New Life For Full DOMA Repeal

Via press release from Freedom To Marry:

Today Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) reintroduced the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure that the federal government respects all valid marriages across all agencies. The bill has 42 original cosponsors in the Senate, including every returning Senator to the 114th Congress who supported the bill in the past; and 78 cosponsors in the House.

“The U.S. Supreme Court took a crucial step in dismantling the so-called Defense of Marriage Act last year, and the administration has implemented the ruling forcefully, but the job is not yet complete,” said Jo Deutsch, federal director of Freedom to Marry. “The Respect for Marriage Act seeks to fix major gaps in federal protections for married couples, especially in social security and veterans’ benefits. We must keep working to end every vestige of federal marriage discrimination and send this mean-spirited law to the dustbin of history.”

The reintroduction in the Senate includes two new cosponsors: incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI). The House bill has bipartisan support, while all of the cosponsors in the Senate are Democrats.

Legally married same-sex couples continue to suffer discrimination in the areas of Social Security and veterans’ benefits, which are determined by federal law based on whether the state in which they reside respects the marriage. If a same-sex couple is legally married but lives in or moves to a state that doesn’t respect the marriage, they cannot share in these programs. The Respect for Marriage Act fixes this inequity with a provision that requires the federal government to respect all legal marriages for the purposes of all federal programs.

This is the fourth attempt for the bill, which was first introduced by Nadler in 2009.

Senate Committee Passes Media Shield Bill That Excludes Some Digital Journalists

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that will protect journalists from being forced to testify about their work. But there's something of a catch.

The new legal protections will not extend to the controversial online website Wikileaks and others whose principal work involves disclosing "primary-source documents … without authorization." Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) insisted on limiting the legal protection to "real reporters" and not, she said, a 17-year-old with his own website. "I can't support it if everyone who has a blog has a special privilege … or if Edward Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he would have a privilege. I'm not going to go there," she said. Feinstein introduced an amendment that defines a "covered journalist" as someone who gathers and reports news for "an entity or service that disseminates news and information." The definition includes freelancers, part-timers and student journalists, and it permits a judge to go further and extend the protections to any "legitimate news-gathering activities."

USA Today has more:

The question of just who is a journalist and should merit protection has become much more complex in the digital era, in which bloggers and others who are not traditional reporters engage in journalistic activities. Under the committee's compromise, those covered would include someone who has had an employment relationship with a journalism organization for one year within the past 20 years, or three months within the past five years. Also covered are people with "a substantial track record of freelancing" in the past five years and student journalists.

Matt Drudge is furious.

RELATED: I've been on the staff of Pride Magazine for eleven years, so it appears that I might be covered under the "compromise" and therefore would not be forced to reveal the name of a JMG source.