Fred Thompson

After three days of saying that Osama bin Laden should be captured and killed, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson added the caveat Monday that the Al Qaeda leader should also get "due process." Thompson's comment on Bin Laden came as he attempted to quell the flap set off by a remark he made last week as he launched his candidacy in Iowa.

On the first trip of his campaign for president, Fred Thompson told a crowd here this week that as a young lawyer, he had prosecuted bank robbers and bootleggers. "I had to kind of apologize to my granddaddy about prosecuting those moonshiners," the former Republican senator from Tennessee said with a twang. "We don't have moonshiners in New Hampshire," Mayor Bernie Streeter told him. Maybe not.

On a recent night at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater, a waiter moved from table to table, replenishing glasses of sweet tea and stopping to sing happy birthday to members of the audience. "Fred never waited any tables," quipped Kenny Dale Thompson as he moved. "How can you be an actor and never have waited tables?" Both Ken Thompson and his brother, Fred, are actors, but there are differences.

Fred Thompson emerged Tuesday from weeks of preparation for his first presidential debate, but largely watched from the sidelines as rivals Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani clashed over who can return the party to its fiscally conservative roots. Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee best known as a TV and movie actor, did not officially enter the race until last month. On the stage of a theater in Dearborn, Mich.

. -- The case appeared to be open and shut. The county sheriff had been caught selling an illegal whiskey still from the back of the county jail. The buyers were a federal informant and an undercover federal investigator. The sheriff, to elude honest police, had even escorted the illegal still out of town. But for Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Thompson, few cases would prove easy.

In August 1970, Sheriff Charles Crockarell of Stewart County, Tenn., took part in the bust of a moonshine operation, which later led to his own conviction on moonshining-related charges -- prosecuted by then-Assistant U.S. Atty. Fred Thompson. A local newspaper said the apparatus, which held 350 gallons of home brew, was one of the largest ever seen in the county. Such confiscated stills were supposed to be destroyed.

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close advisor who has a criminal record for drug dealing. Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and heads a group called the "first day founders."

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Sunday that a friend with a criminal record for cocaine and marijuana sales would remain a top fundraiser for his campaign while he evaluates the situation. For months, Thompson has been flying to campaign events around the country in a private jet lent to his campaign by Alabama developer Philip J. Martin, who has known the former Tennessee senator for more than a decade.

A top fundraiser with a criminal record for selling drugs resigned from the campaign of presidential hopeful Fred Thompson on Monday, and a spokesman for the candidate said Thompson would stop using the man's private jet for campaign travel. Philip J. Martin's resignation as chairman of Thompson's "First Day Founders" team of fundraisers came as the former Tennessee senator adopted a newly combative tone toward GOP rival Mike Huckabee during a New Hampshire campaign swing.

. -- Campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson raised his voice and shook his fists as he described his vision of an America true to conservative values. The display of vigor last week was timely: Two months into his bid for the nomination, the former Tennessee senator is fighting to shake the image of a laid-back -- even lazy -- candidate who lacks the fervor of his rivals.