Lincoln-Douglas in zero gravity) scrutiny, you can bet that this latest twist will be well-remembered by Thompson's adversaries. Maybe it'll even make Phoney Fred!