Repeal

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, the 15-year-old law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing legally married same-sex couples. The new legislation, written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is called the Respect for Marriage Act.   "There are 131,000 legally married, same-sex couples in this country who are denied more than 1,100 federal rights and protections because of this discriminatory law," Feinstein said.  "I don't know how long the battle for full equality will take, but we are on the cusp of change, and today's historic vote in the committee is an important step forward.

WASHINGTON - As Republican leaders try to woo Latino voters with a new openness to legal status for the nation's illegal immigrants, the party remains at odds with America's fastest-growing ethnic community on another key issue: healthcare. Latinos, who have the lowest rates of health coverage in the country, are among the strongest backers of President Obama's healthcare law. In a recent national poll, supporters outnumbered detractors by more than 2 to 1. Latinos also overwhelmingly see guaranteeing healthcare as a core government responsibility, surveys show.

?In their campaign to repeal the healthcare overhaul President Obama signed last year, Republicans have leveled two sweeping critiques of the new law: its impact on the job market and on the federal budget deficit. Here is a run-down of how some of the rhetoric matches up with reality. Why do Republicans say the law will "kill" jobs? Many businesses will face new regulations, including rules dictating that their health plans eliminate lifetime limits, wave co-pays for preventive care and allow parents to keep children up to age 26 on their policies.

WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are renewing their political assault on the nation's new healthcare law, trying to repeal President Obama's signature domestic achievement as part of the next battle over the federal budget. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, last year's Republican vice presidential nominee, said Sunday his forthcoming budget proposal will include repeal of "Obamacare," as his party calls it. That position puts tea-party conservatives at odds with others in the GOP who want to find common ground with Obama on the nation's fiscal woes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the health law. In the Senate, conservatives will press for a vote this week to delay funding for the health law as part of a bill that must pass to keep the government running beyond March 27. "We say we get rid of 'Obamacare,' " Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday.

Waste, fraud and abuse — also known as California's death penalty. It's a colossal waste of money for arguably the state's most inefficient program. California has spent an estimated $4 billion to administer capital punishment over the past 33 years and executed only 13 people. That's about $308 million per execution. It's a shameless fraud on the public. Californians have consistently supported the death penalty and been led to believe that it exists. It really doesn't.

Connecticut has become the 17th state to repeal the death penalty, with lawmakers voting 86-62 on the measure after a marathon debate that stretched into the night and revived memories of some of the state's most heinous crimes. Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will sign the bill, which passed the House on Wednesday night, six days after the Senate approved it . The bill replaces capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole, but it only applies to future cases and has no effect on the 11 men on death row in Connecticut.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has rejected a bill to repeal the state's 2-year-old law allowing same-sex marriage, dealing a blow to activists who had hoped to make the Legislature the first in the country to repeal a gay marriage law. Lawmakers in the House voted 211 to 116 against the bill, which would have repealed gay marriage and replaced it with a preexisting civil unions law, according to the Associated Press. It also would have made the issue a nonbinding question on the November ballot.

WASHINGTON -- House Republican leaders set a vote in two weeks to repeal the nation's healthcare law -- a largely symbolic act that is not be expected to go anywhere in the Democratic-led Senate. House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the vote will be July 11. "The House will once again vote to repeal ObamaCare," the leader said in a tweet. House Republicans already voted to get rid of the law in one of their first acts after taking the majority in 2011. They had promised another vote after the Supreme Court decision.

President Obama endorsed a bill Tuesday that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a 15-year-old law denying federal benefits for same-sex couples.  "The president has long called for a legislative repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which continues to have a real impact on the lives of real people - our families, friends and neighbors,” said White House spokesman Shin Inouye. DOMA, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton, defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.

WASHINGTON - For the 33rd time, House Republicans steered passage of legislation taking aim at the nation's new healthcare law - this time in a largely symbolic vote to repeal it. The two-day floor debate was orchestrated by GOP leaders to rev up voters before the November election, tapping into the deep divisions that remain over the plan two years after President Obama's signature domestic achievement became law. Americans continue to...

A Senate Republican leader has proposed eliminating limits on campaign contributions to state candidates, arguing the restrictions are ineffective. Sen. Ted Gaines, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, introduced legislation to repeal major portions of the Proposition 34 that put a $4,100 limit on contributions by individuals to candidates for the legislature and a $27,000 limit on contributions to candidates for governor. The measure would have to be acted on by the state voters.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is seeking to repeal a Medicare-pricing provision in the recent "fiscal-cliff" deal in Congress that benefits Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen Inc. Legislation to eliminate the exemption for a class of drugs, including Amgen's Sensipar, that are used by kidney dialysis patients, was filed this week by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). The fiscal cliff legislation approved this month excluded these oral medications from Medicare price controls for an additional two years.

SANFORD, N.C. - Ashley Broadway and Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack have been a couple for 15 years. Broadway attended every one of Mack's promotion ceremonies. The two lived together when Mack served on bases in Texas and Kansas. When Mack was deployed to South Korea, Broadway joined her there. She cared for their young son, Carson, when Mack was sent to Kuwait. On Nov. 10, the women legally married in Washington, D.C. Broadway began a new life as a military spouse, certain that with the repeal in 2011 of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that banned gays from serving openly, she would enjoy the same rights as other spouses.

Here's a sign of how tenuous a hold House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has on his fellow Republicans: Seemingly every time he sounds a note of pragmatism, he has to follow up his remarks a few hours later to clarify that he's not conceding a thing. A good example comes in my colleague Lisa Mascaro's story about an interview Boehner gave ABC News' Diane Sawyer on Thursday. In addition to reiterating his opposition to higher tax rates, Boehner weighed in on the fate of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Jode Towe was driving his big rig across the New Mexico desert in April when he noticed an odd sensation at the back of his throat. "It was like something was growing there," he recalled. When Towe, 41, went to a clinic, he got bad news. He might have cancer. Doctors recommended a biopsy. If the results confirmed their suspicions, surgery and chemotherapy might follow. But Towe and his wife, who live in this small city near Nashville when they aren't hauling freight across the country, don't have health insurance.

One in five Americans over age 18 suffers from a diagnosable mental illness in any given year. That's upward of 40 million potential voters. So why have we heard virtually nothing about mental health care from either candidate during this campaign? Just to provide a little context, according to the American Cancer Society's latest numbers, about 12 million Americans are living with some form of cancer; 400,000 Americans suffer from multiple sclerosis; 1 million from Parkinson's and 1.2 million are living with HIV/AIDS.

Opposition to the Ohio law that limits the power of public employee unions has grown substantially in recent weeks, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday, offering a ray of hope to Democrats and their allies in organized labor as the presidential race heats up. According to the poll, 57% of those surveyed said they would repeal the measure, known as a Senate Bill 5, while 32% said they would keep it. The difference between the...

After struggling for years to regulate storefront pot shops, the Los Angeles City Council retreated Tuesday, voting to repeal the carefully crafted ban on medical marijuana dispensaries it approved a few months ago. The move shows the political savvy of the increasingly organized and well-funded network of marijuana activists who sought to place a referendum overturning the ban on the March ballot, when the mayor and eight council seats will...