It was a momentous occasion in Washington, D.C. The District’s first Costco opened. The location is in Fort Lincoln and it brought quite a draw for it’s first day: namely, VPOTUS Joe Biden. According to pool reports, Biden walked up, flashed his Costco card and strolled through the store enjoying samples and shopping for items like children’s books, fire logs, a TV and an apple pie. God bless America. One enterprising salesman at the store even tried to sell Biden some tires! According to the pool report, Biden said, “”Hey man I don’t need tires,” he said “I don’t drive anymore.”

Naturally, Twitter had a field day. Reuters‘ Sam Youngman was thoroughly impressed with the tire salesman. He tweeted, “I have finally decided on my vote for Time’s Man of the Year: The Costco employee who tried to upsell Biden some tires.”

Plenty of others weighed in…. Read more

WaPo‘s Jennifer Rubin tweeted late last month that she was working to have an imposter removed from Twitter. Today, the fake account is still up, active and causing all kinds of trouble.

“I’m sure it’s fun for the @JRubinBIogger account to fool people, but it’s extremely unfair to @JRubinBlogger,” a sympathetic Dave Weigel of Slate tweeted Saturday. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait questioned, “How can there be two Twitter accounts with the same name?” Rubin chimed in to explain that the fake Rubin’s username is spelled with a capital “i” instead of a lowercase “l” in “Blogger.” Though the fake account generally tweets things that parody conservatives and the bio on the fake account says “Not the real Rubin, duh,” the font Twitter uses renders the two names indiscernible.

Rubin told Weigel and Chait that “we are taking legal action.” Asked if “we” refers to WaPo and whether she has retained a lawyer, Rubin told FishbowlDC, “We are asking Twitter to remove it.”

Twitter is only six years old and even younger in terms of mainstream popularity. As with everything else on the Internet, laws that govern it aren’t quite set in stone. David L. Hudson Jr., a lawyer and scholar with the First Amendment Center who also teaches media law at Vanderbilt University, compared Rubin’s problem to cyber squatting — a practice wherein one person buys an obvious domain name that would be beneficial to someone else. For example, it would be like V.P. Joe Biden purchasing the domain “PaulRyan.com.”

If [Twitter impersonators] get to be enough of a problem there may have to be another law passed,” Hudson said. He called it a “balancing act,” of protecting someone’s privacy and publicity rights while also protecting the right “to comment and parody and otherwise engage in protected speech.”

Hudson wouldn’t comment on whether Rubin could make a case in court, but said “generally” courts are applying existing law to new media.

And existing media law is tricky enough. “Parody is generally permissible under the law,” said Erik Pelton, a trademark and copyright attorney in Virginia. “Several areas of law could intersect in these cases,” he said, “including rights of publicity, which are complicated because they vary significantly by state.” Pelton added that even at the state level, it is “difficult” to determine what law to apply and said that if something “is clearly a parody based on its tone and substance,” it would be “difficult to shut down.”

Lastly, Pelton warned that Rubin should be cautious of the “Streisand effect,” a phenomenon that occurs when attention is inadvertently directed at something by complaining about it.

Fresh off his RTCA performance last Wednesday, comedian Joe Wong joined John Dickerson on CBS’ “Washington Unplugged” earlier today. He called performing at the dinner a “very exciting experience” and Vice President Joe Biden an “amazing comedian.”

I personally think Wong & Biden has a nice ring to it, if the two Joes ever decide to take this show on the road…

Scroll to 8 mins in.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Set your Tivos… Vice President Joe Biden will be a guest of Jon Stewart‘s on “The Daily Show” next Tuesday.

This will be Biden’s sixth appearance, but his first time back since being elected Vice President. His last appearance was when he was still a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in August 2007.

Photo from GQ.com.

Forget Kevin Bacon.

President Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden may be excluded from GQ‘s “50 Most Powerful in DC,” but looks like most of the list’s top half are one degree of separation from the West Wing.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, Senior Advisor David Axelrod, Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers (tie), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former VP Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts round out the top ten. The list may be a changing-of-the-guard from the Bush administration, but it’s a DC no-brainer.

