Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, begins her year-long jail sentence today in the downtown Houston federal detention center. As we explained here, this is no club fed. It's an 11-story jail. She'll be in an 8' by 10' cell, which she will share with a roomate. She will live under florescent lights and rarely get outside. There are no facilities for visiting children.

Mrs. Fastow will get no good time off her sentence. There is no federal parole. She'll have to do every day of the year sentence.

We're still angry at her Judge for refusing to recommend a camp. While a Judge's recommendations aren't binding on the Bureau of Prisons, BOP generally tries to follow them. If a Judge's recommendation is not followed, BOP has to write a letter to the Judge and explain the rejection. (The letter is secret, and not provided to defense counsel, only to the Judge and Probation Department.) The Judge in this case played hardball with Mrs. Fastow all the way through, first rejecting the Government's sentencing recommendation, and then refusing to make her requested designation recommendation.

It was Mrs. Fastow who convinced her husband Andrew to cooperate with the Government and take a ten year hit. But for Andrew Fastow cooperating, there would be no Indictment of Ken Lay. She's cooperated with the investigation as well.