But hold! Isn't it the demand of enlightened people that all within these borders have a right to work without being hassled by the INS or kindred state agency? You can argue whether Linda Chavez treated Marta Mercado, her sometime Guatemalan employee, well or badly, and that poor treatment might disqualify her as Labor Secretary. But the spectacle of Democrats like Senator Tom Daschle solemnly denouncing Chavez for giving work to an undocumented Latina was nauseating.

Here's Chavez, who has appalling views on almost every issue relevant to the job for which she was briefly nominated, and the Democrats finally home in on her for the one decent deed on her record, if you believe the testimony of Marta, to whom Chavez appears to have behaved well.

Chavez has been cruelly taken from them, but what an immense favor Bush/Cheney did the Democrats by putting up Ashcroft and Norton! It's hard to stir up liberal passions over Powell at the State Department or Rice as National Security Adviser, or even O'Neill at Treasury. How could you be worse than Madeleine Albright or Samuel Berger? And who cares about O'Neill, when the effective ruler of the economy is over at the Fed?

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