The L.A. Times has appended the following paragraph to its online version of the story about Fred Thompson’s lobbying:

An earlier version of this article included a passage in which Judith DeSarno said Fred Thompson reenacted a cowboy death scene from one of his movies. The version of the article that was printed in Saturday’s newspaper replaced the earlier, online version. That newer version omitted the reference, because confirmation of the name of the movie could not be made before the story got reprinted. Based on DeSarno’s account, the scene that she said Thompson reenacted appears to be from “Keep the Change,” a TNT television western that would have been in production around the time of the lunch and dinner that she described.

Here is the Internet Movie Database entry for the movie.

Interesting that the paper published something online that wasn’t yet confirmed. Are there different standards for online stories vs. print at the L.A. Times?

The blogosphere has forced the paper to explain why it whisked away the sentence in question — and that’s a good thing. But the rumors of the death of the story’s credibility were greatly exaggerated.

By the way, I don’t think the story, if true, means that pro-life conservatives should despair at the idea of a Thompson candidacy. All this story means, if it’s true, is that he didn’t feel strongly enough about abortion in 1991 to turn down work for an abortion rights group. That doesn’t mean he agrees with the agenda of abortion rights groups — or that he would appoint bad judges, which is the only relevance of any of this.

Trust me, his judges would be better than Hillary’s.