Published May 14, 2013
Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has signed a bill that legalizes gay marriage, making the state the 12th to do so.
Cheering spectators filled the south lawn of the state Capitol for the outdoor ceremony, with rainbow and American flags fluttering in a sweltering breeze.
Dayton thanked legislators for political courage before signing the bill.
His signature came just a day after the state Senate approved it.
Published May 01, 2013
Associated Press
President Obama has signed into law a bill to end furloughs of air traffic controllers.
The furloughs stemmed from the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that started taking effect in March.
Millions of air travelers were affected recently by delayed flights across the country because of the furloughs.
Congress moved quickly on a fix, despite Obama's preference that the cuts be replaced all at once rather than piecemeal.
A typo in the legislation delayed getting the bill to Obama, but Congress worked out the glitch Tuesday, and the president signed it Wednesday.
The bill lets the FAA transfer around as much as $253 million to prevent staffing reductions through September, when the current budget year ends.
The FAA had started resuming normal operations in anticipation of Obama signing the measure.
IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.
Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.
An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.
There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.
It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".
The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".
The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".
For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.
Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.
China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.
"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.
And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.
In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.
Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.
Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.
But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.
Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."
I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)
Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.
WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.
"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."
The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.
But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.
The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.
It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.
Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.
Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."
But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.
In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want
an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."
Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.
Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.
IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.
Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.
An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.
There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.
It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".
The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".
The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".
For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.
Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.
China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.
"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.
And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.
In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.
Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.
Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.
But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.
Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."
I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)
Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.
WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.
"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."
The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.
But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.
The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.
It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.
Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.
Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."
But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.
In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want
an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."
Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.
Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.
IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.
Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.
An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.
There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.
It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".
The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".
The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".
For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.
Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.
China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.
"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.
And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.
In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.
Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.
Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.
But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.
Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."
I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)
Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.
WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.
"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."
The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.
But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.
The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.
It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.
Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.
Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."
But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.
In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want
an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."
Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.
Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.
IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.
Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.
An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.
There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.
It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".
The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".
The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".
For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.
Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.
China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.
"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.
And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.
In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.
Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.
Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.
But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.
Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."
I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)
Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.
WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.
"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."
The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.
But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.
The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.
It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.
Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.
Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."
But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.
In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want
an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."
Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.
Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.
Published March 28, 2013
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed an executive order establishing a presidential commission to address voting issues.
Obama announced his plans to create the commission last month in his State of the Union address. The top lawyer for Obama's re-election campaign, Bob Bauer, will co-chair the commission with the top lawyer for Republican Mitt Romney's campaign, Ben Ginsburg.
The goal is to address issues including long lines at the polls, voter registration and voter access.
The order gives the commission six months after its first public meeting to submit a report to Obama about ways to improve the voting experience.
Published March 26, 2013
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – President Obama has signed a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running through the end of September.
The measure leaves in place $85 billion in automatic budget cuts known as the sequester. But it takes steps to ease the impact of the cuts to food inspection and college assistance for active duty military personnel.
The House and Senate passed the spending bill last week. Without it, the government on Wednesday would have run out of money to keep operating.
The measure funds the day-to-day operating budgets of every Cabinet agency through Sept. 30, the end of the 2013 fiscal year. It also provides another $87 billion for overseas military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and maintains a pay freeze for federal workers.
The second of two reports examining who's to blame over the federal anti-gunrunning scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious exonerates top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, but paints a picture of ineptitude, ignorance and mismanagement at the DHS operations in Arizona.
A report by the Homeland Security inspector general, obtained Friday by Fox News, concluded many in the agency's Arizona operation knew for a long time the U.S. helped criminals smuggle guns to Mexico in violation of policy, but did nothing to stop it.
Further, the report said word of the gun-smuggling operation within DHS never traveled beyond Arizona -- and claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were never informed of the role ICE played.
According to the report, on numerous occasions ICE and Border Patrol agents stopped vehicles smuggling guns to Mexico, but were instructed by the ATF and U.S. attorney's office to back off. Even after "suspects admitted to having transported weapons across the border five or six times," they were not arrested, and ATF did not "try to flip the suspects to get them to cooperate, which was a mistake," the report said.
The report was especially critical of senior management in Arizona, who oversaw the Fast and Furious case and assigned a full-time agent to the task force running the operation. That agent conducted surveillance, wrote and received reports, and was aware "gun-walking" -- or allowing the guns to go into Mexico -- "was against policy." But "senior leaders did not read (his) reports nor instruct him to change his methodology or activities."
The report did not name names. However, the Phoenix agent in charge then and now is Matt Allen, a highly regarded and long-time ICE agent who transferred to Arizona in 2008. It criticized Allen's use of the word "tangential" when describing ICE's role in Fast and Furious and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
"We question (Allen's) use of the word 'tangential'," said the report. "Just a few weeks earlier, (the department described HSI agents as) fully involved. ... (Allen) should have provided ICE headquarters officials with a more thorough and clear account of the role his office had in the operation."
Early in the case -- after learning the ATF let more than 200 guns get smuggled to Mexico despite a warning the buyers were dirty from Lone Wolf gun store owner Andre Howard -- a senior ICE agent said in an email, "I'm speechless. Even the owner knows this ain't right, and ATF apparently doesn't get it."
Following the death of Agent Brian Terry, another supervisor wrote, "and this is exactly what I said would happen when you let that many guns walk."
Yet the debate apparently stayed within Arizona.
"Senior DHS officials in Washington DC had no awareness of the methodology used by the task force to investigate Operation Fast and Furious until media reports were published in March 2011," the report said.
