Harry Reid supports Rape?

Good day all. What with all the news coming out of Nevada this weekend, this little gem slipped under the radar. It seems that Dingy Harry Reid doesn’t seem to want to help rape victims get any justice.

“Say What?” You ask? Harry Reid is helping rapists? Why, that sounds like something those evil Koch loving Republicans would do, not those wonderful and caring Progressive Liberal Democrats. Just what the heck is going on here? Well, according to the Washington Examiner:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scheduled a Friday session that won’t have any votes, rejecting Republican and Democratic requests that he allow a vote on a bill that would allow rape kits to be processed more quickly.

“Debbie Smith is an extraordinary woman and an effective advocate,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Washington Examiner. “She’s personally asked me, John Cornyn and others to pass this critically important legislation that bears her name, and it’s deeply disappointing that the majority leader is blocking it from reaching the president’s desk. I will fight to get this done for the sake of Debbie and sexual assault victims everywhere.”

I always knew that Dingy Harry was a scumbag, but who would have thought he would block anything that would help put slimy rapists behind bars? Since Dingy Harry the land grabber is the Majority leader in the Senate, and currently the Progressive Liberal Democrats are the majority, well, he must be speaking for all the Progressive Liberal Democrats in the Senate.

Smith didn’t just persuade McConnell to push for the bill. Rep. Carolyn Maloney wanted the Senate to take up the bill when the House passed it earlier this week.

“I hope that this bill will quickly pass the Senate and become law,” Maloney, D-N.Y., said Monday on the House floor. “This is one of those rare bills that virtually guarantees that it will put real criminals behind bars and protect people more effectively from one of the most traumatic assaults imaginable: rape. The grants provided to states and local governments will allow them to significantly reduce or eliminate their backlogs.”

I’ve read about these backlogs. Some of these kits have been sitting in secure shelves for months and longer. One of the reasons is budgetary, and numerous groups and individuals have been raising funds to help pay for the processing of these kits. As I understand it, these are only kits used in cases that police don’t have a suspect in mind or in custody. When they catch someone, then any relevant kits would have to go to the head of the line simply in the interests of justice, both for the victim as well as the accused. The problem with these delays is that rapists generally don’t stop with one attack and evidence gathered could help investigators get these vermin off the streets and nailed to a cross. (Ok, they can’t execute them these days, but one can hope) So, just what is Reid’s problem?

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked Reid to allow a vote on the Debbie Smith Act Thursday evening when Reid called the senators to the floor in an attempt to confirm two judicial nominees, one of them somewhat controversial, before the Easter recess. Reid refused, saying that he would only allow a vote on a broader bill, the Justice For All Act, which contains the rape kit language, in addition to other legislation.

The point is, the [Judiciary] committee met and reviewed the House legislation and decided that they wanted to do more than what the House did,” Reid replied to Cornyn. “I think we should go along with the committee system. I hear my friends, the Republican leader and other Republican senators talk about, ‘Let’s have the committees do their work.’ They’ve done their work. We approved their work. We’re ready to pass this right now, which is — it approves the Debbie Smith language but does a lot more.”

So Harry is once again playing politics at absolutely the wrong time. Why am I not at all surprised? And Senator John Cornyn? What is he looking to gain by making this a stand alone bill?

Cornyn, who wanted the Debbie Smith Act to pass by unanimous consent, didn’t want to go to the Justice For All Act because a Republican colleague objects to an aspect of the bill unrelated to the rape kit provision.

“What we can pass is the Debbie Smith Act, which is a piece of this, which there is no objection to that I know of, and then we can get this rape kit issue addressed today,” he said. “This shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. We could pass the Debbie Smith Act today and then we could take up the Justice For All Act when return following the recess. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.”

And Reid’s response?

Reid accused Cornyn of “diversion [and] delay,” suggesting that his refusal to move to the Justice For All Act represented more obstruction.

Delay was baked into Reid’s request, though. The Justice For All Act has not passed the House, so the Debbie Smith Act language included in the bill would take effect only after (or if) the House passed that larger, more controversial piece of legislation. If Reid had allowed a vote on the stand-alone Debbie Smith Act, the bill would be headed to the White House for Obama to sign into law.

As Reid’s retort demonstrated, during the debate senators made procedural arguments that differ from their standard positions. Reid has short-circuited the committee process during his time as leader, which has angered Republicans who want to influence legislation. And Cornyn was pushing for Reid to use his authority as leader to abandon the regular process and separate a universally supported provision of legislation from a larger bill.

There have been many bills that have had sections split out and passed as separate bills throughout the history of this country. Reid could easily do this and a bill could pass that has real bipartisan support and that no one has any issue with. Everyone wants to put rapist in jail. Who could be opposed to doing that? Well, Harry Reid apparently. The Examiner closed with this suggestion on why Dingy Harry did what he did:

Perhaps Senate Republicans were in a hurry to pass the Debbie Smith Act because, in addition to supporting the underlying policy, they wanted to take a vote that would allow them to counter Democratic suggestions that they’re anti-women. GOP senators opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act this week. Perhaps Harry Reid blocked the vote on a bill that would help law enforcement crack down on rapists because he wanted to deny them that defense.

Like I said. If he can’t get what he wants, no one else gets anything. I don’t know exactly what this Paycheck Fairness bill was all about. I suspect the reason the Republicans opposed it was due to it only increasing the power of government and not doing what it allegedly was supposed to do. In any case, that bill is a policy matter. Getting rapists thrown in jail, (and clearing those who are innocent), as well as justice for the victims is NOT a policy matter. Harry Reid has once again shown that he only cares about the Democrat Party and himself. Ask him to help the victims of crime, especially when no one is against the bill in question? His answer will be “Drop dead. I’m busy using the forces of Government to steal someone’s land for my own enrichment.”

Harry Reid is up for reelection in 2016. How about we force him from the Majority leader’s position this November, and then retire him in 2016?

Remember in November!

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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