On Monday, Bishop Alberto Ramento, a priest who was a dedicated advocate for workers' rights, was stabbed to death in Tarlac City, in the Philippines. His body was found in his church. Local police claim that Ramento was the victim of an ordinary robbery, but his murder takes place in the context of a wave of violence against leftists and other human rights advocates who have criticized the Arroyo government. Ramento had received death threats as a result of his activism, and he is the second pro-labor clergyman to be killed in the province, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Bishop Ramento was chair of the board of the Philippine Workers' Assistance Centre (WAC) in Cavite, where workers have also been under violent attack in recent weeks. (His colleagues there feel strongly that his was a political murder, not a robbery.) According to WAC, a church-affiliated labor organization that has had phenomenal success organizing workers in the intensely militarized Free Trade Zone, the owners of the Chong Won Fashion factory have been trying to destroy their employees' union by force.

Last week, a combination of municipal and free trade zone police, and private security, attacked strikers who were peacefully picketing, injuring twenty-two of them. It was the second violent attack on the picket line since September 25, when the workers first went on strike to protest the owners' refusal to negotiate a first collective bargaining agreement. At least sixty-six of the striking workers have also received termination notices, according to WAC.

The factory's largest customer is Wal-Mart. Last month, after repeated violations of workers' right to organize, the retailer audited the factory at the request of Maquila Solidarity Network (MSM), an anti-sweatshop group based in Toronto. But Wal-Mart ignored some of MSM's more crucial requests: the company did not meet with WAC to hear the workers' side of the story, nor did it put enough pressure Chong Won's owners to respect freedom of association, so violence at the factory has escalated.

Last year, around the same time that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott started finding his inner tree-hugger, Wal-Mart also began cultivating a better relationship with North America-based anti-sweatshop groups. The company had been so notorious for ignoring these organizations and their findings, that even the ever-forgiving Domini Social Investment Fund had dropped Wal-Mart for "unresponsiveness."

"This represents a change in Wal-Mart's behavior," Bob Jeffcott, a policy analyst at MSM says of the retailer's response to the Chong Won situation, "that they are even willing to talk to groups like us. But they need to talk to the local organizations, the workers' representatives. Wal-Mart still doesn't understand that." It's also a good sign, he says, that Wal-Mart is not "cutting and running"--simply dropping the factory and leaving all the workers without jobs, as it would have done in the past. What's still unclear is whether the company will intervene on the workers' behalf.

No one is suggesting that Wal-Mart ordered--or is in any way directly responsible for--Bishop Romano's murder, but like so many multinationals globally, the retailer clearly hasn't taken any decisive action to stop the violence and intimidation that fattens its own profit margins. For that, this company--so widely perceived by many US consumers and workers as a "Christian company"--has a lot of explaining to do. Wal-Mart should be asked to use its own substantial influence, not to further bully the workers, but to force the factory to bargain fairly.

Like all US companies operating in Free Trade Zones, Wal-Mart should stop the brutal economic pressure that lies at the root of political violence against workers and their advocates. The root of the trouble, says Jeffcott, is "the pricing question – Is Wal-Mart willing to pay a price that allows a factory to pay a living wage?"

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First a bipartisan American Bar Association panel decried George W. Bush's unconstitutional use of signing statements. And now, according to The Boston Globe, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) has declared that the President is using signing statements as "an integral part of his comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power at the expense of the legislative branch."

Read the confidential report posted here.

Signing statements are assertions by a president that he (or, someday, she) need not obey or enforce the bill he is signing into law. Before the current Bush regime, all presidents in our nation's history had issued signing statements for approximately 600 laws. But King George alone has challenged over 800 laws. A recent example – in signing a bill barring the Pentagon from using illegally obtained intelligence, The Decider suggested that he alone can make that determination.

The CRS report deemed that many of Bush's assertions of presidential powers are "generally unsupported by established legal principles."

Anyone who cares about our nation's historical separation of powers and the checks and balances of our Constitution knows that George Bush must be reined in and reined in now. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to elect a Congress that will do just that on November 7.

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As someone who was born and raised in New Jersey I can assure you with some authenticity that New Jersey pride is often under-appreciated and overlooked. Personally, I've always been particularly proud of my state's more liberal leanings over the last few decades. But my confidence in the judgment of my states' voters is being shaken currently by an uncomfortably close race for senate between 10-month-long Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez and his Republican challenger, Tom Kean Jr., who's son of 9/11 commission head and popular former N.J. governor Tom Kean.

