You just got to love this:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey sought a lenient sentence for a convicted rapist who is the son of one of her staffers, igniting a political firestorm over the weekend.

The Petaluma Democrat quickly apologized after a Marin County newspaper reported she intervened on behalf of Stewart Pearson, who pleaded guilty last fall to raping a 17-year-old Terra Linda girl and covering her face with a rag soaked in household chemicals in an attempt to incapacitate her….

…. “Given my support for both women’s rights and victims’ rights, my constituents and my community are right to be shocked by my action. I apologize to them. But most of all I apologize to the young woman and her family.

“I apologize for making a horrible situation worse, and I am sorry that they have been forced to relive this heinous crime by reading about it in the newspaper, again.”