Time to get aboard the all Anna Nicole Smith all the time bandwagon?

Consider this Pew Research Center poll:

Whether they were following news about Smith closely or not, her name is on the tip of many Americans’ tongues these days. Fully 38% of the public volunteered Smith’s name when asked who they had heard the most about in the news lately. She edged out George W. Bush by a significant margin (28% named the president) and left Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama (3%) and Hillary Clinton (3%) in the dust.

Victoria Toensing’s Washington Post piece on the Libby trial in last Sunday’s Outlook section may have set quite an impressive record: 49 pages of comments and 163 links from blogs.

A new record for a Post piece?  We’ll see if anyone can ever top it.

… ABC, for this question asked of White House press secretary Dana Perino:

Q I’m compelled to ask you this question. Does the President have any Oscar picks, and has he seen any of the films?

MS. PERINO: Has he seen what?

Q Keep in mind this is coming from ABC. Has the President seen any of the Oscar nominated films, and does he have any picks?

MS. PERINO: Well, you know, I have not seen any Oscar nominated films. I don’t think, personally, I couldn’t even tell you what is actually nominated. But I know he and Mrs. Bush do enjoy watching movies, and I will check into it and see if I can find out. I don’t even know what’s nominated.

Lousy day for Walter Reed Army Medical Center PR.

First, Dana Milbank skewers the operation in today’s Post.  An excerpt:

The base’s public-affairs crew arrived 25 minutes late for the tour but got right to work. “Some of these people are not on our list and are not coming in,” announced Lori Calvillo, Walter Reed’s chief spokeswoman. “C-SPAN, you’re not on the list. You’re not coming in.”

Then,  Brian Lamb reads that excerpt on the air during this morning’s “Washington Journal” on C-SPAN.

And he asks this of his guest, the Army Times’ Kelly Kennedy:

What kind of public relations organization would want to withhold, in our case, a network that showed this entire tour?  What’s that attitude about?

For the mild-mannered Lamb, you can’t get a stronger slap than that.  Viewers might have even detected a bit of irritation on Lamb’s normally poker face, but only if you have high definition TV.

Kelly’s response, by the way: “ I have no idea why they would do that.”

Today’s Washington Post:

Maryland Del. LeRoy E. Myers Jr. to truckers: If you’ve got ‘em, you don’t need to flaunt ‘em.  As the General Assembly debates global warming and the death penalty, Myers (R-Washington) has something else on his mind: the outsized plastic testicles that truckers dangle from the trailer hitches of their pickups.

Nothing we can add to what the Post already says.

First, last week’s answer — Sen. James Buckley — and the winning questions:

• Richarda: Who was the only person elected to the U.S. Senate (1970) in the second half of the 20th Century as a third-party (NOT independant)) candidate?
• Lee Annis: Name the only senator ever elected from the Conservative party and the only former senator now sitting on the federal bench.
• James Young: Name the United States Senator who unsuccessfully challenged Congress’ partial repeal of the First Amendment through the guise of campaign finance “reform.”
• Peter Roff: Name the retired jurist who got his start in politics only after his journalist-brother dragooned him into managing an ill-fated New York City mayoral campaign?
• Quin: Who, in retrospect, would have been a better appointment to the Supreme Court (despite then being 64) in 1987 than Anthony Kennedy was?

Good questions all.  But I was looking for one more: Name one of only three people who ran for U.S. Senate from more than one state.

Now, this week’s Extreme Trivia answer: Sen. Howell Heflin.  What’s the question?

If you’re flipping through the cable channels Thursday morning around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, stop for a moment on C-SPAN.  You’ll see Extreme Mortman on the “Washington Journal” discussing how Web 2.0 is changing politics.

C-SPAN just ran last night’s National Press Club event where Tony Snow turned the tables.  He grilled the White House press corps.  (The Examiner’s Yeas & Nays explains more here).

At one point Snow brought up blogs, and posed this question to the panel:

I am all for blogs.  People ought to be empowered.  We have got this new democratic age of the media.  It is amazing, you get this hateful stuff that comes flying around.  One of the most important takeaways, not only should you not believe your own press, you should not believe the opposition’s blog?

Check out the full video of the program at C-SPAN’s web site here.

Quite some bravado from Kos in today’s Washington Post article about liberal bloggers pounding on their new public enemy #1: Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher:

“Absolutely, we could take her out.”

And truth be told, they probably could pull it off.

But if you really want to see how important and compelling blogs are for democracy, go a few pages further into the Post.  From an op-ed by University of Chicago’s Raja Kamal and Cato Institute’s Tom Palmer:

A former college student, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, is sitting in an Egyptian prison, awaiting sentencing tomorrow. His alleged “crime”: expressing his opinions on a blog. His mistake: having the courage to do so under his own name. … Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime. 

What’s happening in Egypt seems a bit more compelling and critical for our blogging attention than the ability to influence a congressional district election here at home.

An exchange about Walt Reed hospital from today’s news briefing with White House press secretary Tony Snow:

Q So you’re saying the President learned about this from The Washington Post?
MR. SNOW: I don’t know exactly where he learned it, but I can tell you that we believe that they deserve better. And, again, Ed, this is something where I’d suggest you give DoD a call, because I know they’ve taken a good, hard look at it.
Q Tony, can I follow on that? As Bob Dole might ask, where’s the outrage?
MR. SNOW: There’s plenty of outrage.
Q Is there?
MR. SNOW: Yes.