Calling Out GOP Hypocrisy.

Franken Schools The Rest of the Democratic Senate Caucus

I blogged at Les Enragés last week about what a good idea I thought the Franken Amendment was. Attached to the defense budget, it will prohibit the Department of Defense from doing business with firms like KBR*, who append riders to their employees' contracts basically requiring them to sign all legal disputes with the company into the hands of the company's own arbitrators. Quite a sweetheart deal for the company, but not so much for employees like Jamie Leigh Jones, as I fumed over back in December of 2007 here and here. The Agent's posts on the same story are here and here. All of those posts to some degree point out how the Bush administration deliberately created a zone of lawlessness in Iraq, with the country being beyond the ordinary legal jurisdiction of the USA, and the contractors therein also being outside the special military jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that governs the armed forces wherever in the world they may be.

*-(a division of the former Halliburton, which firm was once led by CEO Dick Cheney -- if you were somehow unaware of those facts)

Senator Franken (I love the sound of that, especially after the protracted wait imposed by sore loser Norm Coleman) was fully aware of the Jones case. Concern for her plight and fear that other women might fall into the same predicament directly precipitated his amendment. But he couldn't be unaware of the political implications either. In the post cited above I expressed the hope that the 30 Republican senators who voted against the Franken Amendment would pay dearly for it politically.

Well, just watch this clip from The Rachel Maddow Show.

"When Republicans are getting called out in
Mississippi, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia
something big is going on politically."

That something big is that those 30 Republican Senators are indeed paying dearly for their knee-jerk votes against Franken's amendment. Uh, guys? Maybe in the future you might not vote against something for the simple fact that it comes from across the aisle. Think about it first. Exercise your judgment, if you actually have any.

Featured in the beginning of Rachel's article are senators Capo and Risch of Idaho; Cochran and Wicker of Mississippi; Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts of Kansas; Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; and Diaper Dave Vitter of Louisiana. These are states that seem willing to forgive their politicians for everything from overt racism to the most bizarre sexual scandals, so long as they bring home the porkbarrel federal dollars. But enabling gangs of rapists?!? Sorry, that seems to be far beyond the pale. The opinion pages in their home states describe their votes as 'disappointing,' 'embarrassing,' and 'inexplicable.' I would have much stronger words for it, but they couldn't be printed in any family newspapers.

When the Jamie Leigh Jones story first came to my attention two years ago I was SURE it was going to finally set a fire under an American electorate that had endured some of the most egregious malfeasance ever to take place in the country's history. Keep in mind that it had already been over two years since the actual rape, which took place in 2005. Still, questions remain that dwarf in significance even the primary question of whether Ms. Jones will ever get even a fraction of the justice she is due.

Firstly, why, oh why, oh why the hell did this have to wait until Sen. Franken brought it to the floor? Where were the other 56 Democratic senators (since the 2008 elections, 50 before that) on this issue? This was especially significant before the election, when an issue like this could well have elected even more Democrats, had it only been nudged into the spotlight during a tight campaign. Which, BTW, would have been a handy way to bring attention to the wider issue of contractor fraud and deception in Iraq, billions of dollars in cash just disappearing, etc., etc. -- all of which would have been a huge embarrassment to the Republicans, with their non-competitive no-bid, cost-plus crony-enriching practices. For the Democrats this was pure political gold, and not of the type they would have had to moil in the mines for. No, this was like freshly-minted sparkling coins scattered on the ground at their feet, and they couldn't bother to stoop to pick it up? Inexplicable.

Secondly, and this is a question that is going to come into the minds of every American who has just heard about this four-year-old story in the last few days, or will in the next couple of weeks -- where was the supposedly liberal-biased media on this story? The answer is obvious -- they were sitting on it to protect their Republican and conservative buddies. By now everybody whose IQ rises above that of a lump of mud should already have dispelled the liberal-biased-media myth. Now even those whose intellect is equal to a scoop of swamp water will know too.

And the third question is one that's been asked from the beginning. Why the heck hasn't Attorney General Michael Mukasey taken any action against KBR on this, or on any other Bush era lawbreaking for that matter? Is he to be considered as merely spineless, ineffective and incompetent, or should he by now be regarded as an unindicted co-conspirator?

Good job, Senator Franken. Mission Accomplished on several levels here. First, this is good lawmaking in its own right. Second, you've exposed the hypocrisy of several of the worst lizards in the US Senate. And third, you've blown the cover off of the Corporate Lamestream Media. Kudos to you. And to the rest of the Democratic Senate Caucus - shame on you for not having done this years ago.

UPDATE: Somebody has done a very good thing, starting a website called Republicans For Rape, specifically to target this issue. Check out the page listing those senators who voted against the Franken Amendment - complete with pictures of each. Nothing like a proper rogues' gallery, I always say.