Politics are a girl's best friend

The University of Nevada Las Vegas student who asked Hillary Clinton is she preferred diamonds or pearls during Thursday's CNN/Democratic debate is pissed about the amount of smack she's receiving.

Maria Luisa said she has received a number of e-mails critizing her question and was approached by another UNLV student who said, "You gave our school a bad reputation." She countered on her MySpace page (which has been set to private), saying she had instead prepared a question about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but someone from CNN had "forced" her to ask her "frilly" question to close the debate. [watch her ask about Hillary's jewelry preference]

Sam Feist, the executive producer of the debate, said that the student was asked to choose another question because the candidates had already spent at least 10 minutes discussing Yucca Mountain. Luisa chose the diamond/pearl question from her list of pre-approved questions, on which CNN told her to write a lighter question for such instances.

Still, a CNN spokesperson said the girl was not "forced" to ask this question. It was her question and she voluntarily agreed to ask it. CNN selected the question and asked her toward the end of the debate if she wanted to ask it.

This question, among other things, have lead Clinton's opponents to accuse CNN of going easy on the fruntrunner, though she tried to convince voters on Friday that she had put a bad two-week stretch behind her and emerged strong from her debate performance in Las Vegas.