Mark Penn, aka Hillary's Sockpuppet, has been dumped into the fire by the most hilarious means.

Finally, some real dirt comes out.

From Reuters:

Mark Penn, chief campaign strategist to the New York senator, has apologized for meeting with Colombia's U.S. ambassador in his separate role as a lobbyist hired by the South American country and close U.S. ally to win congressional approval of the trade deal with the United States.

But the issue poses problems for Clinton for political reasons as well as diplomatic ones as she vies with Obama to become the Democratic nominee to run against Republican John McCain in the November election. Anxiety about free trade runs high with the working-class voters, while Clinton and Obama both strongly oppose the deal with Colombia.

As if that conflict of interest isn't enough, it gets 100x better:

The controversy also prompted an angry reaction from Colombia, which took offense at Penn's statement in which he called his meeting with the country's ambassador "an error in judgment."

"The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable," the Colombian Embassy in Washington said in a statement on Saturday. The embassy announced it was ending a contract with Penn's firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, which had been hired a year ago.

Now the Clinton campaign has stated that their CHIEF STRATEGIST, Mark Penn's dealings with the Columbians were above-board and independent of the campaign, but really, how many people honestly believe that. The Chief Strategist of the Campaign who lobbies FOR a thing, campaigning AGAINST the same thing with no recourse??

It's obvious he's raking in some obscene amounts of money from this situation, but what of the implications to the presidency, if she were to (however unlikely) get elected? What sway would his lobbying have over her decisions at 3am?

She needs to detach herself from him and work on repairing the great breaches that are starting to tear open from the tax releases this weekend too.

We now have a countdown to the end for her. And it begins with this.

-- Update 04.06.2008 by Patrick:

And the circle is complete.

From Reuters:

"After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign," Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, said in a statement.
...
Over the weekend, Penn decided he should step down, and "Sen. Clinton agreed with him," the campaign source said.