Legendary Louisiana Governor Huey Long once said that “someday the people of Louisiana are gonna get good government — and they’re not gonna like it.” Few would argue that Louisianans have yet had the opportunity to test that theory.
Last week, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu made headlines by reiterating her opposition to the public option, in defiance of her party and the will of around 60% of the American people.
Now it’s David Vitter’s turn. Vitter, Louisiana’s other Senator, is a radical conservative, a religious extremist, a champion of family values, and a married $300-an-hour hooker enthusiast with an apparent diaper fetish.
Vitter — along with 30 other Republicans — voted against legislation which would have permitted rape victims to sue their government-contractor employers. The proposal was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who went through this at the hands of her employer, Halliburton:
Jones, who was just 19 when she went to Iraq to work for KBR Inc., a Halliburton subsidiary that was fighting oil fires. She alleges that seven male co-workers spiked her drink with a date rape drug, then brutally assaulted her. When she came to, she says, her employer’s response was to lock her in a shipping container without food, water or a bed for at least 24 hours and threaten that if she left the country for medical treatment she would lose her job.
The woman was only able to escape after a friendly guard handed her a cellphone enabling her to call her father, who called their congressman, Ted Poe of Texas. Jones had to be rescued from captivity by officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Halliburton did nothing to punish the rapists. Neither did the Justice Department or the U.S. military. The company told Jones she could not sue for redress in the courts because her contract said such claims had to be settled by arbitration — with the same people who were part of the cover-up.
Halliburton would prefer that Jones and other rape victims be forced into binding arbitration so that claims could be judged in secret by a Halliburton-paid lawyer. The legislation Vitter opposed would have allowed Jones and other rape victims to let a jury decide.
Over the weekend, a constituent of Vitter’s — herself a rape victim — asked why she and people like her shouldn’t have their day in court. Vitter offered this remarkably condescending, arrogant response, at the end of which he turned his back and stormed off.
Vitter takes millions of dollars from corporations like Halliburton, meaning that he both pays to commit humiliating acts of diaper-clad self-loathing and is willing to be paid for them. Talk about versatility — well done, Louisiana.
