Some of my friends express surprise when I say that I won't go to Wal-Mart with them, or to its sister store, Sam's Club. I'll pay an extra buck or two to avoid WM and its outgrowth like the plague. Personal preference, I guess.

So now, the ever-campaign-contributor-friendly 1600 Crew has allowed Wal-Mart to investigate itself. Presumably it will find it did nothing wrong. Of course. Not so fast, says a congressman, and the Department of Labor's Inspector General.

The inspector general of the Labor Department has decided to investigate its agreement to give Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before investigating any stores facing complaints of child labor violations, according to department officials.
...
Representative George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, asked the inspector general to intervene, saying that the department was wrong to give Wal-Mart advance notice before investigating complaints. Noting that Wal-Mart executives had contributed heavily to President Bush's re-election, Mr. Miller said that Wal-Mart had received special treatment and that the department had acted suspiciously in not making the settlement public for more than a month.
...
Mr. Miller and several career department officials said that Wal-Mart had improper control over what the department could say because the settlement stated that Wal-Mart and the department would "develop the terms of any joint or separate statement" about the agreement. Mr. Radzely said that Wal-Mart had no voice in what the department said about the settlement.

The DoL IG will undoubyedly be incurring Mrs. Mitch McConnell's wrath this week. I suspect there will either be a formal retraction by the IG, or the folks on his team will be inspecting Labor violations in Guam, unaccompanied.

Bottom line: in this day and age, don't fuck with the campaign contributors...they expect the best blindness money can buy. Why? It's Everyday Lowest Prices on elected officials...isn't that cute?