Wal-Mart Watch, an opposition group supported by unions, has sent letters to the attorneys general of Arizona and Nebraska asking them to outlaw television spots Wal-Mart is running in those states. Wal-Mart Watch claims the states can do this thanks to consumer-protection laws that require truth in advertising.

Those laws are targeted at companies' claims about the weight of a Quarter Pounder or the ingredients of a bar of soap, however, and what's at issue in respect of the Wal-Mart ads is something else. Wal-Mart is attempting to counter the attacks of its critics by presenting its case directly to the public. Wal-Mart Watch complains that the TV spots say "Wal-Mart saves the average working family $2300 per year." Wal-Mart Watch claims this is deceptive because that number comes from a Wal-Mart funded study performed by a firm called Global Insight. "This ‘fact' has been discredited," Wal-Mart Watch writes to the attorneys general, "by a leading economic research think tank, the Economic Policy Institute."

It can easily be argued, however, that EPI isn't "objective" either. Nine of its 19 board members, after all, are leaders of labor unions. One of those just happens to be Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has been a supporter of anti-Wal-Mart efforts. Mr. Stern also serves on another board — that of Wal-Mart Watch, which he chairs.

The anti-Wal-Mart unions aren’t trying to organize Wal-Mart workers (who love their company and disdain the unions) they are trying to kill Wal-Mart because “it’s always the low price.”

Wal-Mart’s effective competition against Safeway and other heavily unionized grocers is undermining the finances of the service workers unions. This ain’t about health care for Wal-Mart workers or the environmental impact of a big box store. It’s about the growing threat to the money pouring into the union leaderships. The deal with the Democrats is obvious: you do our bidding against Wal-Mart, or we unions cut off the free phone lines and political machines you need.

So, the anti-Wal-Mart crusaders have intimidated the Democratic party. If the Democrats win the House of Representatives this November, they will be under enormous pressure to do harm to Wal-Mart. Indeed, Democrats are running up huge debts with all of the unions, with all of the groups backed by Soros, with the “net roots” of MoveOn.org and with the professional storm-troopers trained by the socialist organization ACORN.

This ain’t Hubert Humphrey Democratic’s party. It’s enough to make Joe Biden speechless. Oops, scratch that; he’s joined the jihad against Wal-Mart.

(Wal-Mart is hardly a stable friend; after Maryland’s Governor risked all to fight against anti-Wal-Mart legislation based on principle, they cut and ran out on him by relenting to Democratic pressure to expand a warehouse in Maryland. This whole battle isn’t really about Wal-Mart at all; it’s about unions using politics to steer consumers away from the store of their choice into a store the unions control.)