Reporter attributes Wash. roots to how she rocked Parliament

Nice bio from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Heather Brooke, who requested expense-accounts information on Parliament members five years ago. Her request set the stage for Tuesday's resignation of the speaker of the House of Commons and possibly criminal prosecutions of parliamentarians who abused their expense accounts.

If the British tabloids knew about the sex-advice column Heather Brooke wrote for the University of Washington Daily nearly two decades ago they might run with it as a salacious news item.

Something like "sex writer rocks Parliament."

But that information hasn't reached them, it seems, and Brooke has proven to an entire nation she is a journalist of another ilk. In doing so, the former Seattleite has shaken up the British parliamentary leadership and perhaps changed forever the relationship between the British press and the House of Commons.

More here.