Linda, Livin' Large

It's amazing that the so-called liberal New York Times is still spreading lies on behalf of Bush's 2000 Secretary of Labor nominee, Linda Chavez, who was an employer of illegal labor:

But what is truly remarkable is how closely Mr. Kerik's troubles mirrored Ms. Chavez's. She declined to tell the new Bush administration that nearly a decade before she had given shelter and some modest financial aid to an illegal immigrant as an act of compassion for a Guatemalan woman in trouble. She hid some details from the F.B.I. The fate of her nomination lingered for a few days, until Mr. Card and others pulled the plug. And after her nomination was withdrawn, she said that if she had to provide aid to a needy person like that all over again, she would.

Uh, Kerik claims he thought his employee was legal, and admitted he didn't pay social security taxes on her wages. In contrast, the woman employed by Chavez said Chavez knew she was in the U.S. illegally, and Chavez claimed the woman wasn't an employee. So how are those situations similar, David?

The compassionate Chavez even benefitted from paying the woman so cheaply that she had to work for other families, as confirmed in the second link above.

The best take on Chavez at the time was this one, by Josh Marshall:

But, wait ... could there be something more sinister afoot here? Let's take Chavez at her word. She had an illegal immigrant who lived in her home and performed menial chores for Chavez's family. Yet the woman was not an employee and was paid no money for performing these tasks. Don't we have a word for this sort of arrangement? Forget the IRS or the INS. This sounds more like a violation of the 13th Amendment!

Does Linda Chavez have any ties to the Southern Partisan?