VIDEO: Gay Marriage Measure Clears Senate Panel

By Andrea Salazar

Hill lawmakers are once again at odds, this time over a bill Democrats are pushing that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Unlike DOMA, which defines marriage on a federal level as being between one man and one woman, the Respect for Marriage Act recognizes a state’s right to allow gay marriage. Six states currently allow same-sex marriage: Vermont, Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, New York and New Hampshire.

The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday in a 10-8 party line vote.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the bill, called DOMA “discriminatory.” 

“DOMA prevents people legally married in a state to get the same federal rights and benefits that a heterosexual couple would get,” she told reporters. “It treats one class differently from another class.”

Republicans have cited moral reasons in their defense of DOMA, but today Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) made a new argument; that repealing the law would cost the government too much money.

“No one has paid into the Social Security system expecting benefits to be paid to same-sex partners, and it would be unfair for state laws to determine the eligibility for  social security survival benefits, which are a federal benefit,” Cornyn said during the committee’s meeting this morning.

The bill now heads for an uncertain vote in the Senate. Regardless of what the upper chamber does, the measure will likely die in the Republican-led House, where conservative GOP leaders strongly support DOMA.

Senate Grills DNI Nominee On Defense Contractors

Robert Hune-Kalter - Talk Radio News Service

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee Gen. Jim Clapper testified Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. If confirmed, he would become the fourth director of the fairly young department. 

Today, the Washington Post published the second of a three-part series detailing how heavily the Department of Defense (DoD) relies on contractors to do, among other things, intelligence gathering. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed concern to Clapper over the large number of civilian contractors currently carrying out such work.

“The use of contractors needs to continue to decrease substantially,” said Feinstein.

Clapper told the committee that he believes the bloated number will come down naturally. History, he said, shows that the size of the nation’s intelligence community has fluctuated based on events.

“We were constricting facilities, [employing] fewer people, then 9/11 occurred. We put the breaks on screech, and then had to rejuvenate and re-expand the intelligence community,” he said. “Of course, the obvious way to do that is through contractors.”

Clapper said the giant number of contractors will swing back like a pendulum, and compared the situation faced by the intelligence community now, to the problem the U.S. faced after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Pentagon reduced its intelligence force by 20 percent.  

Multiple members of the committee asked Clapper to confirm that the DNI is the clear leader of the intelligence committee.

“I would not have agreed to take this position on if I were to be a titular figure or a hood ornament,” he replied.  “There needs to be a clear, defined, [and] identifiable leader of the intelligence community to exert direction and control over the entirety of that community.”