Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has enraged 10 Republican senators who voted against an amendment he proposed that protected the rights of rape victims who work for federal government contractors like KBR, Halliburton and Xe, formerly Blackwater.

In October, all the Democrats and 30 Republicans senators voted to prohibit the federal government from contracting with companies that restrict the rights of their employees who are raped to sue their employers.

Now the 10 Republicans who chose to vote against protecting rape victims’ rights — or rather, who voted to protect the bottom line of their corporate masters and/or reflexively voted “no” because the amendment was proposed by a liberal — are tired of the drubbing they’ve been receiving in the press and have come out swinging against Franken.

Leading the charge is Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a member of the Capitol Hill Christian death cult, the Family, which is behind a proposed law in Uganda that would impose the death penalty on gays — and the spirtual mentor of Sen. John Ensign, who allgedly advised him to bribe his mistress’ husband.

“It was partisan — and he knew it,” Sen. Tom Coburn said. “That’s exactly what I’d expect.”

Got that? Rape is a partisan issue, according to this leading Christian cultist. Democrats are against sexual assault, but Republicans believe rape victims should have their rights restricted.

Reaction from other members of the Republican Pro-Rape Caucus follows, but first here’s how Franken described the plight of Jamie Leigh Jones, then 19 years old, who was hired by KBR and sent to Iraq, on the Senate floor:

[In 2005] Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones signed a contract to become an employee of KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary. That contract contained a clause which required her to arbitrate any future dispute against her employer. This means it forced her to give up her right to seek redress in court if she was wronged. At the time, Ms. Jones had no idea what implications this seemingly innocuous, fine-print clause would have.

Ms. Jones arrived in Iraq in July of 2005. Immediately, she complained to supervisors about the hostile conditions imposed by KBR — she was constantly being harassed by her male colleagues, and was housed in barracks with 400 men and only a few women. Her pleas for safer housing were ignored. Four days after her arrival, Ms. Jones was drugged and gang raped. She requested medical attention, and a doctor administered a rape kit. Parts of that rape kit have since mysteriously disappeared. After Ms. Jones reported the rape to her supervisors, she was locked in a shipping container with an armed guard and prohibited from any contact with the outside world. They locked her in a container?!? It was only after she convinced one of the guards to lend her a cell phone that she was able to talk to her father, who enlisted the help of Representative Ted Poe, a Republican congressman from Texas, to arrange for her safe return to the United States.

But, Ms. Jones’ horrific plight did not end there. Having survived this ordeal, most of us would expect that she would have her day in court to seek justice for the actions and inactions of her employer. Instead, KBR sought to enforce the arbitration clause in Ms. Jones’ contract, and tried to force her into arbitration. So, over the past three years, Ms. Jones has been fighting for her right just to bring a lawsuit. And KBR has been fighting her every step along the way. This is simply too long for a rape victim to wait, just to have her day in court.

Here’s more angry reaction against Franken and his amendment from the GOP Pro-Rape Gang of10:

Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I think it would be helpful for Sen. Franken to come forward and say, ‘I’m not suggesting that anybody who votes for my amendment is indifferent to crimes against women or anybody else’.”

…Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) attempted to defend their position in a co-written op-ed in a local newspaper. Franken confronted each senator separately to dispute the article. According to Politico, Franken’s meeting with one of the senators was tense: “People familiar with the Corker exchange say it was heated and ended abruptly.”

…”I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), said, “from what I know of” Franken, he “expected” such tactics.

And from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former judge: “Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing … I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

The vote by the Pro-Rape Caucus has inspired the launch of a website called Republicans for Rape.