Yet you're making guesses based on press summaries of documents we haven't seen, based on NYT reporting about them (and we all know the NYT never makes mistakes?), and comparisons of those against a mish-mash of written and oral statements by the candidate and others in a variety of settings and contexts (again, assuming scrupulous and thorough reporting).

Even the records themselves don't necessarily provide conclusive answers. I don't hold law firm billing records in quite the same regard that I do gospel, because I know just how often they're screwed up, or compiled second-hand by a secretary or a paralegal making guesses from inconclusive source documents (rather than reflecting personal knowledge).

Some of the terminology here is also incredibly slippery. If the context of Corallo's follow-up phone call with the LAT, for example, was about "lobbying" Sununu or other top officials, then that's something that might well have been categorically denied, truthfully and in good faith, and after checking with the candidate and doing some due diligence.

And yet that might have happened without anyone ever wondering, "Hmm, did perhaps a phone call ever get made to the second assistant junior staffer to find out if the conference committee had transmitted back to the Senate subcommittee the minority report on the supplemental HHS appropriations bill as amended?" Yet exactly that sort of phone call might have ended up as a 0.1 hour entry in Thompson's scribbled work records as "TC lobbying."

You're not just making small jumps in your assumptions, you're making huge leaps, and then drawing inferences as to intentions on top of that. That's not like you, and it's unfair. Being this eager to jump to conclusions can turn you into someone's useful tool, and I know you don't want that.

It is? I think it is perfectly plausible, 14 years after the fact. You must have an amazing memory, Mr. Joyner.

I'm not a fan of Fred Thompson, but this is a stretch.

The billing records arguably contradict something a Thompson campaign spokesman, Mark Corallo, said when the LAT story first broke. Even that contradiction, however, can be explained as something other than a "lie."

C'mon, Bill. This isn't something a spokesman -- a professional hired by Thompson to communicate with the media -- is going to answer off the cuff. Clearly, he ran this past the candidate first.

He denied the whole thing, categorically. Yet, the records show that Thompson personally made 22 phone calls to the woman who made the charges he denied and further billed 3.3 hours for actual lobbying work. There's simply no way the denial is an honest misunderstanding.

I've been of counsel to a couple of law firms, and a partner in a couple of other much larger ones. I've never been a single-issue voter. But presumably, some theoretical slice of the potential electorate, large or small, is considering whether to di...

The billing records arguably contradict something a Thompson campaign spokesman, Mark Corallo, said when the LAT story first broke. Even that contradiction, however, can be explained as something other than a "lie."

What Sen. Thompson has himself personally denied is that he lobbied John Sununu, who the abortion rights organization people claim was the target of the lobbying engagement. Sununu also has denied having any recollection of Thompson contacting him, and the billing records apparently don't have any indication that it was Sununu.

I strongly urge you to reserve powerful conclusions like "lied" to situations in which we've got a affirmative, unequivocal statement by the candidate himself. If you have one to support your use of the term "lied" this time, you haven't quoted or linked it, and I'm unaware of it.

Where there's ssmoke there's fire???  It's beginning to look that way.  Another round in the ongoing story broke this morning.  This time via the NY Times, which went back and reviewed the billing records of Thompson's old lobbying f...

Fred Thompson, the non-candidate that was to save the neo-conservative element of the Republican Party from the dismal crop of current candidates that are as much, if not moreso, conservative than Fred, has enjoyed pretty much a free ride so far.  I h...

When he give categorical denials and called DeSarno a partisan liar and then it turns out she was correct and you were the one being dishonest, it doesn't reflect well on Thompson's character. What else is he willing to say to get elected?