News about several more key appointments by President-elect Barack Obama emerged today. His choice for Secretary of Labor will be Representative Hilda Solis of California, a bit of a surprise since she didn’t seem to be on any of the short lists leaked so far.

Solis comes from a union family and is a passionate supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as “card check,” which would make it easier to organize workers in non-union workplaces). Her voting record on labor issues is very solid.

TomP has more background on Solis, including YouTubes.

Ideally, Obama would have introduced his Labor Secretary along with the rest of his economic team to underscore the importance of the job, but I’m not going to quibble about the timing. This is a very solid appointment. I assume that Solis would not give up a safe House seat unless Obama had given her some assurances that he would keep his campaign promise to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Speaking of which, Representative Xavier Becerra of California declined Obama’s offer to become U.S. Trade Representative a few days ago. It was a smart move, as Becerra has a chance to become Speaker of the House someday. Today Obama offered that job to former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who had previously been mentioned as a possible candidate for Secretary of Transportation.

Obama made some campaign promises about replacing “free trade” with “fair trade,” but it’s not clear whether choosing Kirk signals a plan to retreat from those promises. The Wall Street Journal argued that

By naming Mr. Kirk, Mr. Obama nodded to the free-trade wing of the Democratic Party, which is small but has important ties to business.

Solis is firmly in the “fair trade” camp of the Democratic Party.

Obama’s chief science adviser will be the physicist John Holdren, an internationally-renowned expert on energy and climate issues. He is apparently a highly effective communicator as well as a brilliant scientist.

Obama also has chosen Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a very large agency within the Commerce Department. The Deep Sea News blog ran with the headline, “Obama Appoints Totally Awesome Marine Biologist to Head NOAA!”

Holy Mola! I can’t contain my excitement about this appointment. Her work in marine ecology and conservation is seminal and her involvement in science outreach is phenomenal. This marks a new era for NOAA indeed. I am very excited to see where she takes the agency. Yet again, another amazing Obama appointment. It feels so strange to have a president who respects science and appoints highly qualified people to important posts.

It’s looking more and more like Obama is serious about tackling the global warming problem. But can any of the highly qualified scientists he’s appointed talk him out of promoting “clean coal”?

UPDATE: Reuters says Obama “has chosen retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair as the top U.S. intelligence official” and will announce that decision soon.

who just won the Nobel Prize for economics:

“What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions,” the [Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences] said in its citation.

“He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography,” it said.

Although Krugman wasn’t honored for his op-ed pieces in the New York Times, I will always be grateful that he remained unafraid to criticize George Bush and his policies, even at the height of Bush’s popularity in late 2001 and 2002.

In case you weren’t aware, Krugman has a good blog too.

Asinus Asinum Fricat is one of very few bloggers who teach you something in just about every piece they write. A trained chef, he writes lots of “food” diaries about various cuisines of the world and occasionally the food past generations ate.

Asinus Asinum Fricat also writes lots of pieces on environmental or health issues, such as this post on the massive “plastic soup” in the Pacific Ocean. Frankly, sometimes I dread clicking on his diaries, because I know he’s going to scare the hell out of me.

That said, I strongly recommend that everyone (especially parents) read a four-part series he recently completed about food products tainted with melamine. You may have heard of melamine last year in news reports about massive pet food recalls.

Unfortunately, melamine has shown up in the human food supply, and so far the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not been as aggressive in dealing with the danger as governmental agencies in some other countries.

Here are the four pieces by Asinus Asinum Fricat:

A Total Ban on Chinese Food Imports Should Be in Place. Now!

Must Read: Tainted Chinese Products Criminal Timeline

From China, with Love: Melamine (This one contains a long list of products that have been banned in other countries; many of them are brands you will recognize.)

Dem. Congresswoman Raps FDA On Melamine Risk Guidelines

The community blog on food issues, La Vida Locavore, is a good one to bookmark and check regularly for articles about food safety.

I've got to agree with David Sirota here: Hillary Clinton Thinks Iowans Are Stupid.

Four days after voting for a trade agreement with Peru, Hillary tells a United Auto Workers conference that “she'll call a 'time out' on trade agreements if she wins the White House to see if the deals are draining jobs from the U.S.”

She also campaigned today in Waterloo, a city that has lost a lot of good manufacturing jobs.

Will people fall for this? 

Hillary Clinton had a chance to do one of two things on the Peru Free Trade Agreement. She could announce her opposition to the proposal, or she could do what Wall Street demanded.

CLINTON ON TRADE: I’M AS AWFUL AS OBAMA…

Clinton went with Wall Street. On the same day that a majority of House Democrats voted against the Peru FTA, the senator from New York endorsed the current economic-policy priority of the Bush administration.

In so doing, Clinton confirmed that the only thing more important to her than securing her lead in the race for the Democratic nod is keeping the likely financiers of her fall campaign happy, and Clinton joined Illinois Senator Obama in supporting the trade deal.

Edwards opposes!