"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad," wrote Aldous Huxley.

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Remember the presidential race? It was only "yesterday" metaphorically speaking, but it seems now like a million years ago.

Well, if you do remember, you should vividly recall Fred Thompson, the senator from Tennessee, who was also on "Law & Order" for several years as the gruff district attorney.

Fred decided, well into the race, that he really didn’t want to be president and dropped out fairly early. But this big, tall conservative is back in action.

He and his wife, Jeri, do a daily radio show for Westwood One, which is heard in 173 markets all over the country. Fred also just returned from Kentucky where he shot the first part of his role in Disney’s upcoming feature, "Secretariat," opposite Diane Lane and John Malkovich.

In a few months, he’ll be in Flint, MI, to portray William Jennings Bryan in the feature movie "Alleged." This drama is about the famous Scopes "monkey trial" where he argues with the great Clarence Darrow about the origins of man. The Darrow role will be played by Brian Dennehy.

Hmm, talk about typecasting – Fred Thompson as William Jennings Bryan!

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Soprano Danielle de Niese knocked them dead last night down at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. This performance kicked off the singer’s new hotly anticipated Decca recording, "The Mozart Album." She squeezed it in on her night off from her adorable performance as saucy Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro" at the Metropolitan Opera.


Danielle de Niese © Decca/Chris Dunlop

Danielle, born in Australia and raised in Los Angeles, is of Sri Lankan and Dutch parentage. She got her first break at age nine when she won a competition with a Whitney Houston medley. Danielle is in the tradition of the new opera stars – beautiful and trim and, in December, she’ll be marrying Gus Christie, the Englishman who runs the prestigious Glyndebourne Opera Festival.

This is a big week in New York for opera buffs. The late great Beverly Sills’s collection of gowns, paintings, opera scores, jewelry and everything else she garnered in a lifetime goes on sale at the Doyle Galleries this very day. Bidding will be especially hot for a helmet that the Wagner Society is bent on nabbing for its own.

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Arguments as to whether filmmaker Roman Polanski should get what he deserves or whether he should just waltz off into the sunset scot-free after all these years are dominating dinner tables.

But it looks as if about 80% of people polled think he should face the music, at last, and only the showbiz crowd (ever tender-hearted) and European intellectuals are on his side.

Any day now, we will have on wOw a "Conversation" where Julia Reed, Joan Juliet Buck and yours truly debate this matter. Here are some points I wasn’t smart enough to make in regard to that argument as it was happening:

Polanski acknowledged in his 1984 memoir that he caused his young 13-year-old victim "considerable pain" when he committed statutory rape on her in Hollywood. He made her submit to oral and vaginal sex, plus sodomy. But according to his biographer, Chris Sandford, he made little or no visible show of contrition. He was warned at the time to limit his public appearances with "nubile young actresses" during the trial. Polanski said back then that he was "a hard-working professional obliged to deal with these distractions."

After he fled from L.A. he continued to denounce what he called "bureaucratic interference" in his life. When he left France for trips to off-limits Holland or Switzerland, he was heard to say, "I’ll be home again before there’s any legal nonsense." He even bought a home in Gstaad.

Sandford remarks, "No wonder, perhaps, that one of Polanski’s friends told me last week that Roman had possibly come to believe over the last 30 years that he was less and less bound by any restrictions on his liberty." The biographer adds a P.S."If so, it’s an assumption that may yet be tested by events in the weeks ahead."