DAILY SHOW: As Jon Stewart reported on last night’s Daily Show, 30 GOP Senators (that’s 75% of all Republicans in the Senate for those keeping score at home) recently voted in favor of KBR and Halliburton’s right to gang-rape employees. It’s shocking, I know. However, it is important to keep in mind that KBR and Halliburton directed Chinatown. MORE

THE GUARDIAN: US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq was prevented from taking legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow workers. Al Franken, the Senate’s newest member, has won an amendment to the defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. She alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors in Baghdad in 2005. Jones, who was employed by KBR, which was fighting oil fires, says that a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the firm, including allegedly locking her in a container under armed guard and losing forensic evidence, amounts to a cover-up. Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.Franken described it as a denial of justice. “Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court,” he said in a Senate debate. MORE

THE EXAMINER:  It would seem that if anything could get bi-partisan support it would be the Franken Anti-Government Contractor Rape Liability bill. This democratically sponsored bill, which did pass in the Senate 68 to 30, still had 30 senators who could not support it. And no, it is not because the language of the bill has something sneaky stuck in, it really does what it claims to do and nothing else. Sec. 8104. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention. MORE

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