SURPRISE! SURPRISE! HEATHER WILSON COMES OUT FROM UNDER HER ROCK... WITH A GUILTY PLEA

After skulking around and ducking the media for almost a week, rubber stamp Republican congresswoman Heather Wilson pops up and does a Pete Domenici me-too semi-guilty plea. Today's Washington Post is hot on the trail of the two crooked pols: "Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) acknowledged yesterday that she contacted a federal prosecutor to complain about the pace of his public corruption investigations, as the Senate ethics committee signaled that it had opened a preliminary inquiry into a similar communication by her state's senior senator, Pete V. Domenici (R)."

Like Domenici, her mentor who is planning on leaving her his senate seat, she still refuses to admit she pressured the now fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to speed up an investigation to help her re-election bid. She actually says she only got involved because her constituents were clamoring to know what was taking so long. This woman should be forced to take an oath and say this load of crap on a witness stand. In any case, I guess we'll see about that today when Iglesias testifies before Congress, along with several other illegally fired U.S. Attorney's who didn't fit in with the Bush Regime concepts of an authoritarian, politicized and tyrannical Justice Department.

The furor over Domenici and Wilson has rapidly become the focus of the dispute over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and a change in law that allows Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to appoint interim prosecutors for an indefinite period of time. The Justice Department has said that seven of the prosecutors were dismissed for failing to follow Bush administration policy on multiple issues, and acknowledged that one was sacked to make way for an ally of White House political adviser Karl Rove.

But most of the prosecutors have cited positive job reviews, and Democrats have alleged that there were political motivations behind the firings.

Yesterday CREW filed an ethics complaint against Domenici. They will probably do likewise against Wilson. (UPDATE: They did.) Domenici admitted he had lied over the weekend, although he's trying to make it sound like it wasn't exactly a lie... you know, another Republican straight-talker like his pal McCain.

Domenici is likely to attract a more substantial opponent next year, now that his name is mud. According to yesterday's Albuquerque Tribune, ex-Governor Dave Cargo, currently a member of the Republican Central Committee said that "This has the  potential to really cripple the (New Mexico) Republican Party. And the way (Rep. Heather (Wilson) and Pete are handling it, by essentially taking the Fifth, isn't helping them." Cargo complained that the GOP was salivating over the prospect of convicting some Democrats over something and suddenly "here are the Republican basically saying 'Ready, aim, form a circle and fire.' They're just killing each other.

As Iglesias said he feared all along, Cargo confirmed that his political future in New Mexico Republican politics is dead-- and that he may have even more to fear. "This thing could still cut a lot of ways, and I'd expect there's going to be a lot of scrutiny of his record. Still, here's this Hispanic prosecutor that you hauled all over the country and built up into a kind of poster child, and now here's your poster child and you're using him for target practice."

Sounds like Iglesias should come over from the Dark Side and join the Democrats. Wouldn't it be ironic if he ran for Wilson's seat!