The Nation - Senate adds hate-crime measure to war bill - The legislation would expand protection to gays. Supporters hope pairing it with spending will prevent a veto.

Supporters of the hate-crime legislation mustered the minimum 60 votes they needed to overcome a threatened filibuster. The House approved the bill earlier this year as a stand-alone measure, but neither chamber appears to have the votes to override a veto.

"We have never had this bill with the potential to go as far as it is," said Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.), one of the chief sponsors, who pleaded for the president to sign it as a "legacy that he can claim on an important civil rights issue."

Smith stood on the Senate floor next to a photo of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally beaten in Wyoming in 1998 and left to die tied to a fence. The bill is named for Shepard. "What happened to Matthew should happen to no one," Smith said.

In the first major expansion of the hate-crime statute passed in 1968, the legislation would cover acts of violence motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity. Existing federal law defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on religion, race, national origin or color.

The measure, which was also drawn up in response to the 1999 shooting attack by white supremacist Buford O. Furrow on a Jewish community center in the San Fernando Valley, gives federal authorities more leeway to assist state and local law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes.

Passage of the bill caps a nearly decade-long struggle. Though the House and Senate have previously approved hate-crime measures, they never reached the president's desk when Republicans controlled Congress. Smith, who has championed the measure with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), has entered a hate crime into the Senate record almost every day for the last seven years.

The bill's supporters said they hoped the hate-crime legislation would be included in a final defense bill that must be pieced together to settle House-Senate differences. Kennedy noted that no president has ever vetoed a defense authorization bill. "We're very hopeful that the president will sign it," he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is "committed to doing all she can to make sure the bill is enacted," said Brendan Daly, her spokesman.