So apparently there’s talk of Fred Thompson looking for the GOP nod in 2008. Doesn’t surprise me at all — back when Cheney was having all those health issues prior to 2004 and there was talk that someone else would take the VP slot, Thompson was the first name that came to my mind. More recently, with Cheney’s blood clot issues, Thompson’s name has come up again.

In any case, I can see the campaign commercial:

Hi, I’m Senator Fred Thompson. You may know me in my roles as “Rear Adm Painter” in The Hunt for Red October, “Big John” in Days of Thunder, or “DA Arthur Branch” in Law & Order. Now, I want to be your President.

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s getting a fair amount of ground-level support from GOP grassroots. Here’s a guy who carries the GOP flag without having all that apparent baggage that pisses off the evangelicals… and as we’ll note in the MSNBC article above, he certainly spouts all the talking points:

On the issues, Thompson said he:

• Is “pro-life,” and believes federal judges should overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision as “bad law and bad medical science.”
• Opposes gay marriage, but would let states decide whether to allow civil unions. “Marriage is between a man and a woman, and I don’t believe judges ought to come along and change that.”
• Opposes gun control, and praised last week’s 2-1 federal appeals decision overturning a long-standing handgun ban. “The court basically said the Constitution means what it says, and I agree with that.”
• Supports President Bush’s decision to increase troops in Iraq. “Wars are full of mistakes. You rectify things. I think we’re doing that now,” he said. “Why would we not take any chance, even though there’s certainly no guarantees, to not be run out of that place? I mean, we’ve got to take that opportunity and give it a chance to work.”
• Would pardon former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice now, rather than waiting until all his appeals are exhausted. Thompson is a fundraiser for Libby’s defense.

Obviously, once you get beyond the actors’ facade, there’s a deep level of party loyalty there. At first I thought Thompson might be a bit of a challenge for the Dems in the upcoming election. As it stands, I don’t think he would be as much of a problem as initally imagined. Then again, Thompson, of course, wouldn’t be the first popular actor to run for President…

Nonetheless, if he decides to run, I think he stands a fine chance at receiving the GOP nod.

So, apparently Warner Bros. is on board to produce the Valerie Plame movie. This, amidst the impending decision in the Scooter Libby trial led some over at FDL to ponder who would play whom in the movie.

The obvious names were bandied about. Tom Hanks, or Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, or even (god forbid) Tom Cruise as Fitzgerald. Samuel L. Jackson or Denzel Washington as Judge Watson… and so on.

Now, maybe I’m all alone here, but I these are all aiming too high and missing the mark. All of these, in my opinion, reflect a real lack of creative thinking and border on a “soap opera”-y absurdity. However, I did have one suggestion that I feel nails Libby to a “T”.

…what about Ron Rifkin?

I can’t remember where I ran across this in the first place — maybe I just saw it in yumex yesterday — but tilda is pretty cool. I never use(d) the console too much in FPS games, but it’s nonetheless handy in X to be able to pop that little term window down when needed.

I ran into a few little bugs, but so far no show-stoppers. The one thing it needs to be really useful is to execute upon window manager startup. I manually configured this, but having it do so upon install would be better, if possible.