Al Franken, our newest Senator and legal comedian, introduced a law to the Senate making it illegal for any company contracting with the federal government to require its employees to sign a document agreeing not to sue the company should they be raped while they worked for that company.

No, I'm not joking. He really had to come up with a bill because Halliburton really had this document ready for women to sign before they would employ the women. Tim spent a lot of time last night explaining to me why a woman might look at a document like that, which at the very least implies another woman has been raped while under this company's employment in such a way that she thought it justified to sue the company for complicity in her rape, and still sign the paper and take the job. Since he really worked very hard at his explanation, I'm going to let him continue to believe he showed me how there would be a woman who would look at that document, sign it, and go to work.

Moving on from my mental block, behind which I stand shrieking and beating my fists on it, we come to: Al Franken creates the bill and takes it to the Senate. He says, "Here is this infamous company practice; they are as much as setting up the defense that a woman agreed to rape; they are denying her the right to legal recourse, this is nuts." 68 Senators agreed that this was the right bill to pass.

30 Senators, all Republican, voted to allow companies not just to wink at rape, but to give it a legal shield. Thirty men, most of them husbands and fathers.

It's doubtful you'll have heard about this. As the Buzzflash editors point out, the mainstream media, instead of covering that story, chose instead to go after ACORN. Yeah, you know, the organization that empowers poor people and allows them to take part in their own futures. Because one outstation of the organization fouled up (and because Obama seems pretty much bullet proof), Congress pulled their funding. See, poor people shouldn't have money, because some people (::coughGoldman Sachs AIGcough::) might mishandle it, so you have to defund the entire organization (because you can't attack Obama, so get one of the popular groups that supported him (::coughnotBankofAmericaFreddieMaccough::). Poor people having power in the political ring? Crush them. Crush them like you crush those women who complain about being raped by their fellow employees. Don't they know they're hired as "comfort troops"?

I've been reading a lot about women under Islam. Then I come back to shit like this, and think maybe the biggest differences are our clothes and the lie that we're more free.

Yeah, I know they have it a lot worse. They really do. But reading stories like this, and the back-up information (because really, BuzzFlash is a progressive polemical outfit and should be checked), makes me feel weak and dirty.