Reporter Back in Blog Game

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions but I did make one this year: To blog more consistently on the Journal's website. Sure, I get space in the paper to inform New Mexicans about how they're being treated by Washington's power brokers.

But this blog should give me a chance to interact more with readers (please feel free to e-mail me) and muse a little more conversationally about the oddities of Washington life. I also hope to share some smaller slivers of information that don't necessarily merit the killing of trees to get the word out.

Take Rep. Heather Wilson's visit to the White House yesterday. The congresswoman and several other members of the House Intelligence Committee met with Bush yesterday to discuss, what else? The war in Iraq. There was little news afterward, except Wilson said Bush made it clear he has no plans to abandon his call for 21,000 extra troops no matter how painful the political fallout.

Wilson, initially a hawkish supporter of the Iraq invasion, has changed her tune significantly on the war since the 2006 election. In fact, Wilson now says — after visiting Iraq in early January — that we should only focus on crushing Al Qaeda and securing American interests in the region. And what about all that lofty talk from her fellow Republicans about freedom and democracy for Iraq? If Iraq wants those ideals, they pretty have to achieve them on their own, she says, because that's not America's responsibility.

Wilson has been vocally opposed to Bush's deployment of 21,000 extra troops, and she said she told him so on Thursday afternoon. But don't expect the determined Texan to reverse course, Wilson told me.

"The president is strongly committed to the path he outlined in his speech last week," Wilson said. "I have a different view and I remain skeptical that this path will be successful."