it was a safe vote for him in illinois. his ex wife was his campaign manager.

Then again, he's a bit more moderate.

He may have always intended to vote for it.

About time!

What happened to the exceptions, LGBT and First Nation women?

"...“The Leahy-Crapo VAWA bill seeks to protect all victims of domestic and sexual violence, including tribal women, college students, and members of the LGBT community,” Leahy said in a statement Friday..." Now we need the house to just pass it - no conference committee either.

Latest news:

Senator Leahy has arranged for VAWA to go directly to the Senate floor and Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to bring VAWA up for a vote in the next week.

Here is what passed:


Description of legislation:

In addition to many important improvements, such as addressing the criminal justice response to sexual assault, domestic violence homicides, housing needs, and campus victimization included in legislation last year. The current Senate bill also maintains enhanced protections for tribal, LGBT and immigrant victims. These provisions were identified as critical priorities by advocates across the country and received overwhelming bipartisan support last year in the Senate.

One provision from last year’s bill was not included- the modest increase in the number of U visas available to immigrant victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and certain other violent crimes who assist law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of the crime (originally created by Congress in VAWA 2000). Increasing the number of U visas would help both victims and law enforcement. Unfortunately, that provision led to a technical objection from House Republican leaders and, in the interest of obtaining the swift reauthorization of VAWA, the Senate introduced the new VAWA bill without that provision in order to avoid any initial technical obstacles. Other important provisions to help immigrant victims and their children from last year’s bill are included in S. 47. The National Task Force and Senator Leahy will also be working hard to include the U visa increase in the comprehensive immigration reform legislation that will soon be considered by Congress.

Another provision was added, the SAFER Act, S. 80, originally sponsored by Leahy and Cornyn (R-TX) which passed unanimously in the Senate late last year and promotes the elimination of sexual assault evidence (rape kits) backlogs that could be used to prosecute offenders and solve cold cases.

The infamous failure to prosecute rape and charging victims for rape kits is over. The immigration portion of the bill that was not agreed to, will be in the bill on immigration coming up. I see this as good news for all of us. More details about how the work and kudos to those who stayed active working on this at link:

http://4vawa.org/

I think it's time for all of those who care about these issues to celebrate, although anyone who has a senator or representative who didn't vote for it, should still be given a earful by their constituents. No one should have been against re-authorizing this.

I read Reid negotiated gun regulations for the filibuster reform, but the agenda continues.

If you have a senator or a representative who didn't sign on, it's still important to let them hear your voice. The offices record the number of calls, letters and emails sent for or against anything and they have to take it into account.

I also think John Kerry calling them to task, telling the Senate to not go for their own personal gain or their party's gain, but to do what's right for everyone, may have had an effect.

Never give up or let the haters win. They are on the wrong side of history, the faster they learn it from us, the better.

wonder what got into him...

Now that it can't be filibustered it's time to see what happens in the house.

I know my representatives voted for it but they were outnumbered by the baggers from the other states. Yet the senators from red states yielded and agreed to do the right thing here, most likely do to the pressure applied by the VAWA .org group.

There is no reason to let up on the House GOP. Since the House is refusing to do its job of presenting good legislation and authorizing what the nation needs, the Senate is having to work around and get it done. But it won't get done without pressure.

If you have a GOP representative, just remember, some of them saw the light in the Senate today.

Some times they will vote to pass when they know for sure it wont make it thru the HOR

... is why Republicans oppose VAWA in the first place, and evidently enough to filibuster. I mean, okay, so Republicans filibuster everything these days, but what message are they trying to send here? That they want women to get beaten up?

is the fact they are waging a war on women. Republican women are in denial of this.

What I don't understand is how anyone observing the GOP's behavior could possibly reach any different conclusion. What possible spurious rationales could they be employing that would allow them to imagine that they aren't waging a war on women?

Not all women are created equal for those Repubs opposed. Even Biden, who authored the original bill back in the 90's, couldn't get Cantor to budge. He tried one on one and got nowhere. Pretty disgusting by Cantor and fellow Repubs.

And to the Republicans, that should be asserted with male force, and male force needs the backing of the Daddy State.

Bring back majority rules.

But any Republican could make a silent filibuster.

Of course, the Violence Against Women Act is not in danger of being vetoed by President Obama, so that's not an issue.

Also, to the best of my recollection (and I haven't gone back and checked) the reason the bill didn't pass last Congress wasn't due to a republican filibuster in the Senate. It was because the bill that the Senate passed (with 68 votes) was watered down by the House repubs and the Democrats in the Senate did not want to pass a watered down version.

Hopefully if I have that history wrong, someone will correct me.

60 votes needed to pass legislation. They decided reform wasnt needed.

Nuts Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress

It is a narrow majority, with 53 Democrats,
2 Independents, caucusing with Democrats
and still 45 Republicans.

You could look up the roll call on the vote when it is posted, but there are 45 GOP in the senate anyway. We do not have a full compliment because Kerry's seat only has an interim appointment by the Governor of MA. I'm not sure if he can vote yet, if he's been sworn in, or if he will be able to vote at all. It turns out Scott Brown is not going to run for that seat as previously thought, and the prediction is that it will go to a Democrat.

It's significant that 7 Republicans yielded to the will of the Democrats on this issue and I hope they will yield more. We have our 60 votes now, let's celebrate. Both parties should be contacted, I'm not going to focus on the number of Dems who may have abstained, are dead, sick or otherwise not voted. The main thing is that we got this done without them and with what were previously thought to be die-hard GOP opponents.

Obama's agenda on the VAWA and other issues is clear and the more momentum we get, the more we will get done.

Here is another link for you to use to contact the Democrats in the Senate. It's easy to use the social networking tools on the right:

http://democrats.senate.gov/members/

Currently in the U.S. Senate there are

Democrats: 53
Republicans: 45
Independents: 2 (both caucus with the dems)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress

List of current U.S. Senators by seniority here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_Senators_by_seniority

That is one of my favorite pages.
It's a quick reference when looking for senate member info.

Currently in the U.S. Senate there are

Democrats: 53
Republicans: 45
Independents: 2 (both caucus with the dems)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress

The people you have to thank are the people of the group who oppose this law but then who voted to end the filibuster. This remains true even if they later vote against the actual bill, for it is the Filibuster that was stopping this from becoming law, not any up and down vote and thus it was the vote on the filibuster that is the important vote, not the actual vote on the actual bill.

Because I care more about those bills than what was done to get them approved.

http://democrats.senate.gov/members/

Do you think it's not going to pass?

Or that Leahy's tweet is wrong in the OP?

If everyone holds to what they've said then it should pass next week.

More to come with the immigration bill in the works that affects a special part of the VAWA as I listed above. Have a good weekend, Tx4obama.

be a bad thing in 2014. Anyway, it's the first thought that crossed my mind. I know, weird.

Good for those who did! Crapo! Heller!

If a post gets 60 DU Recs, whatever it's advocating should go to an immediate vote!

... Who would ever think that we would have to be haggling over this legislation? It should have flown through in the 112th Congress.

This is exactly what they need to do... get the no-brainer legislation that should have been passed long ago back on the block and get it through. Boom, boom, boom, one after the other. After all, the republicans have them working, what? 132 days this year?