The Religious Right is worried. Back in 2000 their dream candidate, George W. Bush, was in the race and nothing could be better. These days their choices are a little more difficult. Pro-choice Rudy Giuliani supports abortion rights and gay rights (he even took up residence with a gay couple after one of his several divorces). The Religious Right is still mad at John McCain for pushing campaign finance reform. Mitt Romney is, well, Mormon and many conservative evangelicals think that means he belongs to a devil worshipping cult.

Enter Fred Thompson. The former Tennessee senator turned television star is set to announce his campaign for the Republican nomination shortly and many in the Religious Right see him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But this little story in The Los Angeles Times might give their enthusiasm some pause:

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter….

Minutes from the board's meeting of Sept. 14, 1991 — a copy of which DeSarno gave to The Times — say: "Judy [DeSarno] reported that the association had hired Fred Thompson Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with the administration" on the abortion counseling rule.

Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), a colleague at the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said that DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for the lobbying work and that he had suggested Thompson. He said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to deny that he lobbied against the abortion counseling rule.

"I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization," said Barnes. "I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact."

DeSarno said that Thompson, after being hired, reported to her that he had held multiple conversations about the abortion rule with Sununu, who was then the White House chief of staff and the president's point man on the rule.

Thompson kept her updated on his progress in telephone conversations and over meals at Washington restaurants, including dinner at Galileo and lunch at the Monocle, she said. At one of the meals, she recalled, Thompson told her that Sununu had just given him tickets for a VIP tour of the White House for one of Thompson's sons and his wife.

"It would be an odd thing for me to construct that thing out of whole cloth," DeSarno said. "It happened, and I think it's quite astonishing they're denying it."

Sununu said in a telephone interview: "I don't recall him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don't think that ever happened. In fact, I know that never happened." He added that he had "absolutely no idea" whether Thompson had met with anybody else at the White House, but said it would have been a waste of time, given the president's opposition to abortion rights.

In response to Sununu's denial, DeSarno said Thompson "owes NFPRHA a bunch of money" if he never talked to Sununu as he said he had.

So was Thompson lying about his work in 1991 and billing for meetings that never occurred (a crime of there ever was one) or his he lying now because he knows how damaging this story will be? One way or another it would appear Thompson is lying to someone about what it is he believes and what kind of person he is.  Don't we want a president who is more honest than this?