When Exploiting a Senate Rule Supports Violence

From Yglesias:

The Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, is one of the nastiest, most brutal and evil organizations on the plant. The leadership of the LRA has been indicted for crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, and enlisting of children as combatants. You can read a few recent grizzly details in this Human Rights Watch report. The point, however, is that it’s little surprise that the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 has widespread support in the Senate, including 63 Cosponsors.

But because the Senate’s rules are dumb, and because Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) is a moral monster, guided by a poisonously misguided ethical compass and a callous disregard for human welfare, there’s been no vote on the bill thanks to Coburn’s hold.

Joseph Kony and the LRA are among the most horrific perpetrators of violence in the world.  This is an organization that abducts young children, and in the process of brain-washing them, instructs 12 and 13 year old kids to murder other abductees as a test of loyalty.  The LRA has destroyed much of the social fabric of northern Uganda, raping women and abducting children in huge numbers.  To obstruct this bill (that has popular and legislative support!) in order to make a cheap political point is monstrous.  And it definitely leads one to wonder whether Sen. Coburn implicitly sides with Kony and his rebels as a tip of the hat to the implied Christian orientation of the group.  Horrifying.