WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pressed Congress on Thursday not to forget the heartbreak of the Newtown elementary school massacre and “get squishy” on tightened gun laws, though some lawmakers in his own Democratic Party remain a tough sell on an approaching Senate vote to expand purchasers’ background checks.
Obama enlists voters
to press Congress on gun reform legislation
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pressed Congress on Thursday not to forget the heartbreak of the Newtown elementary school massacre and “get squishy” on tightened gun laws, though some lawmakers in his own Democratic Party remain a tough sell on an approaching Senate vote to expand purchasers’ background checks.
“Shame on us if we’ve forgotten,” Obama said at the White House, standing amid 21 mothers who have lost children to shootings. “I haven’t forgotten those kids.”
More than three months after 20 first-graders and six staffers were killed in Newtown, Conn., Obama urged the nation to pressure lawmakers to back what he called the best chance in over a decade to tame firearms violence.
At the same time, gun control groups were staging a “Day to Demand Action” with more than 100 rallies and other events planned from Connecticut to California. This was on top of a $12 million TV ad campaign financed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that has been pressuring senators in 13 states to tighten background-check rules.
Plea deal rejected
in Aurora shooting
DENVER — Prosecutors in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting on Thursday rejected an offer from the suspect, James E. Holmes, to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, and they accused his defense lawyers of breaking court rules by making the offer public.
In a scathing court document, prosecutors said anyone reading articles about the offer would conclude “the defendant knows that he is guilty, the defense attorneys know that he is guilty, and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane.”
The defense lawyers could not be reached for comment. Holmes is charged with murder and attempted murder in the July 20 shootings, in which 12 people were killed and 70 were wounded.
Sensing shift even in conservative states, lawmakers endorse marriage equality
WASHINGTON — For years, American opinion on gay marriage has been shifting. Now lawmakers are in a mad dash to catch up.
In less than two weeks, seven senators — all from moderate or Republican-leaning states — announced their support, dropping one by one like dominos. Taken together, their proclamations reflected a profound change in the American political calculus: For the first time, elected officials from traditionally conservative states are starting to feel it’s safer to back gay marriage than risk being the last to join the cause.
“As far as I can tell, political leaders are falling all over themselves to endorse your side of the case,” Chief Justice John Roberts told lawyers urging the Supreme Court on Wednesday to strike down a law barring legally married gay couples from receiving federal benefits or recognition.
It was the second of two landmark gay marriage cases the justices heard this week, the high court’s first major examination of gay rights in a decade. But the focus on the court cases — replete with colorful, camera-ready protests outside the court building — obscured the sudden emergence of a critical mass across the street in the Capitol as one by one, senators took to Facebook or quietly issued a statement to say that they, too, now support gay marriage.
For some Democrats, like Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the reversal would have been almost unfathomable just a few months ago as they fought for re-election. The potential risks were even greater for other Democrats like North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan and Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, already top GOP targets when they face voters next year in states that President Barack Obama lost in November. After all, it was less than a year ago that voters in Hagan’s state approved a ban on gay marriage.
By wire sources