Wait, someone actually voted against this amendment?

by Will on October 13, 2009

This story seems to have gotten lost in the furor surrounding Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, but I’d love to hear someone explain why 30 Republican senators – including noted bordello client David Vitter – voted against cutting off funds to federal contractors who deny their employees legal recourse for sexual assault.

Tagged as: Al Franken, Halliburton, KBR, sexual assault

Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.

{ 6 comments }

1 Sam M October 13, 2009 at 11:58 am

Not that familiar with this amendment. But if requiring arbitration rather than litigation is such an odious practice… why not just make it illegal?

2 Katherine October 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Yes, there’s been a lot of outrage on that one in liberal circles… I mean, how horrible of a person do you have to be to vote in favour of military contractors being allowed to rape their employees?

For the record, the 10 (only 10!) Republicans who voted for the bill were the 4 female Republicans (Collins, Snowe, Hutchinson, and Murkowski), the two senators from Utah (I’m a bit confused on that as I thought Obama sent one of them as ambassador to China), Grassley, LeMieux (Martinez’s replacement in Florida), Lugar and Voinovich. Apparently every other Republican Senator has no problem with rape. Including McCain… I mean, why?

3 Kyle October 13, 2009 at 4:42 pm

Utah’s former governor, Jon Huntsman is now Ambassador to China.

4 Katherine October 13, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Ah, that’s what it was. Thanks.

5 sidereal October 13, 2009 at 4:57 pm

every other Republican Senator has no problem with rape

In the interests of reasonable discourse, I’m pretty sure every Republican Senator has some problem with rape. I think that they’ve simply reached the point where bills are no longer about what they’re about but are pieces in some big game of legislative control. Every vote is some stand on a vaguely related principle, which has the benefit that you don’t have to bother reading the bill.

6 Nob Akimoto October 13, 2009 at 10:21 pm

Not to conflate this issue with another one…but the vote totals kind of seem very familiar to what we saw with the Ledbetter Act where there was a 61-38 vote with Collins, Hutchinson, Murkowski and Snowe (technically Specter was still a Republican at the time as well…but…) crossing over to vote for the bill. While two bills doesn’t make a trend, there does seem to be a theme here.

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