What’s this scuttlebutt we’re hearing about Fred Thompson? I read on Wonkette that Andrew Sullivan is alluding to the candidate’s “colorful and wide-ranging sex life,” code for the notion that Mr. Law and Order swings both ways.

“Sullivan is not even close to the first person we’ve heard float this particular rumor,” writes Wonkette, “not that that says anything as to its truth. Because we’ve also heard, from someone who insists that he heard it from people in a good position to know such things, that Fred Thompson has an enormous dick, which is how he manages to get all of the hundreds upon hundreds of hot ladies he sleeps with.”

My Stars! Let us pause for a pleasurable tingle of excitement and another handful of popcorn as we sit back and enjoy the trials and tribulations of the Republican Party. According to Rassmussen Reports, the undeclared Thompson is actually leading the primary polls at 27 percent, versus 24 percent for Giuliani, 13 percent for Mitt and 12 percent for the beleaguered former front runner, John McCain. We have also recently learned that the actor is not very bright, that he may have done lobbying work for abortion rights groups, and that he conspired with Nixon administration insiders during the Watergate hearings.

Bring him on, by all means!

She Stretches to Conquer
I know it’s too early to indulge in this kind of smug superiority. In fact, there’s never a good time for smug superiority where my beloved Democratic Party is concerned, but you can’t help thinking that things are looking up. And speaking of Democrats, I read that media hound Cindy Sheehan has threatened to challenge Nancy Pelosi for Congress unless the Speaker introduces a bill to impeach Bush.

Now that’s a mature piece of political strategy. Let’s bring the nation even further to its knees and elevate the president’s abysmal poll numbers just in time for the 2008 election for no reason. Sheehan, who has no experience in office, or in anything else that I’m aware of, has left the Democratic Party in disgust, citing the lack of an anti-war bill. I thought she said goodbye to public life the other day complete with a big press conference, but apparently, she’s back. And no, you don’t have to support the war to think Cindy Sheehan’s a self-absorbed blowhard.

Doctor No
Moving on, the Senate Health Education Pensions and Labor Committee will hold hearings Thursday on the nomination of James Holsinger as Surgeon General. Dr. Holsinger has not won any fans on the left. Not only is he a conservative Christian, but he has also written scholarly notes about the dangers of homosexual sex.

Now I read in the (conservative) Washington Times that the right doesn’t like him much either. It seems Holsinger testified in favor of stem cell research before a Kentucky legislative committee in 2002. Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council told the Times that Family Folks were “not supportive of his nomination right now,” although the Family Man added that he has been told that Holsinger has modified his views and now opposes the life-saving research.

Meanwhile, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona told a Congressional committee that the Bush administration pulled the strings when he was in office, forbidding him from expressing any opinion at odds with the party line.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Carmona told lawmakers. “The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of Surgeon General is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party.”

According to a New York Times piece, Carmona says Bush minions censored his speeches, and muzzled his views on stem cell research, contraception and sex education. “I was blocked at every turn.” The former SG served from 2002 to 2006 and has not yet been replaced, ergo Holsinger.

Can these people get any more despicable?

With Enemies Like These...
Here’s an interesting tidbit on a completely different subject. There’s a website called CRUISING for SEX, which provides essential information for those of you out there searching in public for the Fred Thompsons of the world, if you catch my drift. CRUISING has now teamed up with the southern California law firm of Duran & Thomas to publish some legal columns. This week, the topics include how to spot an undercover cop (they look uncomfortable), the safest places to have sex (at home or at a sex club), and the trenchant question of how many times can you shake your dick at the urinal without being lewd (three).

Undercover cops, I see here, generally try to “preserve their heterosexual comfort zone.” As a rule, therefore, “they will not be laying back in a booth or stall pulling on their scrotum or standing at a urinal stroking their dick.” One would hope not! 

In related news, the mayor of Ft. Lauderdale, Jim Naugle, is considering a robotic toilet that discourages illicit sex by automatically opening the door after a set period of time and sounding a siren. Mr. Naugle, who apparently believes that toilet sex is a major scourge on his fair city, says he is trying “to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act.”

Naugle plans to place the $250,000 units in the gay beach area, which I’m guessing is not the most family friendly part of town in the first place. Plus, far better for the little ones if the door to the john doesn’t pop wide open, alarm blaring, in mid-scrotum pull.

According to Sun Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo, Naugle recently explained that he prefers the term “homosexual” to “gay,” because most homosexuals are unhappy. In response to his linguistic analysis as well as his exploding toilet scheme, local activists plan to send him rolls of toilet paper as part of the “Flush Naugle’s Bigotry” campaign.

Naugle has also insulted the rest of his community by suggesting that housing prices would come down if people stopped sitting around on the couch drinking beer and put in longer hours at work. He also refused to sign a pledge to combat climate change, because the text included “hate-America stuff that the environmental wackos want in.”

Ganging Up
In other news of the week, an African American lesbian firefighter has won $6.2 million in a civil rights suit against the Los Angeles Fire Department. Brenda Lee first filed a workplace discrimination case in 2001, and later filed a civil suit against the Department, alleging that her superior officers derided her, assigned her to grueling dangerous jobs, and took no action to protect her against gay bashing by colleagues. According to her suit, one of her charming fellow fighters even peed into her mouthwash.

In New York, a state court judge has ruled that the defendant in a wrongful termination suit must answer deposition questions about his religious views. Ted Doudak, who runs a jewelry manufacturing company in Long Island, fired his gay marketing Vice President once he discovered the man’s sexual orientation. The fired executive, John Fairchild, alleged among other things that Doudak quoted Bible verses and opined that gay people were eternally damned and “repulsive.”

Naturally, Fairchild’s lawyers asked Doudak under oath whether or not he held these views, but Doudak refused to answer, claiming that the questions themselves intruded on his religious freedom. Late last month, a judge disagreed, ruling that the state’s interest in a fair trial took precedence. I got the dirt on this from law professor Arthur Leonard, writing in Gay City News, but did not read the opinion.

And finally, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is taking aim at the Bill O’Reilly show, where a few weeks ago “Fox News Crime Analyst” Rod Wheeler reported on a “national network” of lesbian gangs that target young girls. According to GLAAD, Wheeler said there were over 150 lesbian gangs in the Washington D.C. area alone!

GLAAD and the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report did a little research of their own, talking to a number of gang experts including Detective Patrick Ward of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, a group of 400 criminal justice professionals in the Washington metropolitan area.  “There is no evidence of a lesbian gang epidemic in this region,” Ward told the Intelligence Report. “Our membership reports only one lesbian gang.”

Another specialist, Sgt. Brett Parson, a member and the former commander of the D.C. Metro Police Department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, said there are only about 150 or 175 gangs in the DC area to begin with, and only nine of them are predominately female. Nor is there any reason to suspect that the nine female gangs are lesbians. Well, except for the fact that they hold potlucks after every rumble and raised $4,350 for the DC Feral Cat Association last spring.

No time now, but next week, if you’re good, I’ll tell you about the woman who has frozen her eggs so that her seven-year-old daughter will be able to use them in the future. The little girl has a disease that will make her infertile, but let’s be frank. That’s creepy.