DID HEATHER WILSON AND PETE DOMENICI COMMIT A CRIME BY PRESSURING A U.S. ATTORNEY? DID THEY GET HIM FIRED? LOOKS BAD FOR TWO VERY CORRUPT NM REPUGS

When it came out a few days ago that it was two Republican members of Congress who had been interfering inappropriately with the U.S. Attorney's office-- and may have been complicit in getting David Iglesias (a fellow Republican) fired, every assumed far right nut case Steve Pearce was the guilty party. Turns out Pearce may have been the only Republican in office who wasn't guilty!

The McClatchy papers are reporting today that the two culprits are Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson. The two "pressured the U.S. attorney in their state to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation that involved at least one former Democratic state senator." There's more than the taint of clear ethics violations here, especially because Igelsias was forced out of his office by the Bush Regime soon after. Wilson felt she needed the indictment fast-- in time for her troubled re-election vote in November-- and  Iglesias feels certain Gonzales fired him Dec. 7 in retribution for resisting the pressure from Wilson and Domenici to rush an indictment.

Both Wilson and Domenici, her political godfather-- who is counting on being able to hand over his senate seat to her-- were disrespectful, if not vicious, to Iglesias in trying to get him to indict a Democrat before the election. Both Domenici and Wilson are stonewalling the media and refusing to respond to questions, no doubt trying to get their stories manufactured and in sync. Earlier today Domenici snarled at a reporter that Iglesias has made it up but late in the day the Bush Regime released a statement that Domenici had indeed complained. Gonzales, as usual, denies everything.

Iglesias' is just one of 7 cases where the Bush Regime has fired U.S. Attorneys for partisan reasons (although all of them were Republicans). The most notable has been the firing of Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney who brought down Republican congressman/bribetaker Randy "Duke" Cunningham and has been hot on the tail of several other powerful Republican congressmen tied to Cunningham such as Jerry Lewis and Duncan Hunter.  Yesterday House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers issued subpoenas to require Iglesias and Lam plus two other ousted U.S. attorneys to testify before Congress. The subpoena vote was 7-0 with all five Republican members of the subcommittee avoiding having to go on the record one way or the other.

The subcommittee chairperson, Linda Sanchez, asked "Are these people being removed for doing their job and for it doing it too well?" Iglesias says he fears the consequences of ratting out Domenici and Wilson. "I fear retaliation," said Iglesias, a Republican and former military defense lawyer who served as a model for a character in the movie A Few Good Men. "This is a small state and there are not too many employment opportunities, and I fear they will blacklist me." We're talking about New Mexico... in the U.S.A., not some backwoods province of the old Soviet Union. One has to wonder why Alberto Gonzales hasn't been impeached.


UPDATE: AN AVALANCHE OF SUBPOENAS HEADED BUSH REGIME'S WAY

Those subpoenas that are meant to help the House Judiciary Committee get to the bottom of Gonzales' firing of the U.S. Attorneys for political reasons ae just the beginning. According to today's Hill there are lots more coming. Congressional committees expect to "explore corruption and mismanagement allegations on everything from pre-war Iraq intelligence to the mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina."