Unholy alliance

Don't think I've abandoned you, Christians. There's no shortage of things to be Outraged about, whether it's the Persecution of oil companies by Democrats or the Catholic Church resting its ankles on the shoulders of America's nancies, but this story from USA Today really takes the cake. What happens when liberal trial lawyers get their chocolate in semi-illegal immigrants' peanut butter? You got it, a bogus class action lawsuit that does the unions' heavy lifting:

Armenio Pablo-Calmo, a Guatemalan national, spent six winters as a tree planter in the pine forests of the South as part of a guest worker program that is required under federal law to pay him the prevailing wage for such jobs.

That ranges from $6.32 an hour in North Carolina to $9.20 an hour in Alabama, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Pablo-Calmo says he and his co-workers were paid less than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, were not paid overtime and often were required to pay for their own tools, visas and travel costs. So last year, they sued Eller and Sons Trees, their employer, for back wages and reimbursement of out-of-pocket costs.

A federal judge recently classified the case as a class-action lawsuit, so it now involves about 6,000 tree planters. It is drawing national attention as one of several legal challenges to the H2-B visa program, which admits 66,000 foreigners into the USA each year to do temporary manual labor. As President Bush has proposed tripling the number of such visas issued each year, the H2-B program has come under criticism from the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups that say it has been used by employers to exploit guest workers. ...

Organized labor has long opposed the H2-B program and other guest worker initiatives, arguing that they are used to abuse immigrants and undermine wages for U.S. citizens. Eller and Sons and other employers targeted in the lawsuits reject the notion of any abuse and say such programs help fill jobs most Americans won't do.

So the Republicans had uncontested rule for six years, and they still couldn't hobble organized labor to the point of making American workers dance for the opportunity to make $5.15 an hour? No wonder all my Prayer Warriors are saying they deserved to lose. Praise Him!