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I’ll get to the mirror website for PhoneyFred down at the bottom of this post. But for those of you who’ve been sedated for the past week after you got tackled in a pro football game and then had your blood chilled to save your spine, a quick overview:

After the PhoneyFred.org website was taken down in the second week of September 2007, Mitt Romney’s campaign tried to distance itself from the website, claiming that it had not been behind the website’s publication. But the New York Times found ample evidence of exactly such a connection:

At least two top members of Mitt Romney’s South Carolina operation appear to be connected to an anti-Fred Thompson Web site that was taken down today after reporters began to make inquiries about it.

The Web site, PhoneyFred.org, had attacked Mr. Thompson’s conservative credentials, opening with the line: “Phoney Fred. Acting like a conservative.” But Internet queries reveal connections between the site and Warren Tompkins, a South Carolina political consultant hired by Mr. Romney, and Terry Sullivan, Mr. Romney’s South Carolina state director.

The site is hosted by a Utah company, Bluehost.com. But a search of that site reveals a long list of associated Web accounts that are hosted by the same server, including one for TTS Strategies, a political consulting firm where Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Sullivan are partners, and another for Under the Power Lines, which identifies itself as “South Carolina’s only online campaign strategy firm” and lists Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Sullivan as partners as well. Another Web account listed on the same server is palMITTostate.com, a pro-Romney Web site which bills itself as a “volunteer grassroots community to help Mitt Romney win the South Carolina Presidential Primary.”

Both Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Sullivan are veteran political operatives in South Carolina, which is known for bare-knuckles campaigns. Mr. Sullivan was the campaign manager for Jim DeMint’s successful U.S. Senate run in 2004. Mr. Tompkins served as George W. Bush’s southeast regional director in 2000, helping Mr. Bush to a bruising victory over Senator John McCain in a race that featured an ugly whisper campaign, led by unknown sources, about his personal life.

Calls late tonight to Mr. Sullivan and Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign, were not returned.

In response to the Romney campaign’s denials, the campaign of Fred Thompson issued the following statement:

Today’s half-baked cover-up attempt by the Romney campaign does not even pass the laugh test. The Romney campaign has paid Warren Tompkins and his various firms hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wesley Donehue works for Tompkins and is listed on Tompkins’ own Web page as an associate of the firm. According to PalmettoScoop.com, Donehue “runs the daily operations of their political consulting firm, Tompkins, Thompson and Sullivan, including direct mail efforts and a number of Web-based ventures.”

There is no room in our party for this kind of smut. As the top executive of his own campaign, Gov. Romney should take full responsibility for this type of high-tech gutter politics and issue an immediate apology. In addition, Gov. Romney should exercise some of his much-touted executive acumen, take control of his flailing campaign, and immediately terminate anyone and everyone related to this outrage.

This latest episode only serves to prove what many voters are already figuring out: Mitt Romney will do anything, say anything, smear any opponent and flip flop on any position in order to win. The American people in general and the Republican Party in particular deserve better than this.

“Smut”? Can we see Fred Thompson’s nipples? I couldn’t find that. Oh, darn.

To preserve this touchy bit of history in Republican infighting, we’ve set up a mirror of the five pages from phoneyfred.org which as of September 12 2007 were still available through the Google Cache. These pages aren’t all the pages that were once available — “Pimp Fred,” for instance, seems to have already vanished down the ol’ Memory Hole for good. But the remaining pages are preserved for historical value — and their presence on the Irregular Times server should not be taken to imply that Irregular Times endorses or agrees with the pages’ content.

It is safe to assume, however, that we find the whole episode highly amusing.