Month: December 2009
Huckabee Refuses to Take Responsibility for Pardoning Cop Killer
Of course Gov. Huckabee is correct that no one has a crystal ball. I don’t think anyone expected him to. What I would like to see, however, is even a modicum of genuine remorse, just a teeny weeny bit of post-traumatic stress disorder where he blames himself just the haziest bit for his decision. Instead, I only see arrogance, word games, and defiance.
GOP Pro-Rape Caucus: Senators Furious At Franken Because They Voted Against His Amendment To Protect Rape Victim Rights
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has enraged 10 Republican senators who voted against an amendment he proposed that protected the rights of rape victims who work for federal government contractors like KBR, Halliburton and Xe, formerly Blackwater.
In October, all the Democrats and 30 Republicans senators voted to prohibit the federal government from contracting with companies that restrict the rights of their employees who are raped to sue their employers.
Now the 10 Republicans who chose to vote against protecting rape victims’ rights — or rather, who voted to protect the bottom line of their corporate masters and/or reflexively voted “no” because the amendment was proposed by a liberal — are tired of the drubbing they’ve been receiving in the press and have come out swinging against Franken.
“It was partisan — and he knew it,” Sen. Tom Coburn said. “That’s exactly what I’d expect.”
Got that? Rape is a partisan issue, according to this leading Christian cultist. Democrats are against sexual assault, but Republicans believe rape victims should have their rights restricted.
Reaction from other members of the Republican Pro-Rape Caucus follows, but first here’s how Franken described the plight of Jamie Leigh Jones, then 19 years old, who was hired by KBR and sent to Iraq, on the Senate floor:
[In 2005] Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones signed a contract to become an employee of KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary. That contract contained a clause which required her to arbitrate any future dispute against her employer. This means it forced her to give up her right to seek redress in court if she was wronged. At the time, Ms. Jones had no idea what implications this seemingly innocuous, fine-print clause would have.
Ms. Jones arrived in Iraq in July of 2005. Immediately, she complained to supervisors about the hostile conditions imposed by KBR — she was constantly being harassed by her male colleagues, and was housed in barracks with 400 men and only a few women. Her pleas for safer housing were ignored. Four days after her arrival, Ms. Jones was drugged and gang raped. She requested medical attention, and a doctor administered a rape kit. Parts of that rape kit have since mysteriously disappeared. After Ms. Jones reported the rape to her supervisors, she was locked in a shipping container with an armed guard and prohibited from any contact with the outside world. They locked her in a container?!? It was only after she convinced one of the guards to lend her a cell phone that she was able to talk to her father, who enlisted the help of Representative Ted Poe, a Republican congressman from Texas, to arrange for her safe return to the United States.
But, Ms. Jones’ horrific plight did not end there. Having survived this ordeal, most of us would expect that she would have her day in court to seek justice for the actions and inactions of her employer. Instead, KBR sought to enforce the arbitration clause in Ms. Jones’ contract, and tried to force her into arbitration. So, over the past three years, Ms. Jones has been fighting for her right just to bring a lawsuit. And KBR has been fighting her every step along the way. This is simply too long for a rape victim to wait, just to have her day in court.
Here’s more angry reaction against Franken and his amendment from the GOP Pro-Rape Gang of10:
Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I think it would be helpful for Sen. Franken to come forward and say, ‘I’m not suggesting that anybody who votes for my amendment is indifferent to crimes against women or anybody else’.”
…Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) attempted to defend their position in a co-written op-ed in a local newspaper. Franken confronted each senator separately to dispute the article. According to Politico, Franken’s meeting with one of the senators was tense: “People familiar with the Corker exchange say it was heated and ended abruptly.”
…”I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), said, “from what I know of” Franken, he “expected” such tactics.
And from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former judge: “Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing … I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”
The vote by the Pro-Rape Caucus has inspired the launch of a website called Republicans for Rape.
Big Brother Might Be ‘Following’ You
There’s one denizen of the social networks that won’t show up among the avatars of your Twitter followers or among your friends on Facebook, though it’s there all the same — the U.S. Justice Department.
Seems Justice and some other federal agencies have been using social networks as a source of information on citizens, though how they do it, how often they do it, how much info they mine and what they do with it is a secret. That’s why the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the government to find out what agencies’ policies and practices are when it comes to data collection and surveillance using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
EFF sued only after the agencies refused to comply with its Freedom of Information Act requests within the mandatory 20-day period.
According to a Bloomberg.com article, EFF claims there have been incidents where law enforcement organizations have used socnets for investigations, though no one knows how often or how many:
The EFF said in its complaint that it is seeking the information to “help inform Congress and the public about the effect of such uses and purposes on citizens’ privacy rights and associated legal protections.”
It cited news articles that reported police searching Facebook photos for evidence of underage drinking and an FBI search of an individual’s home after the person sent messages on Twitter during the G-20 Summit notifying protesters of police movements.
The potential number of citizens who could find their social network invaded by cops and feds is huge — Facebook, the biggest socnet site in the world, has 300 million users, while Twitter boasts 58 million.
Verbatim
The first step must be getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our troops have fought valiantly there, but Iraq has deprived them of the support they need — and deserve. As a result, parts of Afghanistan are falling into the hands of the Taliban, and a mix of terrorism, drugs, and corruption threatens to overwhelm the country. As President, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to reinforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO’s efforts against the Taliban.
— Presidential candidate Barack Obama on the campaign trail Aug. 1, 2007, making a promise he apparently is going to keep, according to his speech last night.
Zogby: 72% Can Imagine Becoming Poor; 50% Expect to do Better
Financial recovery may be slow after the economic meltdown, but there is hope this holiday season according to a new Zogby Interactive poll. Seventy two percent of adults say they either already consider themselves poor (20 percent) or can imagine becoming poor (52 percent), yet Americans can see light at the end of the tunnel.
Thirty-three percent of Americans expect their financial situation to improve a year from now and that figure jumps as we look to the future. Fifty percent of Americans believe their personal financial situation will be better off five years from now, 18 percent think their situation will be about the same, and 20 percent believe they will be worse off financially five years from now.
