By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Friday, March 17, 2006; C03

Jessica Simpson is 30 minutes late; the scrum in Room 1539 of the Longworth House Office Building is getting vicious. AP, People and "Inside Edition" are here, bumping up against Christian Broadcasting Network, ESPN, Modern Health Care -- all snarling for a good angle. Bystanders pack the halls, camera phones poised. Then squeals, and Simpson walks through the crowd, her publicist leading the way. She looks around and giggles.

The 25-year-old blond singer/reality star/Pizza Hut spokeswoman is the International Youth Ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit medical charity that repairs facial deformities for Third-World children. Of all the good works needed in this world, how did Simpson pick this project? Her hairdresser's nephew had a cleft palate. In the midst of shooting her new movie and splitting from soon-to-be-ex Nick Lachey , she jets in yesterday for a day of lobbying.

"That's Jessica Simpson !" says one Hill staffer. The jaw actually drops.

Our star is smaller in person (aren't they all?) and dressed like a proper lobbyist -- black pantsuit, pearl earrings, hair tucked conservatively in a loose bun. The pantsuit actually belongs to Simpson's makeup artist because, we're told, the dress she was planning to wear "split."

"Thank you guys so much !" Simpson exclaims. She talks about observing the surgery of a little girl on a trip to Africa last fall. "It was a very spiritual moment," she says, "and made me realize the purpose of life is to go through it smiling." She calls plastic surgeon Bill Magee , founder of the charity, an "angel."

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who has had 10 operations for his cleft palate, says: "Maybe God sends people like Jessica to the earth to make everyone smile." Magee says it's time to stop "paying lip service" and give some sorely needed funding to the cause. He calls it a "serious day" and Simpson a "serious woman."

" Jessica !" a reporter shouts at the first moment of silence. Why is she skipping the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner Thursday night? Simpson is hustled out of the room.

Now, this the real buzz. "Simpson's Snub" headlines have been threatening to sink all the do-gooding of the day. The celebrity reportedly turned down an invitation to the GOP gala and a photo op with President Bush because she didn't want to mix her nonpartisan cause with a partisan fundraiser. Publicist Rob Shuter says she was never confirmed to attend; father-manager Joe Simpson says the details were "never worked out." But NRCC spokesman Carl Forti says she was "100 percent most definitely" locked in and had arranged to attend the VIP reception with the president, but pulled out late Wednesday afternoon.

How's the starlet handling the fuss? Shuter says, "I don't think she's fully aware what's going on." She's been too busy preparing.

Simpson flees to a private lunch with congressional folk, where, sources say, she cries about the children. Meanwhile, her handlers furiously try to hook up for a quick grip-and-grin with the president. When that doesn't work out, her father puts out the word that she greatly admires Bush.

"We are huge fans of him and of his family, his girls," he tells Associated Press. "Jessica loves the heck out of him."

After the lunch, a crowd of reporters stand outside a women's bathroom for 10 minutes waiting for a sound bite. She emerges, poses for pictures with Capitol Police, but doesn't answer questions.

With photographers following every step, Simpson walks out of the building arm-in-arm with Magee and jokingly predicts the next tabloid cover: " Jessica Falls for Doctor !" Then she disappears into a black stretch Excursion -- smiling all the while.

So just how moved were conservatives by Al Gore 's global-warming slide show? While energetically flacking his new documentary at a convention of theater owners in Vegas Monday, Gore told a story about the warm reception he got at a Grover Norquist breakfast gathering here in January. In Variety's account of the speech, Gore said that D.C. conservatives "stood up afterward and said, 'You're absolutely right.' "

How many conservatives? Three people at the convention tell us Gore left the distinct impression he received multiple kudos, "many" in Variety's telling. That got a chuckle from the breakfast club, whose members recall a polite response but only one attendee approaching Gore with praise. Gore's people deny any hyperbole, saying he never claimed more than one enviro-conversion at the meal and may have been misquoted. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," hits theaters in May.

ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff was released from Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center yesterday, six weeks after he was seriously wounded during a roadside bombing while on assignment in Iraq. He will spend the next few weeks at a rehab center in New York before going home, ABC News President David Westin said in an e-mail to colleagues and reporters. He said Woodruff, 44, has been up and about, joking with his family and watching the news. But "we expect months of further recuperation," Westin said.

Olympic speedskater and anti-genocide activist Joey Cheek coasted into town to break bread with President Bush at last night's GOP gala; this morning, he was to join House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi at a briefing on the Sudan crisis. Interesting lineup -- which side is he really on?

"I'm a registered Democrat," the gold medalist told us yesterday, "but in this case the stuff I'm talking about is a humanitarian effort. It's not a Republican effort, it's not a Democratic effort." (Take note, Miss Sim pson .)

Cheek, 26, sounded a little dazed by his sudden emergence as an activist, after donating his $40,000 of Olympic winnings to a refugee charity. "I thought, 'Hey, I'll sign a few autographs and I'll be done.' " Instead he's found himself on a roller coaster of speaking engagements, charity meetings, a headlining role at next month's Save Darfur Coalition rally on the Mall. More than he ever expected, "but I'm happy."

How soon before someone runs this guy for office? Perhaps down the road, he said; college comes first. Cheek, who was infamously turned down last fall by Harvard, has apps out to several elite schools and says he's gotten some encouraging phone calls. "My situation," he says, "has been greatly improved."