If you're a really big fan of Fred Thompson, you may not want him to run for president.

That's because federal equal time regulations restrict candidates from receiving more face time than others and, if Thompson does in fact become a candidate, General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC may have to pull any episodes of Law & Order featuring him from the rerun rotation.

Cable television is not subject to those regulations so, if he does run, we could still in theory see Arthur Branch on Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE: TWX) TNT. However in the Governator's campaign, cable networks pulled his movies to avoid complaints.

All of this raises a question: Would America be better served if Thompson decided to forgo further political ambitions in order that we can watch Law & Order unrestricted?

Should politics really interfere with such a great show? I think not. Fred, for the sake of the show's loyal followers, don't run for President.

Do you watch Law & Order? I do, and despite the fact that I actually did take several law courses in college and business school, I'll be honest: much of my law I learned from Dick Wolf's many franchises. So when I see the news today about Patricia Dunn I think, ripped from the headlines! and I wonder:

Will her attorney in her eventual trial claim that the cancer made her do it?

Dunn, the now-former, now-infamous chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) is rumored to be heading towards an indictment today (Update: Dunn chose to surrender at a Silicon Valley courthouse on October 5, and will be arraigned November 17) for her rather pathological behavior, which ran the gamut from lying to spying to generally shocking paranoia. "Separately," she's been recently told by her physician that her ovarian cancer (diagnosed in 2004) is "advanced," and she'll be starting chemotherapy later this week.

Dunn has been battling her health for the past two years, while in the throes of what seems like an evil and invasive disease. If you've known anyone who's dealt with such terrifically defeating illness, you might have seen any number of different responses, from "courage" to fear to downright falling apart. My mother-in-law, who died of cancer two years ago, became blind and deaf to any negative news for the past several months of her life, completely ignoring the bad behavior of those around her. Another distant family member who's dying of liver disease has decided to hoard all his belongings -- and those of his brother and sister -- jealously guarding things that mean nothing to him in an odd denial of his fate.

It's not a stretch to me, then, to decide that these two pieces of news -- an indictment for strange, paranoid, and yes, criminal behavior; an indication that a serious disease is becoming more so -- might not be "separate" after all. I wouldn't at all be surprised if, indeed, the cancer made her do it.