every time i start writing this, i find out that i have more things to say about this article. so, here's a short list.

first, thank you, frank murkowski. i don't think we agree on nearly anything else, but thank you for the worker's protection bill you sponsored.

second, karma is a bitch, mr. delay. a stone cold bitch. and i am taking some comfort in that right now.

and as for third, i haven't got one right now, but i'm sure i'll come up with something more to say later.

some excerpts from the article.

But as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski became furious at the abusive sweatshop conditions endured by workers, overwhelmingly immigrants, in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, of which Saipan is the capital.

[...]

DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan's salute to the owners and Abramoff's government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system"

Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island."

Contrast that with what then-Sen. Murkowski told me in a 1998 interview: "The last time we heard a justification that economic advances would be jeopardized if workers were treated properly was shortly before Appomattox."

murkowski wrote a bill to extend the minimum wage to the marianas, and got it through the senate. delay kept it from ever being heard in the house.