Last week several groups, including the United Steelworkers, petitioned the federal government to whack the latest trade mole – illegally traded auto parts from China.

With President Obama announcing creation of a new trade enforcement unit in his State of the Union Address, the feds probably will investigate. But even if they whack down the auto parts mole, experience has shown a new mole will pop up.

Apple’s trademark is the intuitive elegance of its designs. Yet when it comes corporate and labor practices, Apple’s track record looks like a morass of obfuscation and murky public-relations smokscreens. So activists seeking a more user-friendly Apple on the human rights front should welcome the company’s new “Supplier Responsibility” report.

It appears that the helpful assistant, Siri, who lives in your shiny new iPhone 4S might be anti-choice.

Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a Hong Kong-based group, reports that Apple’s major manufacturing contractors in Asia routinely subject employees to forced overtime, wage theft and no breaks — and even unprotected exposure to toxins.

I’ve seen no mention of the fact that the workers at one Chinese iPhone plant were all getting sick because an iPhone manufacturer, Wintek, switched to n-hexane rather than alcohol to make the manufacturing process seconds faster.

Think about what would be happening if a sweater, or even a diamond ring, had been left in a bar by someone who had too much to drink. If “Person X” found it and tried to return it to the original owner, who said it wasn’t theirs, and then sold it to a pawn shop, what would have happened? Would a SWAT team be sweeping down on the pawn shop and seizing all of its computers, even AFTER the item had already been returned to its original owner? I seriously doubt it.

Firedoglake is looking to develop mobile applications for our site. We’re looking for folks in the FDL community with experience developing mobile apps for the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry platforms.

The apps we’re looking to build include geographic data, content syndication, and database synchronization. If you or someone you know has the chops to work with us, drop us a line at firedoglake.web@gmail.com.

There’s a tendency among iPod or iPhone users to scoff at the notion that a news app might actually be worth paying money for. No reason to spend a few bucks on a subscription each month when you can easily go online on your phone and find the news that way. On the other side of the spectrum are people like Rupert Murdoch who think news can still be bought and sold like before the internet. Murdoch will charge for web access to the Times of London and $17.99 a month for a subscription to the iPad edition of The Wall Street Journal.

I think both these arguments are partially wrong.