Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation to prohibit the government from contracting with private firms that require potential employees to sign waivers against being able to sue the company in cases of rape by fellow employees. As silly as this sounds, it resulted from a case of a KBR female being gang raped by fellow employees, and then being told she had signed away her right to sue in her contract's fine print.

The legislation vote: 68 for and 30 against.


Guess from which side of the aisle the 30 nay votes came. This was even being spun by one Senator as an anti-KBR bill, and he said that rather than legislation these matters should be left to mediation.

Did you really think our elected folks could not get you more disgusted? It just keeps getting worse. :(

The most screwed up part of it is that those same people will cite womens' rights as justification for re-paving half the Middle East.

All the Republican women voted for it.

Got a link of an article about this? Curious to see it.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-14-2009/rape-nuts

page not found.

Weird, the video is still there, but the page is gone. You can see it embedded here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/jon-stewart-takes-on-30-r_n_321985.html

Thanks Sanchek for getting this link up.


BTW, I loved the comment:

Women supporting the GOP is like Chickens supporting the KFC!


:p

I wonder what else was tied to the bill ?

The vote was for the amendment, not the bill itself, which being a defense appropriations will pass. No need to wonder, you can read:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r111:FLD001:S10070


In the debate, Senator Sessions maintained that Franken's amendment overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution.

To which, Senator Franken fired back quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this whole bill [the Defense Appropriations bill] is full of limitations on contractors -- what bonuses they can give and what kind of health care they can offer. The spending power is a broad power and my amendment is well within it."