So let’s review where we are. For weeks now we’ve been chronicling the story of the unprecedented firings of eight US Attorneys around the country. From the outset, the pattern of firings was highly suspicious. Attracting most notice was the fact that one of the firees was San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam who was in the midst of what is arguably one of the most important public corruption cases in American history when she got the boot.

Today, though, the other shoe dropped — possibly one of many to come. One of the fired US Attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico, came forward and said he believes he was fired because he didn’t play ball and rush an indictment of a New Mexico Democrat prior to the November election.

If Iglesias got canned because he wasn’t willing to tip the scales of justice in favor of the GOP, it’s awfully hard to figure that Lam wasn’t fired for what has always seemed to be the most logical reason — because she was bagging too many corrupt Republicans and getting too deep into the CIA.

Now, when Iglesias had his news conference this morning, McClatchy reports that he said that “two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans.”

Iglesias wouldn’t name those members of Congress. But we want to know who they are.

Logic suggested we contact the three Republican members of the New Mexico congressional delegation: Reps. Pearce and Wilson and Sen. Domenici. We contacted the offices of each. Pearce denied that he was a caller. Wilson and Domenici have yet to respond.

Given the connection to the election, we’ve also contacted members of the House leadership — specifically, Reps. Blunt, Boehner, Cantor, Hastert, Reynolds and Sensenbrenner. We also called Sen. Dole. So far we’ve only heard back from Cantor, who denies being a caller.

Now, to be crystal clear, no inference should be drawn from the fact that we called these members of the leadership. It could have been any Republican member of Congress. (In theory, it could be a Democrat. But in the nature of the case that doesn’t make sense.) The leadership seemed the logical place to start since they’d be most closely involved in managing the election campaign. Same with the New Mexicans — we only called them because they’re from the state in question.

Now, it’s hard for us to place a couple hundred calls. So we’re looking for your tips and leads. Do you think you know which member of Congress might have been likely to have made those calls? If you’ve got a hunch, drop us a line and let us know. We want to smoke these folks out.

Sen. Feinstein: Subpoena the US Attorneys.

Update: Sen. Schumer: because they want to talk.

Maureen Dowd’s clever editing magically transforms Gore into Pompous Bore.

Sen. Schumer (D-NY): Canned prosecutors say they want to talk.

Was it Heather Wilson (R-NM) who helped get US Attorney David Iglesias fired?

As we first reported earlier this afternoon, Rep. Steve Pearce, the other Republican member of Congress from New Mexico, denies he called Iglesias to nudge him to drop an indictment on a state Democrat just in time for the November election.

We called Wilson for comment at the same time. And we haven’t gotten a response. Now we learn that the Post hasn’t gotten their calls to Wilson returned either.

Now, yesterday when we reported that Iglesias had emailed a friend telling him that his firing was a “political fragging”, we picked that story up from the blog of Joe Monahan, a New Mexico politics insider.

A short time ago TPM Reader BL sent us a link to this post on Monahan’s blog from December 20th. It’s about Iglesias’s ouster, but before the fired US Attorney issue caught on nationally. And it includes this passage …

There was another angle that surfaced too. That one had ABQ GOP Congresswoman Heather Wilson egging on Justice to axe Iglesias. Was she unhappy with the Vigil prosecution that played a role in her campaign? Was she displeased that the U.S. attorney failed to come with indictments in the investigation of the construction of two Bernalillo county courthouses in time for her to use in her difficult re-election battle with Democrat Patsy Madrid? Those were the questions being posed in light of her rumored involvement in the Iglesias matter, coming as it did from reliable legal sources.

So it seems like Wilson’s meddling in this matter was at least being traded as scuttlebutt well before Iglesias made his accusations. She doesn’t seem inclined to deny was one of the two callers. And she was involved in a super tight race last Fall against Democrat Patricia Madrid.

I pretty much guarantee that Iglesias’s explosive claims are the story in all New Mexico politics today. We first called Wilson’s office just before 2 PM and we’ve placed repeated calls since then. The Post apparently get an answer either. And a staffer in Wilson’s DC office just told us that Wilson’s spokesperson, Bryce Dustman, is in the office today.

So if Dustman can deny that Wilson was one of the two members of Congress who called him, we’re all ears and we’re waiting by the phone.

It’s truly TPM entering Nirvana: Doug Feith sets up his own website to clear his good name! (via WashingtonWire)

Late Update: It seems some awful, awful person has now created a parody version of Doug’s site.

House committee schedules vote on whether to subpoena ousted U.S. attorneys.

The Politico takes a beating from CJR Daily‘s Paul McLeary over the Dan Gerstein flap:

There comes a time in the life of most every publication when it runs into some ethical quandary concerning the affiliations of one of its contributors. More often than not, the trouble could have been avoided by a couple of words in the author’s bio, or a line or two in the article itself disclosing whatever ties the author has to a person or group that smacks of impropriety…

While [Gerstein’s] right that his piece barely mentions Lieberman (he refers to the Lieberman-Lamont Senate race twice in order to show how nasty liberal bloggers are), he’s sidestepping a crucial point — that he’s still on Lieberman’s payroll, and that the liberal blogosphere ain’t anywhere near through bashing his boss.

And that, friends, is one important reason why we have bio lines, to announce such connections.

We’re not saying that Gerstein is hiding his affiliation with Lieberman — he is quoted as working for him in the other Politico story, but from a journalistic standpoint, his continuing relationship with Lieberman, and all the history with liberal bloggers that that relationship entails, does in fact taint his piece.

While Gerstein claims innocence, it’s important to remember that he’s a political operative, and thus he works under a very different set of rules than a journalist. His goal is to push the interests of his clients, period. It’s the editors of the Politico who should have known better.

The rest is here.

Golden oldies … (Jay Carney, Jan. 17th 2007)

Running Massacre?

That’s how Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo describes a story that his blog and its offshoot, TPMMuckraker.com, have played a laudable role in uncovering: the resignations of more than a dozen United States Attorneys across the country, and their replacement, under an obscure provision in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, by “interim” candidates hand-picked by the attorney general without the consent of the Senate or any constraint on the duration of their service.

It’s all very suspicious-sounding. The provision smacks of a power-grab, an attempt to put a leash on federal prosecutors in the name of efficiency. It looks even worse when it turns out one of the “interim” US attorneys appointed by Alberto Gonzales is Tim Griffin, a veteran GOP operative who worked in Karl Rove’s shop at the White House and as director of research (i.e., chief dirt digger) at the Republican National Committee. Not only that, but Griffin was appointed to be the USA in his home state of Arkansas, which can only mean he’s being sent by Rove, armed with subpoena power, to dig up fresh dirt on the Clintons in time for the 2008 presidential campaign cycle.

Of course! It all makes perfect conspiratorial sense!

Except for one thing: in this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist.

The silence is starting to get a tad deafening. Fired US Attorney says two members of Congress contacted and nudge him on getting a Democrat indicted before election day. Everyone seems to be denying it was them. Except for two folks. No one seems to be able to get a call returned from Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) or Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM).

Here’s the Post‘s succinct, if vaguely oblique, summary of the relevant reporting …

Spokesmen for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) and the state’s two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Rep. Tom Udall, said the lawmakers and their staffs had no contact with Iglesias about the case. The offices of New Mexico’s two other Republican lawmakers, Sen. Pete V. Domenici and Rep. Heather A. Wilson, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Heather? Pete?