In Jersey, Bush is more unpopular than he is in roughly 45 of the other states. He was defeated there handily in '00 and '04. The state hasn't elected a Republican senator in over 30 years. But with the corruption and scandal fueled downfalls of former Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli in 2002 and the former Democratic Governor James McGreevey last year, has soured many New Jersey citizens on the state's Democratic machine. Menendez, an appointee of Gov. Jon Corzine's, has been similarly marred by accusations of poor ethics. With the exception of a recent Zogby poll, Menendez has been trailing Kean Jr by a few points consistently for weeks now.

Even more discouragingly, Menendez has about as much charisma as a 9th grade algebra teacher. Nevertheless, he has taken some impressive political stands. Throughout the campaign Menendez has been savvy to highlight his opposition to the war in Iraq from day one. On the other hand he's shown a disheartening inclination to pander to the right, as he did by voting to essentially allow President Bush to continue with his blatant disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

Meanwhile Kean Jr. seems just as affable and sensible as his father. But his sunny exterior and moderate posturing disguise much more conservative views on issues like stem cell research. When it comes to what is arguably the most important issue in the country right now, the war in Iraq, Kean Jr. says he supported it initially and despite what we all now know, still does.

New Jersey can't risk putting someone in office from either party who spouts that kind of reactionary rhetoric. The senate swings in the balance and the opportunity to finally change course on Iraq and host of other issues does too.

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Yesterday the House Ethics Committee issued four dozen subpoenas but declined to appoint an outside counsel to investigate a possible cover-up of Mark Foley's conduct by the House Republican leadership--meaning that they're likely to sweep the most damning revelations under the rug.

There's many reasons to distrust the Ethics Committee, which I outlined in a piece in January, "Ethics-Go-Round." The most obvious red herring is that the Chairman of the committee, Rep. Doc Hastings, was specifically appointed by Hastert to prevent investigations of fellow Republicans.

After rebuking Tom DeLay three times, Hastert purged three Republicans from the committee and replaced the old chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley, with Hastings. The committee didn't function for the next year, even as scandal after scandal gripped Washington.

Only recently did the Committee hire full-time staff and begin working again. But it's hardly independent. Is the man who owes his job to Hastert really going to thoroughly investigate him?

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Republicans have finally found the causes and culprits of Foleygate: political correctness and George Soros.

First, political correctness. On Tuesday the Arlington Group, a coalition of over seventy religious right organizations, issued a letter responding to Rep. Foley's conduct.

"We are very concerned that the early warnings of Mr. Foley's odd behavior toward young male pages may have been overlooked or treated with deference, fearing a backlash from the radical gay rights movement because of Mr, Foley's sexual orientation," the letter stated. "It appears that the integrity of the conservative majority has given way to political correctness, trading the virtues of decency and respect for that of tolerance and diversity. No one should be surprised at the results of such a tragic exchange."

In other words, gays and liberals are to blame.

But it doesn't stop there. The new conservative talking point is that Soros-funded organizations, particularly Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) leaked the emails and IMs between Foley and the underage pages to help Democrats regain control of Congress. "The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros," still-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert told the Chicago Tribune yesterday as part of a desperate attempt to keep his job.

Last I heard, ABC News is not funded by Soros. And CREW, which filed an ethics complaint against Foley and passed on some of his emails to the FBI, targets Democrats as well as Republicans and receives only a small percentage of its budget from Soros personally.

And the source who originally gave ABC News the emails was a House GOP aide. Let me repeat: a Republican. Not someone presumably funded by the "radical gay rights movement" or George Soros.

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Read Wednesday's New York Times article about how software is being developed to monitor negative opinions of the US or its leaders in overseas newspapers and other publications. It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone written by Orwell.

It's also creepy because it's so reminiscent of the aborted 2002 attempt to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that, as the Times points out, "was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information."

This administration actively tries to alienate everyone through its words and actions and then it wants to measure just how much they've offended everyone? You couldn't make this stuff up.

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The President and his speechwriters have, these last years, fallen in love with "victory." Back in November, 2005, for instance, promoting his administration's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," Bush used the word "victory" 15 times in a single speech. Things in Iraq were already bad enough then. Now, of course, they are beyond disastrous and, in a small but telling piece on p. A28 of Wednesday's New York Times, Thom Shanker reports the following: "Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital ‘for commemoration of success' in Iraq and Afghanistan." He adds, "Not surprisingly, the money was not spent." It was, in fact, rolled over to next year when… well, if the Republicans still control Congress, it will surely be rolled over to 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Victory in Iraq is not on many American minds right now in a country where, according to the latest CNN poll, 66% of us disapprove of the job the President is doing there. So it's not surprising that a little piece about marches in honor of "success" in his wars is tucked away in the paper, while an unexpected slaughter among the Amish and mayhem over charges over pedophilia cover-ups among Republicans, dominates front pages countrywide. But here's the strange thing: Right now, if victory is relegated to p. 28 (and next year's military budget), the pain of American loss has hardly been easier to see recently, unless, as Juan Cole pointed out at his Informed Comment blog, you're reading very local papers.

