Meet David Iglesias:

David Iglesias was appointed by the President on August 2, 2001, to be the US Attorney for the District of New Mexico.  Prior to his appointment, Iglesias had a successful legal career as General Counsel to the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department (1998 - 2001),  Chief Counsel to the New Mexico Risk Management Legal Office (1995 to 1998), and as an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Albuquerque (1991 - 1994) and an Assistant Attorney General in the New Mexico Attorney General's Office.

Iglesias performed his US Attorney duties to great satisfaction, according to his performance reviews, until 2005, when the Chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, Allen Weh, began pressuring him to bring voter fraud indictments against Democrats; Iglesias did not feel the case was strong enough, and declined to do so.  The pressure was ratcheted up in the fall of 2006, when Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) each called Iglesias to pressure him to bring indictments against Democrats before the November elections.  He did not do so, and on December 7, 2006, he was dismissed.

David Iglesias, one of the fired US attorneys, has been asked to appear before the House Ethics Committee to answer questions about the phone call he received from Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) about an investigation he was conducting.

Iglesias has stated before that he received calls from Wilson and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) urging him to bring indictments in a case involving state Democrats.  He declined to do so, and believes that's how his name ended up on the list of US attorneys to be fired.  The House Ethics Committee has already launched an investigation into Domenici's call.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, also known as S. 1, or the ethics and lobbying reform bill, is not everything we had hoped it to be. And it's nowhere near what we'd like it to be despite its lofty title and low number.

That's all right.

If the Senate gives its approval to S. 1 this week, as it's expected to do, Congress will finally have produced tighter ethics and lobbying rules after being dragged through the mud of the Abramoff, Foley, Ney and Cunningham scandals of years past. And we'll soon be reminded of why we went to this trouble, when Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, goes to trial.