Sen. Barack Obama may be the only smoker running for president, but the occasional snapshot of him taking a puff has not endeared him to the powerful tobacco lobby.

How is Spitzer’s call girl related to former Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani?

It’s about the court, it would seem.

Sen. John McCain is doing well with many voters. However, some conservatives insist they wouldn’t vote for him should he get the Republican presidential nomination.

In politics, enemies need to be watched. However, it’s friends who can really cause trouble.

Failed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani learned this the hard way. His one-time pal, Bernard Kerik, kept making the wrong kind of headlines, and Giuliani suffered a kind of guilt by association.

Sen. Barack Obama, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, now finds himself in the same boat.

Judith Regan may have published a book with no last chapter. It doesn’t make for good reading, but it would seem worth her while.

Celebrity support, always important in national campaigns, is likely to play an increasing role in the high-cost, heated presidential campaign of 2008.

When it comes to good-looking supporters, Barack Obama leads the pack, with Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, and George Clooney. And of course, there’s his powerhouse stumper, Oprah Winfrey.

Hillary Clinton is backed by a slightly older, more established, show business crowd which includes Chevy Chase, Danny DeVito, Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg.

Thanks to Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat, the first rule of investigative journalism is “Follow The Money.”

The rule works for Muckety, too, especially when it comes to politics. Connections between politicians and their donors are always revealing.

A case in point: A story by Michael Cooper and Leslie Wayne in Thursday’s New York Times. It focused on the wealthy Paul E. Singer, a hedge-fund founder and backer of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid.

When it comes to Rudy Giuliani’s effort to win the Nascar vote, the national press corps just can’t resist stereotypes.

The latest sample comes from today’s Washington Post: “On Sunday, the Giuliani campaign came to the Homestead-Miami Speedway, past a handful of Confederate flags flying in the parking lot and beyond the Jack Daniel’s tent, to attend NASCAR’s Ford 400.”

There’s so much more to this picture than fast cars, bourbon and the Southern Cross.

There’s no question that the $100 million defamation lawsuit filed Tuesday by former books publisher Judith Regan has news value.

But the 70-page complaint also has literary value, as well.

Though it’s bogged down in places with legal terms, it’s still a Judith Regan style page-turner, complete with scenes of betrayal, confrontation and deception.

He claims he IS America in the title of his best-seller, I Am America (And So Can You!). So why is it so surprising that Stephen Colbert has announced he’s running for president?

For starters, Colbert is running only in South Carolina. And he’s a comedian.