Crapo and Risch cast an inexplicable vote

 October 18th, 2009  (7) comments By Marty Trillhaase

Every so often, you have to ask: Who are your senators working for? Who are they truly representing? What motivates them when they lose sight of the ordinary citizen?

And so it is with the story of Jamie Leigh Jones.

Four years ago, while she was employed in Iraq by KBR and its former parent corporation , Jones was slipped a date-rape drug in her drink. Then she was viciously gang raped. Her account was confirmed by an Army physician. The U.S. Department of Justice did not prosecute her assailants and, under limitations then in place, the government of Iraq could not file charges.

What was KBR's response? Under armed guard, Jones was confined to a shipping container. She was denied nourishment or medical attention. After a day passed, a sympathetic guard gave her a cell phone. Jones called her father. Her father called a congressman, who in turn alerted the State Department, which assigned agents from the Baghdad embassy to rescue her.

Two years later, Jones sued her ex-employer. But she's been bogged down in a legal morass. Under the KBR contract, she's not allowed her day in court. She's supposed to seek arbitration. Just last month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld her right to have a judge and jury hear her case.

Last week, Sen. , D-Minn., asked the Senate to end the practice. In an amendment to the defense appropriations bill, Franken sought to withhold defense contracts from companies that "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

Franken did his homework. To counter claims the measure violated due process, Franken produced three legal scholars - Akhil Reed Amar of the Yale Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law and Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard - who said the amendment was constitutional. So did a review by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

His amendment passed 68-30 with bipartisan support. Among the Republicans supporting Franken were all four female Republicans, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Kay Bailey Hutchison of .

Also voting yes were Utah's Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, Kansas' Chuck Grassley, Ohio's George Voinovich, Indiana's Richard Lugar and Florida's George LeMieux.

Which left 30 white male Republicans in opposition.

Among them was Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, who has championed the rights of domestic violence victims.

Joining Crapo was Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who began his career putting criminals - presumably including men who attacked women - behind bars when he served as Ada County's prosecuting attorney. Viewed through a partisan lens, Halliburton is the former employer of Vice President Dick Cheney. So Franken's amendment is viewed as another attack on Cheney and the Bush administration.

"It was a political grandstanding effort by one senator to single out one contractor," Crapo's office says. "Congress should not reopen legally binding agreements; this is a matter for the courts, not Congress."

But what is the role of Congress if not to at least occasionally seek out what's wrong with the system and then make a good-faith effort to correct it?

Why would any member of that body - especially two lawyers from Idaho - place a legalistic point in the path of justice? - M.T.