Since Saturday, at least 23 American soldiers have died in Iraq (mostly in Baghdad) and at least 2 in Afghanistan. A single day total of 8 was announced by the Pentagon for Monday and yet these numbers generally didn't make it near a front page. The Washington Post, whose Wednesday front page had a huge story on the murdered Amish girls, "Pa. Killer Had Prepared for ‘Long Siege,'" on page 1, dealt with American casualties in Iraq in a tiny Associated Press piece on page A21 ("11 U.S. Troops, 52 Iraqis Killed"). A story of rising American casualties around Baghdad only hit the paper's front page today. The New York Times, whose front page had a similar Amish story ("Elaborate Plan Seen by Police in School Siege") Wednesday, put its Iraq piece by Michael Luo ("8 G.I.'s Die in Baghdad, Most in a Day Since '05") on p. A12 -- with a tiny box about it on p. 1.

The news from Baghdad is even worse than you might imagine, but this week you had to be a news junkie to notice. The capital not only experienced the highest daily American casualties of the war, but "the highest number of car bombs and roadside bombs... this year." And here's the real twist: While American casualties are on the rise, Iraqi military casualties are actually falling! This undoubtedly reflects not better fighting skills on the part of the Iraqi Army, but an ever-lessening engagement with the insurgency in Baghdad where a militia-ridden, death-squad-linked national police brigade was also being pulled off the capital's streets and replaced by… well, what did you expect?... American troops.

The President has long said, "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." But what if they stand down? And Americans in their place simply die in increasing numbers.

Maybe the Vietnam-era advice of Vermont Senator George Aiken is still worth considering. What if we just declared "victory" and started to come home. Then that $20 million in parades might be a fine investment.

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House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, has scheduled a press conference this morning in Chicago.

What will Hastert, who faces mounting pressure to quit over his mishandling of the scandal surrounding former Congressional Mark Foley, have to say?

Chances are, Hastert may not know.

In a Wednesday evening interview with the Chicago Tribune -- which followed the announcement by Foley's former chief of staff that he had warned Hastert's office more than two years ago about the Florida congressman's inappropriate behavior toward teenage pages – the Speaker said he was not going to quit. "Look, I've talked to our members," Hastert told the largest newspaper in his home state. "Our members are supportive. I think that (resignation) is exactly what our opponents would like to have happen -- that I'd fold my tent and others would fold our tent and they would sweep the House."

But it wasn't just Democrats who were telling Hastert to fold the tent.

Human Events, the influential conservative weekly newspaper, is reportedly set to editorialize today for Hastert's exit and the election of a new Speaker. ``We think the Republicans need new leaders, and I don't think Hastert will be there much longer,'' explained Human Events the editor-in-chief Tom Winter in an interview Wednesday. ``I think (Hastert) has to do this for the team, he has to step down.''

Another conservative publication, the Washington Times, called earlier in the week for Hastert's resignation.

But the real measure of Hastert's troubles may be coming from the ranks of his own caucus. Congressman Ron Lewis, a Kentucky Republican who is waging a tough reelection campaign, announced on Wednesday that he had cancelled a fundraiser that was to have featured Hastert.

Lewis is unlikely to be the only Republican in a close race to distance himself or herself from Hastert, who is under fire for failing to respond adequately when concerns were raised about sexually-explicit communications between Foley and congressional pages and who, since the scandal broke last week, has repeatedly been caught in lies about it.

As conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote late Wednesday, "a dysfunctional House leadership" – led by Hastert – is now a key factor threatening GOP control of the House. "The anger by rank-and-file Republican House members over the incompetence of their leaders is palpable," explained Novak.

All of this points to the prospect of a Hastert resignation. What argues against that prospect?

One big argument that key Republicans are making for keeping Hastert is the challenge of finding another leader who is not tarnished by the scandal. Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is at least as closely tied to the scandal as Hastert, as are other top Republicans such as New York Congressman Tom Reynolds, the chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

The former Foley aide who has come forward to challenge Hastert's version of events had served as chief of staff for Reynolds until the aide abruptly resigned Wednesday.

One suggestion that seems to be gaining traction is a proposal that Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, a senior Republican who is not seeking reelection, might replace Hastert for the short term.

But many Republicans fear that even a shuffle of leadership that put the reasonably well-regarded Hyde in charge would not be enough to make the party's problems go away. Indeed, there is concern that a Hastert resignation would bring so much additional attention to the scandal that disenchantment among religious conservatives – essential supporters of the GOP in recent election cycles – would spread. No one thinks that fundamentalist voters will switch as a group to the Democrats in this fall's elections. Rather, the fear is a portion of the party's social-conservative base would simply fail to turn out on Election Day.

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