Paris Hilton and the Supreme Court

On the drive into work I was listening to live coverage of the Judge John Roberts Supreme Court confirmation hearings and almost veered off the road from busting out laughing over a comment made by Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D).

Somehow, last year's scandal over Republican staffers allegedly downloading thousands of documents from Democratic computer files came up. Durbin actually made reference to the story I broke Tuesday about the Massachusetts teenager who pleaded guilty to breaking into Paris Hilton's cell phone account and posting its contents on the Web for the entire world to see (the original story about how this kid and his buddies carried out the attack is here).

Durbin said: "I sent a letter to the attorney general yesterday applauding the fact that the Justice Department had, in fact, successfully prosecuted, in Massachusetts, a person who had hacked in and stolen the telephone records of Paris Hilton. And 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."

I'm flattered that he mentioned the news, if not the exact story or the publication that broke it, but I have to ask: Is nothing sacred anymore? Can't we get through something as serious as a Supreme Court nomination hearing without mentioning Paris Hilton? Guess not. Washington Post reported.