I do not envy Hilda Solis’ task at the Department of Labor.  Reversing the last 8 years of not-so-worker-friendly Elaine Chao-isms is not going to be an easy task.  Especially where there are these types of concerns:

In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found.

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case.

This is not the first time problems have been reported with child labor law enforcement particularly, something that is supposed to be a sacrosanct enforcement priority at Labor. Via Jamie Parks at AFL-CIO:

On a typical day, more than 400 workers younger than 18 are hurt on the job in the United States and one is killed every 10 days. At the same time, the number of federal child labor investigations has declined by half since the Bush administration took office eight years ago….

The U.S. Labor Department has 750 investigators who look into both child labor and wage and hour complaints, 20 percent fewer than in 2001, according to Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Education and Labor subcommittee on Workforce Protections. Woolsey, who conducted hearings last September on child labor, has vowed to work with the incoming Obama administration to strengthen child labor laws and increase the number of inspectors. The current laws have been loosely enforced at best, the Observer found. Under federal law, the maximum penalty for most child labor violations is $11,000, but in 2006 the average penalty was less than $1,000.

The Charlotte Observer series that Jamie references is wrenching, intersecting poverty, despair and dangerous conditions for the kids working at a poultry plant that actively recruited underage workers because they were more "compliant." (Full series here. Part I and Part II on child labor.)

That drop in child labor enforcement and reduction of staffing didn’t happen by accident, now did it? Is it what happens when you put people who loathe government and labor organizations in charge of the Department of Labor?

Do workers’ interests get a fairer shake in a Democratic administration? I certainly hope so, and will be watching. (more…)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was interviewed this morning regarding the Judiciary Committee hearings on a potential truth commission held today. Marcy’s been liveblogging them, and they’ve been fascinating in terms of dynamic and staging coming from Specter as much as anything else.

But something that Whitehouse discusses at the end of this interview is well worth amplifying, if only because I’ve had to explain it over and over again to folks inside the Beltway from the Libby trial forward. And that is in regard to immunity.

The MSNBC host played a tape of Speaker Pelosi, discussing her concerns with Rachel Maddow over the issue of immunity. Here’s Sen. Whitehouse’s response:

Yeah, I think the speaker is absolutely right. The question of when and whether to grant immunity is a very carefully drawn one. You need to include the Department of Justice, you need to make this sensibly — if you are giving blanket immunities and preventing prosecutions that could and would and should move forward, then you’ve made a mistake. If immunity is cleared by the prosecutors and is a way to get people to testify, then I think it can be helpful. So there is really no hard and fast answer, but the Speaker is dead right that you don’t want blanket immunities that prevent prosecutions from going forward — not without a very thoughtful conversation with the prosecutors themselves.

A thought for anyone considering a series of showcase hearings: Iran Contra. The immunity granting in that was a mess, and it undercut the whole of criminal prosecutions altogether, and has stood as an example of what not to do in prosecutorial circles for governmental commissions ever since.

Whitehouse, as a former USAtty understands this very well, and his explanation is spot on. As is his reference in the interview to the Church Commission and the needed reforms that came out of it.

But Whitehouse is one of the few on the Hill who get it.

The questions surrounding "immunity" are complex — there isn’t just one sort of immunity, there are several levels of it. LHP did a great piece for us during the Libby trial that gets you started on the subject, and you see that there is no one answer on the hows and whys of granting immunity or not.

My preference is for sunshine. The how of it is the trickier question, given the myriad of issues the nation is facing at the moment, the limited resources in terms of budget and time, and the fact that these issues put not just our nation’s reputation but also its very core principles on the line.

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Let’s take a closer look at the latest round of reporting on the as-yet-still-not-released OPR report on legal reasoning (or lack thereof) at the Bush/Cheney OLC. 

On the heels of Isikoff’s Saturday leakfest, Newsweek coughs up with some intriguing tidbits:

Filip also insisted that detailed responses from the three former senior lawyers at the department’s Office of Legal Counsel–Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury–be included as part of the final copy of the report, one former Bush administration lawyer told NEWSWEEK. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In addition, Miguel Estrada, a lawyer who has represented Yoo on matters relating to his service at OLC, declined comment.)

 Citing information contained in the NEWSWEEK story, Durbin and Whitehouse in their letter Monday asked Jarrett to clarify the status of the report and tell them when it will be released. (Durbin also recently privately pushed David Ogden, nominee to be deputy attorney general, to make the release of the report a top priority, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer who asked not to be identified talking about private discussions.)

The report, according to the senators and others, could have widespread implications. If Holder accepts the findings, the OPR report could be forwarded to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action against the lawyers. More broadly, the report would likely affect the broader debate over calls for a "truth commission" and other investigations of Bush-era policies.

Aside from whatever professional responsibility implications there may be ahead — and the WaPo hints that bar complaint referrals are forthcoming — it certainly calls fitness into question when a case like Youngstown can be so conspicuously absent from legal analysis on presidential powers.  And absent from publicly released OLC memoranda thus far.  Implausible.

I know we’ve talked at length about this, but I cannot emphasize enough how deliberate such an omission must have been. 

The question is: because the lawyers were not honest or competent enough to attempt to refute it? Or because they were ordered to omit its findings from their analysis in order to skew the results? And, if so, by whom and when?

Which is, ultimately, the crux of all of this, isn’t it?  Especially since Cheney’s been parading his "I relied on the lawyers" malarky for personal rehab.

Is the latest round of sympathetic leaks a by-product of Cheney’s "every Dick For himself" manifesto?  Or is this Yoo, Bradbury, Haynes or someone else on the legal practice hook?  

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Ready yourself for the shrieks, the cries, the dittohead fury…the wingnut run on Depends: Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress today that instability in countries around the world caused by the current global economic crisis rather than terrorism is the primary near-term security threat to the United States….Blair also raised the specter of the “high levels of violent extremism” in the turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s along with “regime-threatening instability” if the economic crisis persists over a one- to two-year period.