Captain's Quarters

Captain's Quarters
Great work over at Captain's Quarters, as usual.

Progressives For Racist Smears?

It doesn't take long for provocateurs to crawl out of the woodwork to attack candidates, especially in stealth attacks. With Fred Thompson, they've apparently started before he officially enters the race -- and in one case, race is the operative word. Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at www.imwithfred.com, a new site has appeared at www.imwithfred2008.com -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites.

Who would post something like this as a smear on Fred Thompson? Someone a little too stupid to cover his tracks, possibly? A DNS search gives us an answer. The domain name, registered through GoDaddy (no great shock there), belongs to:

Henry Reynolds
500 California Ave. #5
Santa Monica, California 90403
United States

The phone number listed on the domain record, which I won't post here, goes to an answering machine for the "law offices of Henry Reynolds". I left a message asking for comment on this website, and then decided to take a look through OpenSecrets and the FEC to see if Mr. Reynolds has a history of supporting Fred Thompson, or even the KKK. Actually, it turns out that a Mr. Henry Reynolds in the same zip code working as an attorney has a small record of political donations -- but in another direction:

4/6/2005 - $500, MoveOn.org

9/22/2004 - $500, DNC Services

4/5/2004 - $250, John Kerry

FEC receipts for these donations can be found here, here, and here. They have the same address as the domain registration.

So why is a Santa Monica attorney and contributor to the Democrats and MoveOn hosting a website with links to the KKK and white supremacists? Perhaps he'll call back with an interesting explanation -- but it looks like he's conducting underhanded smear tactics in his spare time. Will MoveOn and the DNC reject the politics of character assassination and give back the money Reynolds donated?