CNN is reporting that after years, and the notable pass given to WalMart and the Federal contractors hired after Katrina: Companies using illegal workers to be targeted

Federal authorities checked a sample of 5,800 IFCO employee records last year and found that 53 percent had faulty Social Security numbers, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said.

“That is, they were using Social Security numbers of people that were dead, of children or just different individuals that did not work at IFCO,” ICE chief Julie Myers told CNN.

“The Social Security Administration had written IFCO over 13 times and told them, ‘Listen, You have a problem. You have over a thousand employees that have faulty Social Security numbers. And we consider that to be a big problem,'” said Myers. “And IFCO did not do anything about it.”

I know this is news to the daughter of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, but this administration has been giving employers a free ride on hiring undocumented workers for years.

If you send in a bogus Social Security number you get a letter telling you about it, so you have to know. One of the ways corporations avoid “knowing” is by using “contractors”, rather than hiring people directly, so they don’t have to deal with the payroll issues and don’t establish a paper trail.

IFCO is a foreign company and couldn’t make the necessary campaign contributions to buy the protection that large American corporations have.

For all of those people who complain about undocumented immigrants costing us money, think about it. They don’t have a valid Social Security number so they can’t receive income tax refunds and they aren’t eligible for Social Security benefits. They are paying taxes and receive no benefits.

The Republicans have been raising so much hell about immigration, that the administration finally had to do its job.

You really should read A History of US/Iranian Relations Since 9/11 by Adam Felber.

It’s a thoroughly researched, meticulously documented, thoughtful exploration of the … actually it’s snark.

CNN has confirmed the death of Scott Crossfield in the crash of a small aircraft in the mountains of Georgia at the age of 84.

As his bio indicates when anyone says “test pilot” you should think of Scott Crossfield and Chuck Yeager.

There’s a certain irony in the man who walked away from some of the most horrendous accidents in test flight history at the controls of some of the fastest aircraft ever built, died as the result of a crash in a Cessna, but he was still flying his own plane at 84.

After an exhaustive search through the birth announcements of the Heritage Foundation’s members for 1970, the White House announced the appointment of R. Furbington Howl III to be the new press secretary.