Anna Nicole's Bush Connection

The Bush Administration's top Supreme Court lawyer filed arguments on behalf of Anna Nicole Smith and wants to take part when her appeal is argued before the high court.

The court will decide early next year whether to let the U.S. solicitor general share time with Smith's attorney during the one hour argument on Feb. 28.

Smith, a television reality star and native Texan, plans to attend the court argument.
She is trying to collect millions of dollars from the estate of J. Howard Marshall, the oil tycoon she married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was a 26-year-old topless dancer in Houston. Marshall died in 1995.

Like Marshall, President Bush was a Texas oil man. Both attended Yale. Both held government positions in Washington.

A federal bankruptcy judge sided with Smith in the fight over her late husband's estate, awarding her $474 million. That was reduced to about $89 million by a federal district judge, then thrown out altogether by a federal appeals court.