Last night marked the first appearance of sitting Senator Fred Thompson as the new district attorney, Arthur Branch, on NBC's plow horse Law And Order.

Senator Thompson is no novice thespian. He costarred in a number of major Hollywood productions before running for Al Gore's deserted Senate seat in 1996. He replaced the inexplicably boring Dianne Wiest as the district attorney (she herself had replaced the incomparable Steven Hill, who is answer to the trivia question "Who led the Mission Impossible Force during the first year of that show?" Extra points if you know the name of the character Mr. Hill played on IMF).

For some reason, Dianne Wiest, who is a great actress, really sucked on that show. Her character, Nora Lewin, was very uninvolving, and nothing about her performance really jumped out at the viewers. The most exciting thing she ever did on that show was be introduced, in her first episode, by America's mayor, Rudy Guiliani (who set the precedent for politicians moonlighting on Dick Wolf productions, we suppose). She was so uninteresting, we'd rather watch Steven Hill on his TD Waterhouse commercials.

But that's not the point of this rant, if there even is one. Last night as we watched Sen. Thompson trade barbs with DA Jack McCoy and Assistant DA Blondie Barbie, or whatever her name is, Mrs. Skippy remarked "Gee, do you think Bill Clinton will try to get a job on this show too?" (Mrs. Skippy is just as funny as Skippy, and that's why he married her. We have no idea why she married him).

That got us to thinking. Sen. Thompson is still a sitting senator, working in Congress, until the end of this year. We have spoken about Sen. Thompson's TV duties interfering with his day job here.

Now, when rumors about Bill Clinton negotiating for a talk show were flying around the great echo chamber, there was such an indignant hew and cry coming from the screeching heads that you could fry an egg on your overheated TV set.

As it turns out, those rumors were just that: rumors. Of course, that didn't stop anyone from decrying Mr. Clinton's lack of taste or dignity for contemplating something that it turned out he was never contemplating in the first place.

But Mr. Clinton was a private citizen when this was supposedly taking place. Sen. Thompson, if you'll notice our use of the title "senator," is still a senator.

Take it from us, many of Skippy's staff have worked on television shows (not Law and Order, but, Buffy, fer shure!). It takes a lot of work and focus and energy and time and commitment. To be fair, none of us have ever been a senator. But we bet that takes at least as much work and focus and etc. as being a television actor. We are very unsure how anyone could do both at the same time.