[PUBLISHING NOTE: IT’S REALLY WEDNESDAY! Your weary correspondent will be up at 4:30 a.m. here in the nation’s capitol to catch a flight to the West Coast so…this will have to do for your Wednesday feeding until perhaps later in the day]

I hear that House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel, ex-Clintonista and advocate of so-called free trade (and, as an aside, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), will be meeting with labor’s political directors this Friday. And I hear that Firefighters prez Harold Schaitberger is making a special trip back from the West Coast to take part in the meeting–and he’s coming loaded for bear.

As I hear it, Schaitberger wants to unload on the Dems over the failure of the party to hold the CAFTA 15 accountable. Pelosi had promised to punish those 15 who went over to the dark side–but, as far as anyone can tell, nothing has happened to the miscreants.

I would hope that the issue of the Democrats who are shilling for and/or voting to protect Wal-Mart will come up. I’m still hoping that labor takes some steps to force Democratic Party consultants to stop playing both sides of the fence: labor should not be supporting a party that won’t hold its troops to some sort of standard.

Part of the problem is that Emanuel is a political whore: he was a key operative in the Clinton White House who had a central role in the push to pass NAFTA. He’ll gladly take corporate money and, then, come begging for labor to deploy its troops during elections to get-out-the-vote. Someone has to draw the line–and hopefully Schaitberger can get the ball rolling.

I also hear that some labor money is beginning to flow to an independent candidate, Bill Schuerer, who is going to run against Melissa Bean, one of the CAFTA 15. Let’s take her out.