Self-identified centrist Sam Waterston appeared on O’Reilly tonight and made it pretty clear he won’t be sporting an “I’m With Fred” button on his lapel any time soon.

Waterston, one of Fred Thompson’s Law & Order costars, used his appearance on The O’Reilly Factor as a platform to promote Unity08, a movement to draft an independent candidate for the 2008 elections. Rumor has it that Unity08 may prove to be the netroots force behind NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s bid for the presidency.

Although Waterston claims to be fond of Fred Thompson as a person, he says he and other Unity08 members are looking for an alternative candidate who won’t be beholden to special interest groups with lots of money.

Supposedly the Unity ticket will be “funded solely by small-dollar donations from everyday Americans.” I wish them luck in finding a qualified candidate who has never accepted money from people, corporations, or lobbyists with agendas.

How else do you explain the overblown reaction to the miserably written hit piece by the strung out hacks at the rape porn loving Boston Globe. I blogged about the piece before, so there’s no need to go into how a poorly crafted rehash of an incident from 30 years ago featuring interviews with people who felt slighted by Thompson has the whiff of desperation about it.

More interesting is the rush to embrace the shoddy logic of the piece (Thompson trusted Nixon until he was proven wrong, therefore we can’t trust Thompson) by the dregs of the blogosphere, the far left bloggers.

The childishly titled Down with tyranny! (the tyranny they mean is America) takes the Globe’s piece and runs with it. Actually it’s more of a half hearted jog. But in the comments section one of the DWT faithful sums up the feelings of the rich white “liberal” for the rest of us quite nicely:

Howie thanks for the reminder about Thompson but I fear he is the winning candidate for a dumbed-down redneck-majority country just waiting for the next GOP B-actor to audition for Preznit.

Walter Cronkite had it right when he pronounced our democracy dead after the 04 election, saying we no longer had the critical reasoning capacity as a country to support a democracy. Any hope that a new bright young generation would replace 60’s passionate voters has been dashed by the deliberate disinformation empire of the right, designed not only to confuse and mislead but to queer politics so no one could possibly be interested but instead treats it like a coroner’s job.

Stick a fork in America. The rest of the world has. The penalty for making the kind of deliberately dumb decision like Iraq, following on the supposed “lesson” of Vietnam, is to go out of business. You can thank the willfully ignorant rednecks and Jesus Freaks who are likely the majority anyway.

Oh the pathos! Well what do you expect from a person who has this blog on blogger. Do you think his pining away for “passionate 60’s voters” is really just his anger that the rest of us won’t pay for aging hippies’ massive health care costs caused by their lifetime of drug use and excess. “If only the government will make someone pay for my four therapy sessions a week and my gastric bypass” is the subtext of his attack on the rest of us.

Liberal Values show us exactly what values liberals value most, in this case smearing the Republican to ensure a liberal gets in office. I’m surprised that after the rape photo scandal someone who considers himself such an honest broker of truth would reference the Globe at all.

And of course there’s the mighty Digby, who channels his inner Dead End Kid to write this hard boiled analysis of Fred Thompson:

Good thing Nixon was such a paranoid egomaniac that he taped himself committing crimes, otherwise Thompson — the tough, shrewd “law ‘n order” prosecutor — wouldn’t have been able to see past his “subconscious” desire to defend his president no matter what the massive amounts of evidence already showed.

On the other hand, it probably makes more sense that Thompson knew very well that Nixon was a criminal (and liked him all the more for it) but jumped off the sinking ship like the rat he is after the tapes surfaced and nobody in public life could defend him anymore without appearing to be brainwashed or insane.

This guy is the perfect successor to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. I’m just shocked they didn’t anoint him earlier.

Yeah, yeah, he’s a rat see. He’ll turn you over to the coppers. Not like Slick Willie, he’s no crumb. And he’s quick with a roscoe! Ugh. Someone should tell bloggers that when you start writing rat metaphors you’re already done. I suppose now we’ll see Dems in “stop snitchin'” t-shirts.

