Yesterday, the newly minted junior senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, introduced legislation that would prohibit federally funded defense contractors from requiring their employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses in certain cases. The amendment was attached to the 2010 defense appropriations bill and stemmed from the 2005 case of of Jamie Leigh Jones who was gang raped by her co-workers at KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. The crux of the case is that Ms. Jones was unable bring her case to court because of a bit of legalese in the contract she signed with KBR that specifically requires claims of sexual assault be handled in private arbitration; Senator Franken wants to make such clauses illegal if a company is being funded by federal dollars.

The amendment, which seems like a no-brainer since I can’t imagine any senator wanting to be seen as pro-gang rape, passed with just 68 votes, with 30 senators, all Republican, opposing on the grounds that it seems to single out Halliburton. Even if that were the case, and it’s not since the amendment would apply to any contractor receiving federal funds, I’m not quite clear why that should matter.

Interestingly, The New York Times launched an ambitious new project yesterday, Inside Congress, which tracks and visualizes every vote before the House and Senate. Scraping data from the House, Senate and LOC websites, the Times’ site provides a comprehensive look at what Congress is doing; it’s almost certainly built on their Congress API, which is geared more towards developers than end users.

I love these kinds of projects and I must say, the Times did a great job. Data is an increasingly powerful tool for telling stories and users are becoming more savvy in how they handle lots of information. Big databases like congressional vote trackers used to be the domain of CAR reporters who would sift through big sets of numbers and then condense it into a few hundred words for the paper the next day. With the web, we can make this data available directly to our readers, and can tailor relevant information down to the personal level in a way that would have never been possible with print.

So, now you can see how your senator voted on Senate Vote 308 - H.R.3326: On the Amendment To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.