Another key figure in the on-going Abramoff scandals (with very, very close ties to the Bush administration's Department of the Interior) gets sentenced -- and she's now a cooperating witness:

Italia Federici, who served as lobbyist Jack Abramoff's conduit to the top ranks of the Interior Department, was sentenced yesterday to two months in a halfway house during a day in court that touched on her romantic liaisons, tax evasion and conduct before the Senate.

Federici, the onetime president of a Republican environmental group, had pleaded guilty to evading taxes and obstructing the Senate's investigation of Abramoff's lobbying for Indian tribes. Prosecutors suggested that she receive home detention instead of incarceration because of her cooperation with the ongoing investigation into the Abramoff scandal. For her colleague at the environmental group, Robert Jared Carpenter, who also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 10 to 16 months in jail.

But U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle rejected their recommendations, insisting that Federici serve some time, in part as an example to others. She gave Federici 60 days in a halfway house plus four years of probation and ordered her to pay $77,243 in restitution.