Alabama Senate Dunces Make the Daily Show
October 15th, 2009OK, this is funny, but it’s not, especially since Alabama’s Senate delegation voted against the measure. Another embarrassing day to be from Alabamaland…
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Rape-Nuts | ||||
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In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Franken said:
The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”
In the end, Franken won the debate. His amendment passed by a 68-30 vote, earning the support of 10 Republican senators including that of newly-minted Florida Sen. George LeMieux.
“He did what a senator should do, which was he was working it,” LeMieux said in praise of Franken. “He was working for his amendment.”
Appearing with Franken after the vote, an elated Jones expressed her deep appreciation. “It means the world to me,” she said of the amendment’s passage. “It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”
Franken Wins Bipartisan Support For Legislation Reining In KBR’s Treatment Of Rape
Tags: Alabama, Daily Show, Dunces, Jeff Sessios, Jon Stewart, Senate
October 15th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Sessions is an empty suit. Alabamans should be ashamed of ever voting for this dweeb after seeing Jon Stewart’s show, in which Sessions said absolutely nothing pertinent to the problem.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
It’s a never-ending source of shame, for those of us in Alabama, that we have elected so many unconscionable people to high office over the years.
Franken fought the good fight, for the right cause, and won. I really don’t have any words to appropriately characterize Jeff Sessions’s remarks and vote, at least none that can be used in polite company.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
He is a moron, a dunce and an embarrassment. How’s that?
And they say he is “popular?” I don’t see it…
October 15th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
It goes beyond even those words, I think. There is a deep, fundamental flaw present when an elected political leader in a democratic country defends what is, by any standard, criminal conduct. It’s amoral — a result of an atrophied or nonexistent moral sense that almost any “ordinary” person would have.
Assuming Don Siegelman is out the mess created for him by Al Gonzales, he should run against Sessions next time around. If Sessions wants to defend criminals, he should do it as a trial attorney paid by his clients, not as a United States Senator paid by taxpayers and supposedly obliged to look out for the welfare of all, not private interests.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:35 am
This Sessions is an embarassment to the United States. I hope the commies don’t watch John Stewart!
October 21st, 2009 at 8:24 pm
How much more of this can we take? The GOP seems bent on voting on every issue to support big corporations against the average citizen. Vote the thugs out!
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I can’t understand why certain people in Alabama continuously try to maintain some sort of “holier than though” attitude that prevents the state from progressing forward into the 21st century. Whether it be voting a Governor into office that ends up in prison, a big city mayor on trial for corruption charges, preventing a means of raising funds to further education, or withholding the rights of certain groups that should be afforded to everyone… I’m embarassed over and over again to be from this state.