The actions by the LA Times are getting stranger, pointed out by at the National Review Online:

Here’s where it gets really interesting: The “cowboy death scene” comments, once prominent in the story (DeSarno is referred to by full name and role within the organization, indicating this is the first reference to her), have now been removed from the Los Angeles Times article. The new version:

Thompson kept her updated on his progress in telephone conversations and over meals at Washington restaurants, including dinner at Galileo and lunch at the Monocle, she said. At one of the meals, she recalled, Thompson told her that Sununu had just given him tickets for a VIP tour of the White House for a Thompson son and his wife.

Problem is, bloggers already quoted the old version.

Why did the L.A. Times take that comment out of the story? And why no mention of the edit/correction/retraction?

The actions of these people at the LA Times are very suspect. They delete a section of their own story to cover their rear ends without an apology, update, editor’s note, or retraction? That’s not very professional or honest.

Update: More Omissions, as spotted by Hot Air:

The first paragraph originally read:

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as a ?pro-life? Republican, accepted a lobbying assignment from a family-planning group to persuade the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and five people familiar with the matter.

Now it reads:

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

Again, Hot Air notes that there is no correction on the page and no edits, and that:

The changes in the first paragraph are obviously much less important than the one about the cowboy movie, which speaks to DeSarno?s credibility. I don?t know what the story is here but for a major paper to be dropping facts and rewording passages without noting it, in a bombshell story no less, is suspicious ? but not surprising.

Update #2 The American Thinker weighs in:

Bloggers noted some whoppers in the Los Angeles Times report that Fred Thompson lobbied for pro-abortionists. The paper responds, not by correcting or retracting the story or even acknowledging that certain aspects of it simply cannot comport with the facts..it simply is airbrushing out the demonstrably false aspects of the report undoubtedly to keep the entire account from being tossed out as not credible..

Update #3: This story has completely fallen apart. Check out the Newsbusters update from my boss at the original blogs for Thompson site, Warner Todd Huston:

So, there is no registration for Thompson to be a lobbyist until the month AFTER the L.A.Times story claims he was lobbying the White House for this abortion group. And the registration that does exist for the next month registers him as a lobbyist to foreign nations, not domestic concerns.

This story is seeing bigger and bigger holes blasted through it every day by the blogosphere, and it’s getting easier and easier to believe Thompson’s claims that it is all a straight out lie as this story falls apart around the L.A.Times’ ears.

And what of the Hillary Clinton connections I mentioned a few days ago? How deep are Hillary’s hands in this incident one has to wonder?