Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over. Iiiiiiiiiit’s… Monica Goodling! That’s right, after a months-long legal and political serial drama – pleading the 5th, winning our hearts, crying, resigning from DOJ, gaining immunity, falling under investigation, regaining immunity, and ultimately securing immunity (and all while maintaining the photo-/video-graphic scarceness of a Sasquatch) – Goodling will be appearing before the House Judiciary Committee this morning to finally spill what she knows about the U.S. Attorney firings. In today’s early-bird edition of TPMtv, we tell you all you need to know about Goodling, why she’s testifying, and why she might be the last best hope for congressional investigators.

As you’ll see, Monica Goodling isn’t the only new face greeting you this morning. TPM Deputy Editor and reporter Paul Kiel fills in for an absent Josh Marshall, and gamely so. [Please cut him some slack on getting the date wrong; the producers of the show mistakenly fed him the wrong date and take full responsibility for the error.]

So, who is Monica Goodling? You may have heard that she’s a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School (class of ’99). Goodling went from there directly to the Republican National Committee’s opposition research war room, where she worked during the 2000 presidential election as a researcher under Tim Griffin – before he became an un-Senate-confirmed interim U.S. Attorney in Arkansas, that is. In fact, you may remember Goodling’s oppo-research past being covered in one of the earliest episodes of TPMtv.

Goodling then made a speedy transition from digging dirt to administering justice, moving up through the Justice Department until she found herself as the department’s liaison to the White House. Her job was to talk to the White House about what Justice was doing, all day every day.

So why is she testifying before congress today? If you look at the U.S. Attorney scandal, you’ll see Goodling’s name all over it.

Goodling was present at all the major meetings – for instance the November 27th meeting in which Alberto Gonzales signed off on the game plan for the firings and which he has since had some trouble pinning down in his memory – along with later meetings in which Justice officials got their stories straight on what to tell Congress about the firings.

Goodling was also the one who received and addressed GOP complaints about U.S. Attorneys who weren’t towing the line on voter fraud prosecutions, like former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico.

If you’ve been reading TPMmuckraker at all you’ll know how many Justice Department e-mails have Goodling’s name on them. In mid-2006 for instance she was corresponding very closely with Kyle Sampson and the White House to get Karl Rove protégé and Goodling’s former boss, Tim Griffin, installed as U.S. Attorney in Arkansas.

Goodling also played a major role in the brainstorming sessions that Justice officials held after the firings had been executed to seemingly hammer out just why exactly these particular U.S. Attorneys had been fired.

Goodling also worked very closely with Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales’s former chief of staff, who is obviously at the center of the scandal. When Sampson testified before the Senate back on March 29th, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) had a pretty good line of questioning asking whether or not we should be concerned with the level of experience (or lack thereof) of some of the officials making the big decisions in the attorney firings. Whitehouse cited Goodling’s name specifically.

Goodling of course never wanted this day to happen. She invoked her 5th amendment right against self-incrimination when Democrats first called on her to testify a couple months ago. Her lawyer was especially churlish in defending his client’s legal maneuverings. But Democrats granted her immunity, so Goodling will be going up there today without any worry of criminal fallout from her conduct.

So then, why are we so interested in Goodling’s testimony? We know that her job was to talk to the White House. So Goodling more than any other official could have some answers about what Karl Rove’s office has to say about the firings, what Harriet Miers and the White House Counsel’s office has to say about certain attorneys and why they were put on the firing list. Goodling’s entire job was to be familiar with what the White House thought about the goings on at Justice.

And one last critical point is that Monica Goodling appears to be the last line of accountability in the entire U.S. Attorney scandal. All public testimony thus far hasn’t been able to answer the question of WHO specifically put the attorney names on the firing lists.

Democrats over the last couple months have been calling up all Justice Department officials involved in the firings and asking questions in closed-door interviews. To a man, they’ve said that they were not responsible for adding names to the list, and they don’t know or can’t tell why or how these people got on the list. Process of elimination suggests that Goodling is the last shot for getting the answers congress has been looking for.

And if Goodling doesn’t provide any answers, then… well… your guess is as good as ours, we’re afraid.