Sorry kids, but this is weak cheese. You’re going to have to do better than this to derail Fred Thompson, or the thousands of Fredheads behind him.

I’m with Fred!

Silly, over reaching and dreadfully boring:

The website of Thompson’s presidential exploratory committee, imwithfred.com, suggests that Thompson helped reveal the taping system and expose Nixon’s role in the Watergate coverup. And while Thompson’s question to presidential aide Alexander Butterfield during a Watergate hearing unveiled the existence of the taping system to the outside world, it wasn’t Thompson who discovered that Nixon was taping conversations. Nor was Thompson the first to question Butterfield about the possibility.

On July 13, 1973, Armstrong, the Democratic staffer, asked Butterfield a series of questions during a private session that led up to the revelation. He then turned the questioning over to a Republican staffer, Don Sanders, who asked Butterfield the question that led to the mention of the taping system.

To the astonishment of everyone in the room, Butterfield admitted the taping system existed.

When Thompson learned of Butterfield’s admission, he leaked the revelation to Nixon’s counsel, J. Fred Buzhardt .

“Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home” to tell him that the committee had learned about the taping system, Thompson wrote. “I wanted to be sure that the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action.”

Armstrong said he and other Democratic staffers had long been convinced that Thompson was leaking information about the investigation to the White House. The committee, for example, had obtained a memo written by Buzhardt that Democratic staffers believed was based on information leaked by Thompson.

Armstrong said he thought the leaks would lead to Thompson’s firing. “Any prosecutor would be upset if another member of the prosecution team was orchestrating a defense for Nixon,” said Armstrong, who later became a Washington Post reporter and currently is executive director of Information Trust, a nonprofit organization specializing in open government issues.

Baker, meanwhile, insisted that Thompson be allowed to ask Butterfield the question about the taping system in a public session on July 16, 1973, three days after the committee had learned about the system.

The choice of Thompson irked Samuel Dash , the Democratic chief counsel on the committee, who preferred that a Democrat be allowed to ask the question. “I personally resented it and felt cheated,” Dash wrote in his memoirs. But he said he felt he had “no choice but to let Fred Thompson develop the Butterfield material” because the question initially had been posed by Sanders, a Republican staffer.

When Dash told Thompson on the day of the hearing that he had agreed to let Thompson ask the question that would change US history, Thompson replied: “That’s right generous of you, Sam.”

Gasp! This semi-interesting rehash of partisan politics during the Nixon years makes me question whether or not I’ll vote for Fred Thompson. Why, if he was a loyal Republican who stayed true to his beliefs, that’s cause for concern. And he stole the thunder of a Democrat who was in the midst of stealing the thunder from a Republican! Unforgivable!

Isn’t it ironic that a left leaning rag like the globe is complaining of leaks during Watergate? I mean, wasn’t Watergate all about the leaks? Is leaking bad when it helps Republicans, but good when it undermines our national security?

But what do you expect from the same paper that used violent pornographic images to culled from rape fetish sites to “prove” American soldiers were gang raping women.

Journalistic integrity? Not when the Presidency is on the line.

Also penning (or typing really) hit pieces on Fred Thompson are Media Matters, whose revelation that Fred Thompson is no Ronald Reagan has caused much Republican shoulder shrugging to be sure.

Media Matters is a well known front group so their attacks of Thompson are evidence of his threat to radical leftists.

But what do I know, I’m with Fred!

Fred Thompson brings out the Carl Perkins in all of us. AllahPundit says that’s kinda gay but he’s a naysaying Giulianite fearful of Fred’s omnipotence. The video is by James Kole and lest you think it’s a joke, it’s posted at the official Fred Thompson website.

[youtube]VwKE4z3l2jg[/youtube]

I think he croons for all of us. How long before The Cramps do a Thompson benefit concert?