Your DC media types are represented by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos at #31, Politico‘s John Harris #43 and The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer and NYT‘s Scott Shane tied at #27.

Politico points out White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, though #20 on the last list, did not make the cut this time around.

The mag will celebrate the list with a party tonight at 701. And though obviously overlooked for “50 Most Powerful,” FBDC will be there. Check back tomorrow for dets.

The complete list, as polled by “journalists, congressmen, lobbyists, think tankers, and influence peddlers,” can be found here.

Unless you’re the AP’s Jennifer Loven, 11-year-old Damon Weaver has probably gotten more questions in to President Obama than you have.

Weaver interviewed the President late last week at the White House, focusing, fittingly, on education. The young reporter from Florida even did a press avail on the South Lawn afterwards, appearing on the morning shows and cablers.

Weaver has quite the resume tape. He’s already interviewed politicos like Vice President (then presidential candidate) Joe Biden, Colin Powell and Caroline Kennedy, Hollywood stars like Samuel Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker and has reversed the mic on some of our own, including David Gregory, Larry King, Megyn Kelly, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Looking for a fall intern? Little Weaver’s probably over-qualified.

ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos will travel to Iraq this 4th of July weekend with Vice President Joe Biden for an exclusive Sunday show interview. From ABC’s release:

Our EXCLUSIVE headliner this Sunday from Iraq: Vice President Joe Biden. George Stephanopoulos travels with the Vice President, who this week took the lead on Iraq policy for the administration as US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities. Mr. Stephanopoulos will sit down with Vice President Biden for a discussion on the draw down, the status of the administration’s first large-scale offensive in Afghanistan that launched this week, the latest from Iran, and the state of the US economy.

Good morning FishbowlDC!

Got a blind item, interesting link, funny note, comment, birthday, anniversary or anything of the sort for Morning Reading List? Drop us a line.

Tonight’s the Radio & TV Correspondents Association Dinner. Scroll down FBDC for all the dets. What we know and what we’re reading this Friday morning…

NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE | NEWS NOTES | WEST WING REPORTAGE | JOBS

NEWSPAPERS

The Boston Globe union has set a date to vote on a new contract, though no agreement has been met with the newspaper’s owner, NYT.

NYT executive editor Bill Keller on his reporting on Iran in E&P. “Do people in the media crit game really think editors are supposed to be desk jockeys who never go get a sense of the story?” he writes. “Or is the idea that when a big, exhausting news breaks visiting editors should hole up in the hotel?”

TV

Long Live the Nightly News! Fortune: Despite a steady erosion in their collective audience and an aging viewership, the big three nightly newscasts are hardly dead. Actually, they draw an average 21 million viewers every night. Andrew Tyndall says there’s a good reason for that — they’re still the best daily snapshot of news on television.

Vice President Joe Biden just isn’t pulling the ratings for Sunday shows that he used to. TVNewser has the numbers of his last appearances on “Meet the Press” versus past appearances on “This Week” and “Face the Nation.”

ONLINE

Today was TVNewser’s Steve Krakauer‘s last day on the Morning Media Menu. Listen in here.

NEWS NOTES

It appears the legendary Walter Cronkite is gravely ill. He is 92.

WEST WING REPORTAGE

Daily Finance “Obama takes on Fox News, loses“: When is Barack Obama going to learn that presidents shouldn’t play press critic? It didn’t work for Richard Nixon. It didn’t work for Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. It didn’t help John McCain win the White House, and it won’t help Obama, who vented his frustration with Fox News Wednesday.

CNN’s keeping tabs on WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs‘ tardiness. “Gibbs was a total of 13 hours and 46 minutes late to his own press briefings in the month of May alone. Of the 19 briefings held by Gibbs in May, the White House officially pushed the scheduled start time back 14 times (although: one time they actually made it earlier.) That averages out to a delay of roughly 28 minutes a day – a total of 8 hours and 50 minutes for the month.”

There was speculation yesterday that President Obama would make a surprise appearance in Gibbs’ daily press briefing. When he didn’t, a few reporters were left disappointed, including CBS’ Mark Knoller. Read through here.

Also at the WH yesterday- Bob Woodward. Mike Memoli tweets his run-in.

