Yep Josh! you've got yourself a real anti-Edwards site here.
Perhaps tomorrow Eric can post the article a 3rd time, linking once again to the Friday article.

You state that two things have occurred over approximately the same period (actually the correlation between has not really been established) and then just assume that because NAFTA and other trade agreements exploit workers in their home countries that this exploitation is the real underlying explanation for illegal immigration to the US.

First, is the exploitation of workers in their home countries new or unique to the post-NAFTA environment? Were workers' rights and workplace protections much stronger and better enforced before? Have other changes in the these countries led to deteriorating conditions, and do these other changes have anything to do with the implementation of trade agreements? Does this impact apply just to NAFTA or to all trade agreements the US has negotiated in recent years (do the illegal emigres come principally only from countries that are parties to these agreements, or other countries as well?)

It just seems counterintuitive, on its face, that outsourcing jobs to certain countries (and then in some unexplained sense "exploiting" those who take these new jobs) would be the dominant explanation for these same workers struggles to get to enter the US, where they'll immediately be exploited at: slaughterhouses, unsafe construction sites etc. I'd think it more likely that people would enter the country illegally to rejoin family, because they cannot find work or support their families on work in their home countries, or because even exploitative, undocumented service jobs in the US allow them to accumulate much more money than at home.

I don't claim to know -- really anything -- about trade, immigration, or international labor economics, so I raise these questions sincerely. To the extent that I know anything, I am not a fan of the neoliberal free trade orthodoxy, which does seem to grossly subordinate labor, environmental and human rights to corporate profits via access to the very cheapest labor. We need trade, but it's just as important that we build those protections in all countries. On the other hand, and I mean this objectively not normatively, if a US company sends its jobs to Mexico or the Philippines the people in those countries who gain those jobs can be exploited, by our definition or theirs, and still be vastly better off than when they had no jobs at all. It's an awful state of affairs for workers here and there, but I don't see how gaining jobs is the impetus to emmigrate.

These constant complaints are beginning to sound paranoid. If you want to make a more specific and substantive complaint about how various candidates are covered differently on this site, then make it.
I've never gotten the sense that the people who work (or post) here are trying to promote stories that slime Edwards.

On the other hand, I've seen prominent coverage -- and praise -- provided here to Edwards for his clear calls for Congress to end the war and for his direct criticism of Giuliani et al on terrorism.

Most people who read this site follow politics fairly closely, so it's probably assumed that we can tell the difference between spreading or amplifying criticism of Edwards and covering and critiquing the media's treatment of him.

BTW, I think there is a lot to recommend John Edwards. Why not focus on promoting his most admirable policy goals.

Evan R points out that he does know much about trade, immigration, or international labor economics. Most of us don't. Is that because the corporate owned media do not want us to know? To learn more about what is going on, one is forced to turn to "Alternative Media". A good source for these alternative viewpoints has been the War and Peace Report on Democracy Now. These daily news programs are podcast and can be viewed on a computer. Google "Democracy Now" to find out out to get them. You can download free software for viewing these broadcasts.

In particular, See the May 24th broadcast on which Dennis Kucinich was interviewed about attempts by the U.S. to seize control of Iraqi oil. Also see the June 5th interview with John Perkins about his new book "Economic Hit men, Jackals, and the truth about Global Corruption." These give strikingly different assessments of what is going on than what we hear from the WSJ, or even from most of the Democrats.

The main beneficiaries of the free trade agreements are wealthy multi-national corporations in the industrialized nations and wealthy individuals in poor countries. The victims have been indigenous peoples whose habitat has been destroyed in the quest for resources -- oil, minerals, farmland; the environment itself; and workers around the world, whose wages, health benefits, and safety protections have been degraded due to the Free trade agreements. Free trade talks have stalled on agricultural issues because of the refusal of wealthy countries to give up subsidies and duties on agricultural items, such as cotton and sugar.

U.S. cotton subsidies make it uneconomic for African farmers to produce cotton, thus depriving them of a source of income. U.S. duties on sugar cane increase the cost of sugar at home; sugar cane could be used as a source for ethanol, which would be far more economic than the current use of corn for ethanol. Corn based ethanol receives a 51% subsidy by the U.S. government. Without that subsidy, it would be uneconomic and collapse. These subsidies greatly distort agricultural economics; their cost is borne by U.S. taxpayers.

What is the basis for the argument that poor people around the globe are better off because of "free trade" agreements? Is there any validity to these claims, or are they simply rationalizations to justify exploitation of the poor by the industrialized countries?

Perhaps the prima facie evidence that Free trade is not working to raise the standards of living of the poor throughout the world is the heavy stream of poor peoples around the world into the industrialized countries.