WEEK IN REVIEW: WASHINGTON, D.C.

Sunday, June 17, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON - For a freshman congressman, Nevada Rep. Dean Heller had a busy week making news, but did so in a way that tested the adage that any publicity is good publicity.

He and fellow Nevada Republican Rep. Jon Porter continue to be barraged over their support for the Iraq war and the nation's big anti-war coalition announced it would target them all summer in hopes of peeling away their support from President Bush's Iraq campaign.

Now the environmentalists also are ganging up on Heller, calling him one of the top "anti-environment extremists" on the House Natural Resources Committee. Their complaint is his vote last week against a global warming bill.

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund launched radio ads in Heller's Northern Nevada district on Thursday implying Heller is out of touch on global warming because of his coziness with big oil. The ads will continue this week.

"Congressman Dean Heller has his head stuck in the sand," an announcer says on the ad . "He's voted against legislation to combat global warming and help break our nation's dependence on foreign oil. Could it be because Dean Heller has taken thousands in campaign cash from big oil while voting to protect $14 billion in tax breaks for oil companies gouging us with high gas prices?"

Defenders of Wildlife is the same group that led last year's campaign that defeated Rep. Richard Pombo of California in his bid for reelection. Pombo, chairman of the Natural Resources committee, had been a longtime foe of environmental groups.

Fresh from that victory the group is targeting Heller and four other Republicans on the committee that oversees public lands issues, including mining in Nevada and oil and gas drilling in the West. The group is not opposing their potential reelection campaigns. Yet.

"Global warming is the biggest environmental problem the world has seen and the legislation is beginning to move now," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

"We've had a lot of problems with that committee being in the hands of the extraction industries," Schlickeisen said. Heller, he added, "seems to be falling in the same mode."

Heller could not be reached for comment. He told the Associated Press on Thursday that Defenders of Wildlife was "polluting the air waves" with its ads.

"If we're going to talk about pol lution let's talk about who's polluting here," Heller said. He also said the group wants to close down mining and public lands in Nevada and "take away our guns."

Heller found a friendlier crowd that same day elsewhere on Capitol Hill when he and other conservative Republicans announced support for legislation to extend President Bush's tax cuts.

Heller joined members of Congress and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who is chairman of the small-government group Freedom Works, in calling for continuing the tax cuts put in place in 2001 and 2003.

"If Americans allow the tax cuts to expire, Americans will be facing the real potential of the largest tax increase in the history of our country," Heller said in a statement.

"The policy of tax and spend by the majority party is wrong for Nevada and is wrong for the country."

No word whether anyone will be running an ad for him about that.

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