• Reliable Source: Tony Snow takes Helen Thomas’s apple. [WP]
• Heard on the Hill: Star of “My Super Sweet 16” now interns with Sen. Harry Reid… Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) gets manicures. [Roll Call]
• Rush & Molloy: Laura Bush spotted on a Delta shuttle. [NYDN]
• Page Six: Euan Blair gets full scholarship to Yale… Bill and Chelsea Clinton receive standing ovations while attending the show “Jersey Boys”… A Fran Drescher political campaign? [NYP]

• Reliable Source: Tipper Gore at the premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth”: “It ends with a message of ‘we can do it.’ [Al] doesn’t want people to go from denial to despair.” Moby, Lynda Carter, and Queen Noor were in the audience… Euan Blair is reportedly deciding between Yale and Harvard graduate programs… Ted Kennedy, Mary Cheney, Barack Obama, Tim Russert, Gary Hart, Pat Buchanan, Ariana Huffington, Karenna Gore Schiff, Cindy Sheehan, and Jim McGreevey are all making appearances at BookExpo 2006… Sean Penn to play Richard Clarke in upcoming film. [WP]
• Rush & Molloy: Halle Berry on Barack Obama: “I so love what he stands for and respect him so much that when I met him, I was a bit shaky.” [NYDN]
• Cindy Adams: Chelsea Clinton was seen paying for her dinner with a “tall, lean dude.” [NYP]

• Reliable Source: The Bushes gave Kenny Chesney special cowboy boots to commemorate his East Room performance… Alberto Gonzales says it’s “unclear” whether his parents entered the country illegally… Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) is returning $23,000 to an indicted producer. [WP]
• Under the Dome: James Gandolfini thinks Bush should “reinstate the draft, send 500,000 troops and finish it.”… Two members of the Grateful Dead fundraise for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)… John Edwards and Jack Kemp join forces to encourage people to save for retirement. [The Hill]
• Heard on the Hill: Euan Blair is no longer a Hill intern, and one question lingers: why? [Roll Call]
• Page Six: Former NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey will be on “Oprah” in the fall. [NYP]

• Will the kind gentleman from across the pond please refrain from burning down our fair city’s pubs, regardless of how corny they may be. [UPI]

• Young, upwardly-mobile professionals can’t really get “out.” For them, each neighborhood they invade is only a flagstone in the garden path towards an ever receding notion of success. But yeah, they’ll all be back in Virginia in 10 years, max. [Bubblemeter]

• A toast for anyone who has ever been used as a private OnStar service by their drunken friends, here here! [East Village Idiot]

Striking similarities exist between the U.S. and British governments. Consider the following ways in which the Brits are just like us:

• they view their current government as “sleazy and incompetent”;
• due in part to an unpopular war, their leader’s approval rating is languishing in the low 30’s, an all-time low; and
• various administration officials are now the subject of repeated and vociferous resignation calls.

In addition, Tony Blair, just like President Bush, has a hard-drinking kid who sometimes gets a little out of control.

So why are the British better than we are? Well, they currently have a sex scandal going on in the administration:

[Deputy Prime Minister John] Prescott’s former secretary, Tracey Temple, 43, has accused Prescott of having an affair with her, which included liaisons in his office and in a hotel room just before they joined Prescott’s wife, Pauline, for dinner downstairs….

[Temple also] alleged that she and Prescott often had sexual relations behind the desk in his office, with the door left open. She said one sexual encounter at his taxpayer-funded apartment took place immediately after the two had attended an Iraq war memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

We can’t let our former colonial masters get the better of us like this. Please, someone tell us about a Bush Administration sex scandal that’s just waiting to be exposed! We’ve blogged extensively about those congressional hookers; but that didn’t come as a surprise, given how Members enjoy living the high life. Right now we’d like to learn about lust within a famously disciplined executive branch.

(Random observation: Gale Norton sure left office quickly, and with surprisingly little commentary or media attention devoted to her departure. What’s up with that?)

Sex Scandal, Low Ratings Are Latest Setbacks to Blair Government [WP]
Report: Blair’s Son Gets Rowdy in D.C. Bar [WT/UPI]

Earlier: Hooker/Cunningham/WatergateGate: Who Didn’t Get Hookers?
Boring Ol’ Congressional Corruption Case NOW WITH HOOKERS

• Heard on the Hill: Fitness instructor was “horrified” to find out that the Bush twins were in his spin class after he made jokes about the president and distributed a DVD of “Bushisms”… Tennessee House candidate Joe Ford Jr. uses MySpace instead of an official campaign site. [Roll Call]
• Reliable Source: Drew Lachey and Steve Case are also attending the Correspondents’ Association Dinner… Euan Blair has a late, antic-filled night… Birthday party for WRC anchor Wendy Rieger is nearly ruined by the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds. [WP]
• Under the Dome: Reps. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) are the only House members who did not sponsor a single bill during this session… Princeton students Lauren Bush, presidential niece, and Harrison Frist, son of the senator, helped to select Bill Clinton as commencement speaker. [The Hill]
• Inside the Beltway: Politicians announce their commencement speech plans… Sandra Day O’Connor: “I was disappointed to see the percentage of women on the court drop by 50 percent.” [WT]
• Rush & Molloy: Mick Jagger won’t give up his hotel suite in Vienna for Bush… Bill Clinton, in Las Vegas, “enjoying Grey Goose, sea bass and apple pie.” [NYDN]
• Lloyd Grove’s Lowdown: Laura Bush holds White House screening of “Akeelah and the Bee.” [NYDN]

• Reliable Source: Tony Blair’s son is trying to be inconspicuous as a Capitol Hill intern… Hill staffers will continue to receive free subscriptions to Hustler. [WP]
• Inside the Beltway: Laura Bush on the film “Glory Road”: “You’ll be amused when you watch the movie and you see the lines that, ‘Blacks can’t play basketball.’”… Humane Society wants the White House to use cage-free eggs for its East Egg Roll. [WT]
• Page Six: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Hillary: “I hear Bill is driving her nuts. Apparently, she came home the other day, saw him on the sofa and yelled at him to turn off ‘Oprah,’ get off his butt, and pick up the towels on the bathroom floor. And Bill said, ‘Don’t try that stuff with me. You’re trying to run this place like the House of Representatives… and you know what I mean.’”… Morrissey was investigated by FBI and British counterpart after calling Bush a terrorist. [NYP]