30 Senate Republicans vote to shield Halliburton and other defense contractors from rape charges

30 Republican senators voted against an amendment designed to protect woman employees of US defense contractors from rape, physical abuse, and other abusive workplace practices, claiming to do anything else would amount to government interference with commerce, since the rapes and other abuse are no one else's business but the companies and the victims. If that sounds weird, read on and find out the kind of business rights that Republicans like former presidential candidate John McCain -- who this writer is ashamed to say he voted for in 2000's GOP primary -- were trying to protect from government interference:

... Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with KBR firefighters.

"When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.

Jones was treated by a US army doctor who gave forensic evidence to company officials. She says the firm placed her under guard in a shipping container and she was released only after her father asked the US embassy to intervene. When the forensic evidence was handed to investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were missing.

Jones says she identified one of the men who attacked her after he confessed, but that Halliburton/KBR prevented her from taking legal action against him or the company by pointing to a clause in her contract requiring disputes to go to arbitration.

John McCain and 29 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate want to make sure no one interferes with Halliburton/KBR's right to make that nasty busy just go away...