Awww.  Now it turns out that 21 "workers" at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel are being deported following the 24 January ICE raid there.  And this law enforcement action has other "workers" scared.  Actually, the term used is "terrified of more arrests".  Isn't that just awful?  Don't you feel terrible?  If you don't, why you're just a big meanie, that's what you are.

Meanwhile, church officials within the region’s Hispanic community and spokespeople with the United Food & Commercial Workers union said the workers’ families didn’t know where they were and other immigrant workers were terrified of more arrests.

Production at the plant was substantially diminished Thursday as workers stayed away.

“There are hundreds of immigrant families who will have to decide, ‘Do I show up to work (Friday) and risk being arrested by immigration?’” said Eduardo Pena, a spokesman for the union, which became an unofficial hub of information for workers Thursday, he said.

Something's wrong with this picture, as Senator Dianne Feinstein has for many years routinely ignored her own conflicts of interest.  She was Chair of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee from 2001-05, and she voted in favor of contracts worth billions to companies owned or largely controlled by her husband.

And this is who's in charge of the Democrat effort to restore ethics to Congress?  In the words of a famous Democrat, it all comes down to what the meaning of the word "is" is.

In her annual Public Financial Disclosure Reports, Feinstein records a sizeable family income from large investments in Perini, which is based in Framingham, Mass., and in URS, headquartered in San Francisco. But she has not publicly acknowledged the conflict of interest between her job as a congressional appropriator and her husband's longtime control of Perini and URS–and that omission has called her ethical standards into question, say the experts.

Multnomah County Commissioner Lisa Naito's plan to ban trans-fats has been shot down. As Commissioner Jeff Cogen noted,

"I think its fine to have a sign saying your doughnut is fried in trans fats, but I'm not comfortable telling people you can't eat a doughnut," Cogen said last week. County Chairman Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Lonnie Roberts also expressed concern about regulation.

At length, even Lisa - apparently recognizing that she's not swimming in the estrogen pool any longer - gave it up, though she plans to carry on the battle against trans-fats somewhere, sometime, somehow. After so many years of getting her way in her relentless effort to do things for our own good (whether we like it or not), this has to be bitter medicine indeed.