Fuck the Women... Literally and Figuratively.

Republicans I can see blocking Al Franken's rape amendment in the defense appropriations bill. I was not surprised to hear Republican asshats like David "Why yes, I am looking for a date" Vitter and Jeff Sessions calling the bill "a political attack directed at Halliburton."

What I didn't expect is that Sen. Dan Inouye (D-HI) to cave in so blatantly and easily after having his office placed under siege by contractors like Halliburton and KBR. It's now widely known on Capitol Hill that Inouye has all but decided to either water down or outright excise from the bill Sen. Al Franken's popular rape provision that would allow abused employees of defense contractors to have their day in court and would mandate the federal government to not do business with contractors who rape their employees.

The Title VII provision is what it seems to come down to. Title VII would've allowed a victim such as Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones to bring suit against former Halliburton subsidiary KBR after they raped her and imprisoned her in a storage container in 2005. Ms. Jones was also told that if she left Baghdad to seek treatment for her savage abuse that she'd be fired.

Inouye and thirty Republicans in the Senate, despite Franken's bill passing 68-30 with the support of ten Republicans and enjoying broad bipartisan support in the House, seem to have a problem with the due process of law and to give female rape victims their constitutional right to bring suit against her assailants and rapists and to have to settle instead for a kangaroo court proceeding euphemistically referred to as "arbitration" (Translation: "Let's keep it internal.")

I shouldn't need to go on and bloviate about how utterly, thoroughly and completely despicable this is. It's not even based on some warped ideology. Sen. Dan Inouye, an eight term senator, is blatantly, openly and shamelessly caving in to corporate interests that have shoveled nearly $300,000 into his campaigns. It's simply putting corporate interests ahead of the safety and dignity of women who are already putting their safety in jeopardy by volunteering to work in Iraq.

Inouye's been in for forty seven years already. Obviously it's time to put this old fart out to pasture like we did Ted Stevens. He's up for reelection next year and let's not forget that "aloha" stands for something other than "hello."