Article: After The Elections, Leave JASTA Alone

After The Elections, Leave JASTA Alone

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10/8/2016

On the 27th and 28th of September, both the Senate and the House voted to override President Obama's veto of JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors Of Terrorism Act).

CSPAN Image Of Veto Override
(Image by Jon Gold) Permission Details DMCA

Before JASTA was passed into law, we heard about why it shouldn't pass from the White House, and from Saudi Arabia.

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After the Senate voted to override the veto, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called it "the single most embarrassing thing the United States Senate has done possibly since 1983."

Jerrold Nadler did an excellent job debunking the "imagined fears" about JASTA.

Since the veto has been overridden, the chorus against JASTA seems to have grown. On 9/29/2016, CNN reported that "top congressional leaders from each party expressed buyer's remorse Thursday about a controversial new law that was enacted over President Barack Obama's objections that allows 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia. Just one day after these lawmakers led the first override of a veto during Obama's presidency they publicly called for making changes to the law."

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Now, the Hill has reported that "Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said that he spoke to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir last week, according to Bloomberg, and the Saudis are open to tweaking the law with new legislation following the November elections (I don't know about you, but the idea of a foreign entity having the ability to get a law "tweaked" doesn't seem right to me).

On 10/6/2016, Treasury Secretary Lew told (39:00) the partially Saudi-funded Peterson Institute for International Economics that JASTA is bad, and he put forward all of the debunked talking points.

The Congress has had seven years to look over JASTA, to change JASTA, to compromise on JASTA. If they had a problem with it, they should have said so before voting for it. Before overriding the veto.

If after the elections, individuals attempt to "tweak" the bill to take some of the teeth out of the legislation, then they would be treasonous in my book.

The families have had to wait 15 years just to get the chance to bring 9/11 into a court room. They've had to fight, and fight, and fight, and fight. Don't take that chance away from them. Don't you dare.