He voted against them in the Senate. But after touring an ethanol plant in Iowa today, he considers them “a matter now of national security.”

Ethanol subsidies are one thing; the ethanol mandate is another. The 2005 energy bill mandated the production of about 7 billion gallons of ethanol, and the one Congress is working on now would raise that to about 35 billion gallons. Does Thompson support such a massive increase in the mandate? It’s not clear from the article.