Roberts Hearing Has Paris Hilton Moment

AP ^ | 9/15 | LAURIE KELLMAN

[SmithL]

WASHINGTON -- Paris Hilton's name made John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination a bit sexier Thursday.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., interrupted the Judiciary Committee's somber discussion of constitutional matters with the suggestion that a recent case involving the hotel heiress should serve as a precedent for protecting the Senate panel's stolen records.

Last year, Republican staffers were caught snooping through Democratic computer files, some of which outlined strategy for blocking Bush's judicial nominees.

A world away, Hilton — whose sex video with an ex-boyfriend became a cyberspace novelty — was the victim of a teenage hacker who broke into T-Mobile's computer system, obtained her list of celebrity phone numbers and posted them online. The teenager, a minor, was sentenced this week to 11 months in a juvenile facility.

The two cases should be connected, Durbin reported writing in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.

"I asked the attorney general to please ask our special counsel in this case to take a look at the precedent of the Paris Hilton case and see if he can perhaps protect our records as much as we want to protect that poor young lady's telephone records," Durbin said at the hearing.

Vanity Fair magazine, whose cover features a virtually topless Hilton this month, says she earned about $7 million last year and is expected to inherit $30 million.

[hsalaw]

"I think Durbin must be thinking about a dreamy vacation in Paris at taxpayer's expense."

He should buy one of Rush's "Gitmo" T-shirts and take a vacation in Gitmo, courtesy of the US military he slandered. I'd pay to see that.

[joem15]

Was this Sen. Dick Durbin's "pubic hair on a Coke can" moment?

[finnigan2]

" She is far from poor , she is young, but her actions in a porn film disqualify her from being called a lady IMHO."

- I happened to see the porn film in question before it got pulled off the web site. It was unremarkable (as porn films go) except for the striking way in which Ms. Hilton was playing to the camera, rather than her lover, throughout. She was supposedly giving him the big Lewinsky but kept twisting around to try and leer at the camera. In short, she was about as involved in the action as any street hardened hooker would be.
The fact that she has since gone on, unfazed, to keep herself in the public eye tells me that she is, despite her money and social standing, just a cheap scrag.

[sgtbono2002]

I too saw the film. On a scale of 1 to 9 I give it a 2. Her performance put most who saw it to sleep. When it comes to being hot--she is not.

[SkyPilot]

I like what Conan O'Brien said last night. He was assigning who would play the parts in the Hollywood movie for Hurricane Katrina.

Kathy Bates would Blanco, and the rest down the list. He then came to this:

"And, for the Hollywood movie playing Pumping Station Number Six in New Orleans.........