Even though disgraced former Ag Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps lost 45 pounds in the joint, that coat she tried on upon her release still doesn't fit.

And it definitely doesn't go with that electronic ankle bracelet she'll be wearing until the house arrest portion of her sentence ends later this year.

Which coat?

The one with "victim" written across the back.

Even before she'd had a chance to go home and wash off three years of prison grime, Meg was trying to don that coat and to rewrite history.

Apparently taking a cue from her prison-mate, Martha Stewart, who emerged from the hoosegow as feisty and as marketable as ever, Phipps refused to acknowledge her own role in winding up on the chain gang.

(I know, I know. There was no chain gang, but it's just such a charming image, picturing Martha and Meg swinging nine-pound steel hammers on a rock pile, turning big 'uns into little 'uns all the livelong day and singing "Nobody knows the troubles I'se seen.")

Far from admitting guilt and remorse, as she had upon being found guilty, Meg emerged from the joint with as much defiance and attitude as the skanky rapper Li'l Kim.

After picking up the GPS personal tracking system she's being forced to wear, Phipps said last week, "The only other regret I have is that I haven't been able to make the same speech that the Duke lacrosse young men got to make."

What -- that you were falsely accused? That you were innocent?

The only reason Phipps can't say that without bursting out laughing is that she was neither falsely accused nor innocent. She admitted as much when she was found guilty of selling her office. Whatever honor there is in admitting one's guilt, Phipps found it when she accepted responsibility for her predicament.

She now seems to be reneging on that admission.

Of course, confessing one's guilt is easier when the state has already found you guilty, and the feds have copious amounts of evidence and are threatening to drop the hammer if you don't.

In court records -- United States of America vs. Meg Scott Phipps -- I looked at after Phipps sought to portray herself as a victim, she signed, with bold strokes, a document admitting that she accepted cash campaign contributions in excess of legal limits, that these contributions weren't reported and that she converted some of the cash to her own use.

Comparing such a case to that of three men who maintained their innocence from the beginning is galling.

You know what I fear? That the Duke lacrosse case, which some people seem to think was the first one ever in which some dudes were wrongly accused, will now become the rallying cry each time someone professing innocence finds herself or himself in front of a judge.

They're going to pull on that victim's coat -- or, in this instance, a Duke lacrosse jersey -- and yell "Remember the Blue Devil 3: It happened to them; now it's happening to me!"

Although people are buying Duke lacrosse jerseys like they're going out of style, nobody is buying what Meg is selling -- that she's innocent.