HAT TIPS: mediabistro, Politico

JOBS after the jump…

Read more

This past Saturday marked the one year anniversary of the death of Tim Russert. The journalism icon was remembered this weekend throughout DC and beyond- with tributes in his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News, on NBC by his former colleagues, and also by his former competitors.

“Meet the Press” anchor David Gregory marked Russert’s legacy on Sunday’s show. “He’s here, still teaching by examples, offering the lessons of a full life we can emulate.”

TVNewser: One Year Later: Remembering Tim Russert

HuffPost: Remembering Tim Russert One Year Later

Politico: Remembering “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert

The Buffalo News: Russert Remembered on Anniversary of His Death

Matt Cooper: Tim Russert, Me And The CIA Leak Case

CBS’ Bob Schieffer‘s commentary on Sunday’s “Face the Nation”: “We have a wall of TV sets in our office where we monitor the competition, and on Sundays I still find myself looking at those screens expecting to find that big, round Irish face of Tim Russert.”

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “It was fun to cover politics with Tim and an honor to compete against him.”

FOX News Sunday’s Chris Wallace (via TVNewser): “I don’t think the basic goal of political talk shows has changed at all since Tim’s tragic death. We are still trying to get our national leaders off their talking points – to react in real time – and explain their policies and actions. I never would have admitted it while he was alive, but he was the best at that. And a year after his death, all of us on the Sunday morning beat are still trying to live up to the standard he set.”

NBC’s Tom Brokaw (via TVNewser): “It’s testimony to Tim’s legacy that politicians, journalists, and viewers alike still refer to the high standard of his work and say how much they miss him. We were lucky to have him for as long as we did – and we must always be mindful of his commitment to the place of vigorous journalism in the public arena.”

NBC’s tributes from Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell and more continued after the jump…

Read more

The Situation Room w/ Wolf Blitzer: Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) will discuss gas pipeline, Letterman feud, Obama and 2012. Dir. OMB Peter Orszag, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to discuss healthcare, budget and economy and author of “Myths, Illusions and Peace,” David Makovsky.

NBC’s Meet the Press w/ David Gregory: VP Joe Biden and roundtable with Republican strategist Mike Murphy and MSNBC’s Fmr. Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos: Sec. H&H Kathleen Sebelius, Former MA Gov. Mitt Romney and a roundtable with Dem. Strategist & ABC News Consultant Donna Brazile, Nat Journal’s Ron Brownstein, WSJ’s Kimberly Strassel and columnist George Will to discuss the battle over a public insurance plan, the opposition from Congress over key provisions, and how the President plans to rally public support for reform.

CBS’ Face the Nation: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to discuss health care, Guantanamo Bay, the Supreme Court nom. of Sotomayor, and the state of the Republican Party.

Fox News Sunday: Sen. Chris Dodd, (D-CT) / Chairman, Banking Committee with Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-IA) / Ranking Member, Finance Committee. Tom Donohue, President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce. Steve Chaconas, National Bass Guide Service.

CNN’s State of the Union w/ John King:Sec. H&H Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to discuss health care debate and the latest on H1N1.

CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz: CNN’s Rick Sanchez, CBS Sportsline’s Gregg Doyel to discuss Twitter: phenomenon or passing fad? TIME’s Mark Halperin, Air America’s Ana Marie Cox and Jim Geraghty of National Review to discuss Palin-Letterman and Obama comedy

NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show: BBC’s Katty Kay, ABC News’ Claire Shipman, NYT’s Helene Cooper and Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC will discuss why Republicans are struggling to find the right path to oppose Obama

Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal: WaPo’s Ceci Connolly on health care reform, Bara Vaida of National Journal on health insurance lobbyists, Tom Gjelten of NPR on TARP bailout funds and Politico’s John Harris on VA and NJ gubernatorial races.

Bloomberg’s Political Capital with Al Hunt: Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Middle East peace process, Bloomberg’s Lizzie O’Leary and Christine Harper report on executive pay issues, Hans Nichols on health care reform and Margaret Carlson and Kate O’Beirne discuss Sotomayor’s confirmation process, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

Will update as we learn them.