WORSE THAN SCOOTER LIBBY OR HOLLYWOOD PARTY GIRLS: DOOLITTLE, LEWIS, CALVERT, MILLER, 4 CALIFORNIA CROOKED CONGRESSMEN

When people want to make an analogy between the Paris Hilton saga currently playing out on a TV set near you and current politics, the most obvious comparison is the predicament another privileged normally-above-the-law Republican, Irving Libby (AKA- "Scooter"), finds himself. But while actor/lobbyist/presidential hopeful Fred Thompson and a menagerie of the Republican high and mighty are demanding special treatment-- and no prison time-- for Libby, no one with any power in Hollywood cares if they throw away the key on Hilton and she's never heard from again. Yesterday AP Entertainment writer Sandy Cohen pointed out that Hollywood has little love for jailed Paris Hilton. "Celebrities," he writes, "who fall on tough legal times can often rely on their fellow stars for support. Jodie Foster spoke out on Mel Gibson's behalf after his anti-Semitic tirade last summer. The cast of 'The View' gave Alec Baldwin a place to explain his custody battle and an angry voicemail message he left for his 11-year-old daughter. Robert Downey, Jr., was welcomed with understanding and job offers after his multiple drug arrests.

But few Hollywood players have come out in support of Paris Hilton, who was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case."

Instead Hilton supporters are a motley crew of drugs addicts, losers and the trashy hangers-on who habitually bask in her notoriety, notoriety based on porno videos, bad taste, bad behavior, and general disgustingness.

Usually "powerful people protect powerful people," said veteran Hollywood publicist Michael Levine.

"But in this case I don't see any rallying around her," he said. "She is a person who got into the famous club for nothing and I think there's some contempt around that."

Howard Bragman, a longtime publicist who runs the public-relations firm Fifteen Minutes, said Hilton doesn't have the "strong foundation of relationships in this town" that would motivate famous folks to stand behind her.

"Paris' career was made in a microwave and not in a crock pot," he said, adding that Hilton lacks the self-awareness that might inspire empathy from her colleagues.

"You've got to understand and accept responsibility for yourself in order for people to rally around you," he said.

Before Hilton was sent back to jail Friday, comedian George Lopez called her brief stay behind bars "more like a spa treatment than an actual sentence."

"Celebrities get treated lightly by the judicial system," he said. "Wealthy and affluent and famous people get treated differently than anybody else."

And that, of course, is exactly what Cheney, Bush, Thompson and the rest of the Republicans are hoping they can pull off for their pal "Scooter," someone who endangered the security of hundreds of secret agents and of the United States in order to push forward a narrow partisan agenda of deceit and corruption.

But I don't even want to make the Paris Hilton-Scooter Libby analogy today. Today I want to point out someone else's analogy, another AP writer's, Erica Werner's. Today Erica took a look a something a lot filthier stinking up California than the Hilton family: Jerry Lewis, Ken Calvert, Gary Miller and John Doolittle.

Hollywood party girls don't have a monopoly on trouble in California. A disproportionate number of the state's congressional Republicans are facing ethics questions that threaten to sink their careers and their party's political fortunes too.

Of 201 House Republicans, at least six are known to have attracted the attention of federal investigators-- and four are from California. Their woes come in the wake of the lurid corruption scandal that sent ex-GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of San Diego to prison last year for taking $2.4 million in bribes.

DWT regulars may have come across this frame before-- but it's always nice to see it being picked up for wider circulation, especially in relationship to the 3 southern California crooks, whose constituents are still widely ignorant of the ominous judicial status of their representatives. (Doolittle is dead meat in CA-04 and no one, from either party, expects him to run for re-election.)

Besides Doolittle, California Republicans with ethics problems are:

—Rep. Jerry Lewis, now in his 15th term and chairman of the Appropriations Committee last year when federal prosecutors in Los Angeles began investigating his ties to a lobbyist with clients in his district.

—Rep. Gary Miller, in his fifth term, who's drawn scrutiny over a tax deferral strategy he used in a profitable real estate sale to a Southern California town outside his district.

—Rep. Ken Calvert, in his eighth term, who denies any conflict over pushing federal funding for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles from property he sold at a profit. The FBI pulled Calvert's financial disclosure forms a year ago, but he says there's no evidence he's under active investigation.

The four deny wrongdoing, and it's not clear that Miller, Calvert or Lewis are in immediate legal or political jeopardy. Not so with Doolittle, who barely won re-election last year in one of the most heavily Republican districts in California.

Interestingly of the 6 horrid Republicans we've been looking at in this post, only Hilton, the one whose crimes are the least harmful to society, has acknowledged guilt. The other 5, Libby, Doolittle, Calvert, Miller, and Lewis are all swearing up and down that they're all choir boys, just like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, James Tobin, Chuck McGee, Dusty Foggo, David Safavian, Steven Griles, Adam Kidan, Tony Rudy, Michael Scanlon, Mitchell Wade, Brent Wilkes, Thomas Kontogiannis, Neil Volz, Mark Zachares, Mark Foley... before the started begging for mercy and working on their plea bargains.