Next week, Understanding Government will be rolling out a highly entertaining and trenchant look at the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s stormy history. There might even be pictures.

The cliche about the CPSC is that they’re "the little federal agency that couldn’t" — a tiny bureaucracy that’s been politically marginalized. But that may have changed with a new law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, that gives new resources and power to the agency.

But as the Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Trotman reports, Nancy Nord, the acting chairman of CPSC, doesn’t really like the law. She’s complaining about how confusing it will be to implement new regulations like the maximum level of lead paint in toys. And she says that Congress still hasn’t given the agency the money it needs to do things like create a database of consumer complaints.

The Democratic Congress may be stalling in passing any budget bills in the hopes they will be signed not by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama. So the money complaint may be temporarily legit. Nord’s attitude, however, isn’t. In a Washington anomaly, she’s complainng about added power and responsibility.  Maybe the next administration will have a chairman excited by the challenge of bringing CPSC back from the dead. -MB

The Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher has a good catch today — the White House is considering whether to issue an executive order compelling government contractors to use secret ballot elections in deciding whether to unionize.

This may sound arcane, but it’s a pretty big deal. The first, second, and third legislative battles for organized labor right now are the effort to eliminate secret ballot elections in favor of employees checking off on a card if they want to join a union. In both methods, a majority of employees have to want a union for it to get started. But with card checks, organizers can approach workers several times with their union pitch.

Regardless of the merits of card check v. secret ballot, it’s morphed into a confrontation that shows politicians’ pro-labor or pro-business bona fides. The President has never been afraid to antagonize unions. This possible executive order may be his last chance to do so.-MB

Wow. The U.S. military and United Nations are known to disagree, but this is absurd.

Last Friday, the U.S. military said that an airstrike in Afghanistan killed five civilians. Buried amid coverage of the Democratic National Convention, some heads turned this week when a report by the U.N. and Afghanistan officials put the total at not five, but 90, including 60 children. But, as the Washington Post’s Ann Scott Tyson reports, a U.S. military review completed yesterday puts the total back at five.

The U.S. feels it was misled in ordering the airstrike and dutifully apologizes for the five civilian deaths. But how in the world can a country that’s been patrolled by the U.S. and NATO for more than six years now not be able to broadly agree on civilian casualty totals?.-MB

The Washington Post’s Dana Hedgepath reports that KBR, which recently inked a 10-year, $150-billion Pentagon contract to continue giving logistics support in Iraq, has been sued for alleged human trafficking. Agnieska Fryszman, an attorney at a Washington law firm, asserts that 13 Nepali men were kidnapped by a KBR subcontractor in Jordan and then taken to Iraq. The men went to Jordan because they thought they were promised hotel and restaurant jobs in Amman. Insurgents fired at the men as they were entering Iraq, killing 12 of the 13. The lone survivor is back in Nepal.

The chilling allegations sound similar to those made against First Kuwaiti, the contractor in charge of building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. In that case, citizens from the Philippines went to Dubai for hotel jobs. There, their passports were seized and the laborers were re-routed to Baghad.

With so many third-country nationals in Iraq, the extent of human trafficking is an unknown problem. Now the largest contractor in Iraq must contest tales of its involvement.-MB

The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung has a very good follow-up on last week’s U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 90 civilians — 60 of them children. DeYoung reports that there’s no protocol to investigate the airstrike, or really anything else in Afghanistan, because the U.S. literally has a two-page note that governs the role of the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

But with violence spiraling, Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants a "status of forces" agreement similar to the one State Dept. diplomats are negotiating with the Iraqis. Not surprisingly, the U.S. seems less than eager to draw up a more detailed document that might limit American power. One legit quagmire is this:  of the 33,000 U.S. troops in the country, 19,000 are controlled by Central Command and 14,000 take orders from NATO.

A uniform law for all these troops will be a colossal headache. But it also would be a justified demand by Afghanistan. -MB

The Washington Post’s James V. Grimaldi was part of a coterie of reporters who broke story after story after story on super-duper-mega-uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s vast web of influence peddling. Now Grimaldi’s writing a relatively more favorable Abramoff story– the Justice Dept. is seeking to reduce his prison sentence from almost six years to almost four. The reason is Abramoff has spilled the beans about Rep. Bob Ney (R-Oh.). He’s also apparently cooperating in an ongoing probe into former House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Tx.).

With his fedora and black trenchcoat, Abramoff often seemed to affect the style of organized criminals. So it would be fitting if he got off for ratting out his old friends in Congress.-MB

The Washington Post’s Spencer S. Hsu has a "day 3" story on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a Mississippi factory that rounded up a record number of almost 600 undocumented immigrants. Hsu points out that the raid occurred, even though the factory was using the federal e-verify system, which is supposed to check worker’s social security and ID info against a national database.

E-verify is currently voluntary for employers, but soon federal contractors will be forced to check hires against the database. What in the world the Mississippi plant was doing with the database is not clear. It’s also not the first time a major raid has occurred at a place that ostensibly uses the database.

Whether E-verify’s information is accurate and its good policy to expand it, is, according to Hsu, "fueling a national debate." Meanwhile, 462 immigrants rounded-up in Laurel, Miss. sit detained in Jena, Louisiana.-MB

One of the nation’s top bank regulators, Chairman Sheila Bair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), says that bank failures are going to increase in the coming months, according to a profile by Eric Dash and Geraldine Fabricant in the New York Times.  But some are wondering if the FDIC actually has the money to cover savers’ bank accounts, which are presently insured up to $100,000.  In response, Bair has proposed charging banks who manage riskier investments to pay more in insurance fees to FDIC, which Bair calls "only fair."  Bair, with experience on Capitol Hill, at the Commodities Trading Commission, and the New York Stock Exchange, contrasts with a number of Bush administration appointees in that she appears to know what she’s talking about. -NH

The New York Times’ Adam Nossiter follows-up on yesterdays report on immigration raids in Mississippi– to say it’s much bigger than previously thought. About 595 people were rounded-up– after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents put the figure at 350 on Monday.

On numbers alone, the raid of the Laurel, Miss. factory is the biggest in years. But unlike this May’s raid in Postville, Iowa, it may not result in endless prosecutions. 106 of the 595 were released for "humanitarian reasons"– though they will nevertheless be deported. Nossiter reports that "about eight" have appeared in court so far for aggravated identity theft.

This probably doesn’t mean that the Dept. of Homeland Security’s ICE has turned over a new leaf. But perhaps some of their worst prosecutorial excesses will be curbed.-MB

Federal court judge Patrick Bates yesterday denied the White House’s request to hold his ruling that compels Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, to testify to Congress. Bates ruled in July that Miers could not use a Presidential assertion of executive privilege to claim absolute immunity from sworn, public testimony. The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Miers to talk about the dismissal of nine U.S. Attorneys. Also, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten must turn over subpoenaed documents regarding U.S. Attorneys.

Alberto Gonzales may have resigned. But what the White House knew and did in the politically motivated firing of U.S. Attorneys remains in many ways a mystery. Who orchestrated the firings? How much did it affect the day-to-day jobs of federal prosecutors? How much did the Bush administration try to make the Justice Dept. a partner of the Republican National Committee? How successful were they?

The federal court case at hand is primarily about George W. Bush’s abuse of the executive privilege assertion. But if Miers ever does testify, judiciary committee members better come prepared.-MB