30 GOP Senators Defend Gang Rape

30 GOP Senators Defend Gang Rape

Here in Virginia we worry about a thesis that disrespects women that was authored by the republican candidate for governor. Its much bigger than that, The GOP disrespects women across the board. Read on, this is unbleivable.
ACVDN

It is stunning that 30 Republican members of the United States Senate would vote to protect a corporation, in this case Halliburton/KBR, over a woman who was gang raped. The details:

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.

Offering Ms. Jones legal relief was Senator Al Franken of Minnesota who offered 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."


Seems simple enough.    And yet, to GOP Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama allowing victims of sexual assault a day in court is tantamount to a "political attack" at Halliburton.     That 29 others, all men, chose to join him in opposing the Franken amendment is simply mind-boggling.

Here are those who vote to protect a corporation over a victim of rape:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)


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."

 If you are female or a brother, father, grandfather, uncle, cousin, husband to someone who is a female or just someone who believes in justice and you vote republican drop us a comment about the GOP mindset.
Amherst County Virginia Democratic News

Election Day in Virginia By President Obama

Virginia, it's time to get fired up.

I've just announced that I'll be visiting next Tuesday to rally you and your neighbors in support of Creigh Deeds and our movement for change. Creigh Deeds has offered real solutions to address Virginia's challenges in transportation and the economy, and it's up to us now to build the support that will make those solutions a reality.

ACVDN

We made history here in Virginia last year. Together with your neighbors, you built a movement in order to move this commonwealth and our country forward.

But from day one, we knew we were working toward something far greater than simply one election. It was about changing the way politics in our country works -- from the bottom up, face to face, one conversation at a time. And it was about getting beyond the divisiveness and petty politics that have kept too many out of the process.

That promise is now ours to keep.

Election Day in Virginia is less than two weeks away, and you have an important choice to make -- not just in how you vote, but in what you make of this important opportunity to create change. We can take a giant step together toward keeping that promise of a better future for Virginia by doing all that we can to elect Creigh Deeds as the next governor.

Join fellow Virginians in keeping the promise of change alive by volunteering for Creigh Deeds.

http://www.deedsforvirginia.com/action/obamavol?sc=x.ofa1021

We've worked too hard and come too far to let Virginia slip back. Creigh Deeds has embraced the movement you started by speaking directly and honestly to Virginians about the challenges ahead and the ideas that will move us forward.

His record of bringing people together to create solutions to difficult challenges is exactly the kind of change we built this movement to achieve -- and it's exactly what Virginia needs now.

But it's up to you to make sure that your friends and neighbors know the stark choice they face in this election by making calls and knocking on doors. And it's up to you to make sure that those we helped to vote and get involved for the first time in Virginia last year do so again now.

We know firsthand that we can win elections in Virginia the right way -- one real, thoughtful conversation at a time. But we also know the only way it can happen is when people who believe in our cause step up and get involved. That means this year, right now, it all comes down to you.

Help keep the promise of change alive by getting involved and building support for Creigh Deeds in these final two weeks:

http://va.barackobama.com/VAfiredup

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Amherst County Virginia Democratic News

Bill Clinton Speaks to Virginians

BILL Says

"Don't Let 'Fear Factor' Determine Deeds-McDonnell Victor"

McLEAN, Va. -- Ah, what might have been. Terry McAuliffe and Bill Clinton brought their buddy act to a pep rally Tuesday and gave Virginia Democrats a taste of what they passed up by nominating Creigh Deeds for governor, instead of McAuliffe.

Never mind that Deeds trails Republican Bob McDonnell by 7 to 8 percentage points in most polls. "November 3 is going to be the greatest comeback in the history of American politics!" McAuliffe exclaimed, adding another instant classic to his hit parade of sweeping pronouncements.

Then the former national party chairman moved on to chicken waste as energy (a staple of his own short-lived gubernatorial campaign) and said he felt like a Little Leaguer talking baseball next to Babe Ruth when he talked about the economy standing next to Clinton.

Clinton, playing his part, looked bemused. "You gotta love this guy," he said.

The pair, recently back from Africa, had teamed up earlier in the year to try to launch McAuliffe in electoral politics. Now they're back as part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to shore up Deeds.

For Clinton, it was a day of gubernatorial duties. He was due in New Jersey on Tuesday night to campaign for Gov. Jon Corzine. For Deeds, it's the week of presidents. In seven days, President Obama will make his second campaign visit for Deeds in a state he won comfortably last year.

But will the late Democratic push here be enough to help Deeds catch up to McDonnell? McAuliffe, who had led a field of three in most primary season polls, said he was speaking from personal experience -- "don't pay any attention to the polls."

Clinton offered his own lesson from the primary outcome: "Never underestimate this man." He said Deeds has the best record and best plans for jobs, education, health care and transportation -- "I have reviewed this ... This is not a close question."

More than 300 Deeds supporters and volunteers gathered for Tuesday's feel-good event in a campaign office in an industrial park in the Washington suburbs. They responded with whoops and cheers to Clinton's mild partisan swipes ("Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It apparently is the political platform of the Virginia Republican Party") and exhortations to "step into the breach" and make sure people vote.

The former president said a central issue of the election is "not being in denial" about serious problems such as state transportation woes that are choking off economic growth. He said voters shouldn't give in to "the fear factor" and stay home -- and it's up to Deeds workers to make sure they don't.

"Don't you let this election be determined by the denial strategy of people who only trigger the fear factor because the others are too busy to go vote," Clinton declared. He did not say what there was to fear, but Deeds' openness to higher taxes for transportation has been a central theme of McDonnell's campaign.

Deeds shot to a surprise primary victory after The Washington Post endorsed him in a strong editorial praising his record and style. The newspaper has now run another endorsement editorial that is, if anything, even stronger. Deeds cited the editorial Tuesday ("I was so proud") and also cited a New York Times article that deemed employer tax credits for every job created -- a Deeds proposal -- the most cost-effective way to create jobs.

The Post editorial and the prodding by Democratic heavyweights could deliver some less-than-fired-up voters to the polls. But if current opinion polls are accurate, even "heroic turnout" in Northern Virginia wouldn't make the difference for Deeds, demographer Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, said in an interview.

Lang says Northern Virginia, five counties within about an hour of Washington, D.C., accounted for 28 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election. Democrats typically have to win big among liberals and moderates in the area to pull off a statewide win. But Deeds doesn't have a natural base here -- he's from the rural southwest part of the state -- while McDonnell grew up in the area.

And Deeds won't be able to match the huge turnouts of young people and black people that helped Obama become the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry Virginia in 44 years. Nor does it help that in the Richmond area, where blacks turned out in force for Obama, Doug Wilder -- the state's first black governor and the former mayor of Richmond -- hasn't endorsed Deeds.

Meanwhile, McDonnell is getting his own high-wattage help from people like Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, and Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television.

Turnout is always relatively low in Virginia's way-off-year election, a deliberate strategy to keep the race focused on local rather than national issues. Of course, that's made it and New Jersey -- the only two gubernatorial races in the years following presidential elections -- even more closely examined for clues to national trends. But Virginia hasn't proven predictive in the past. For decades the state has simply elected governors who are from the opposite party as the president who won the year before.