Your View: Sessions' Vote Against Franken Amendment Hazardous, Shameful

Editor, the Auburn Plainsman

Thank you Senator Sessions for yet again embarrassing the great state of Alabama.

Earlier in the year during the Justice Sotomayor confirmation hearings, Sessions made our state seem backwoods and racist during his times to question.

Sessions was more concerned with asking questions about race and empathy than about Justice Sotomayor's extensive judicial record.

Sessions all but called Justice Sotomayor a racist.

Guess it takes one to know one, right, Senator Sessions?

Now, Sessions has topped himself by voting against an amendment of Senator Franken of Minnesota that would defund federal contractors that force their employees to use arbitration.

Franken's amendment would allow for the employee to chose sue in court as an option as well as choosing arbitration.

But we cannot have employees have choice and rights, can we Senator Sessions?

Franken introduced his amendment because of a 2005 incident involving a KBR (Halliburton) employee in Iraq.

Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones was working in Baghdad on a KBR worksite when she was gang-raped by some of her fellow employees and locked inside a railroad container for more than a day.

But Ms. Jones had signed a contract waiving her right to sue in court, instead having to take her claim to an independent arbitrator.

Sessions seems to think that the federal government should have zero power over the contractor's to which we give government contracts.

We would not want the government meddling in government business, would we Senator Sessions?

Sessions also believes that the Franken amendment will lead to the elimination of arbitration altogether.

Looks like someone has been using his Jump to Conclusions Mat.

"Arbitration agreements allow parties to avoid the cost of litigation, a benefit that may be of particular importance in employment litigation, which involves smaller sums of money..." said Sessions.

By this, Senator Sessions, do you believe that gang-rape deserves a "smaller sum of money"?

Arbitration also allows the employers to basically hide the crime, thus it could happen again. Sunlight is the best disinfectant; let these crimes be known to all.

Funny how Sessions whole-heartedly support a Bill of Attainder against ACORN, even though Article I Section 9 paragraph 3 of the Constitution specifically prohibits them.

I guess you missed that day at the ambulance chasing factory of a law school you attended. Yet you will not support a bill against KBR, a major GOP donor.

Good to know that a guy with a candid camera dresses as HuggyBear is more persuasive to you than the actually criminal act of gang-rape.

Senator Sessions, you are an embarrassment to this state.

You actions almost make me want to agree with the teabagger call for term-limits.

Unfortunately for us, we are stuck with you until 2014, since the religious nut-jobs, flat-earthers and civil war reenactors that dominate this state's politics reelected to in November.

I promise I will do everything I can to educate the population of this state on your action, to help ensure you are not reelected again.

Dustin Pridgen

sophomore,

social science education