The report also claimed that days after the death of Terry, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who oversaw Fast and Furious and later resigned because of his role in it, declined to tell Napolitano about the case, even as she called for an investigation into it.
Robert Heyer, a spokesman for the Terry family, said no one from the OIG ever contacted the family and criticized the report for failing to hold anyone accountable.
"We are very disappointed with the quality and depth of the investigation," Heyer told Fox News. "The report says that Homeland Security personnel in Arizona all knew on December 15th that the weapons found at the murder scene were from (Fast and Furious). That information was passed to (headquarters), yet was never passed on to Secretary Napolitano," he said. "(Allen) had the opportunity to shut down the operation because of public safety concerns but he chose not to. How about holding DHS executives accountable for that decision."
The OIG has not responded to a question from Fox News on why the report did not include names.
DENVER – Civil unions for gay couples got the governor's signature in Colorado on Thursday, punctuating a dramatic turnaround in a state where voters banned same-sex marriage in 2006 and restricted protections for gays two decades ago.
Colorado will join eight states that have civil unions or similar laws. Nine states and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage.
Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed the bill as dozens of gay couples looked on during the signing ceremony. The law takes effect May 1.
Views on gay rights have been rapidly shifting in the United States. A Pew Research Center survey found that 49 percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, and 44 percent are opposed to the idea. A decade ago, 58 percent opposed it and a third supported it.
Civil unions grant gay couples rights similar to marriage, including enhanced inheritance and parental rights. People in civil unions also would have the ability to make medical decisions for their partners.
"It means I can change my name finally," said 21-year-old Amber Fuentes, who plans to have a civil union with Yolanda Martinez, 34. "It's not marriage, but it still gives us a lot of the rights."
The signing in Colorado comes less than a year after the proposal was blocked in the House by Republicans.
"It's really meaningful. To have the recognition of your love and relationship just like any other relationship by the state is an important both legal and symbolic thing," said Democratic House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, a sponsor of the bill and the first gay lawmaker to hold the title of speaker in Colorado.
Supporters of civil unions say the passage in Colorado also is telling because in 1992, voters approved a ban on municipal antidiscrimination laws to protect gays. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court said the law, known as Amendment 2, was unconstitutional -- but not before some branded Colorado a "hate state."
Ferrandino said the shift "shows how much through hard work and through a very thoughtful approach you can change public opinion."
Most Republicans opposed the bill, saying they would've liked to see religious exemptions to provide legal protections for those opposed to civil unions. Churches are shielded under the new law, but Democrats rejected protections for businesses and adoption agencies, arguing the Republican suggestions were too broad and could provide legal cover to discriminate.
In May, Democrats said they had enough votes to pass the bill. But Republicans who controlled the House by one vote prevented debate on the measure.
Democrats took control of the House in November and retained the Senate.
Some Republicans insist the bill is too similar to marriage, and therefore violates the will of voters in 2006.
"Even though it was specifically told to us that it wasn't about marriage, I think both sides know that it is what it is about," said Republican Rep. Lori Saine, speaking against the bill before a final vote last week.
Democratic Sen. Pat Steadman, also a gay lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said public support has grown for civil unions because same-sex couples face the same challenges as other families.
"The issues at hand are ones that families all across the state know all too well," he said.
South of Colorado in Arizona, meanwhile, the city of Bisbee is poised to become the state's first community to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.
President Obama signed expanded protections for domestic violence victims into law Thursday, renewing a measure credited with curbing attacks against women a year and a half after it lapsed amid partisan bickering.
The revitalized Violence Against Women Act also marked an important win for gay rights advocates and Native Americans, who will see new protections under the law, and for Obama, whose attempts to push for a renewal failed last year after they became entangled in gender politics and the presidential election.
"This is your day. This is the day of the advocates, the day of the survivors. This is your victory," Obama said. "This victory shows that when the American people make their voices heard, Washington listens."
As Obama prepared to put his pen to the new law, new government data underscored both the progress that has been made and the enduring need to do more.
The rate of sexual violence against women and girls age 12 or older fell 64 percent in a decade and has remained stable for five years, the Justice Department said in a survey released Thursday. In 2010, women and girls nationwide experienced about 270,000 rapes or sexual assaults, compared with 556,000 in 1995.
The survey also showed that rapes and sexual assault rates involving women have plateaued while violent crime rates overall have declined. Women's advocacy groups called the report proof that the Violence Against Women Act and heightened awareness of the problem by police has had a positive effect.
Still, 1 in 5 women will be raped during their lifetime, said Obama, asserting a continued need for action nearly two decades after the bill's original passage in 1994.
"It didn't just change the rules, it changed our culture. It empowered people to start speaking out," Obama said.
The law authorizes some $659 million a year over five years for programs that strengthen the criminal justice system's response to crimes against women and some men, such as transitional housing, legal assistance, law enforcement training and hotlines. One element of this year's renewal focuses on ways to reduce sexual assault on college campuses. It also reauthorizes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, adds stalking to the list of crimes that make immigrants eligible for protection and authorizes programs to reduce the backlog in rape investigations.
After twice being renewed with little resistance, it was something of a surprise in 2011 when lawmakers let the act expire. At the crux of the election-year clash were disagreements about expanded protections for gays and lesbians, Native Americans and illegal immigrants.
Sensing a political advantage, Senate Democrats offered an expanded law that specifically protects gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender Americans and gives tribal authorities the power to prosecute non-Indians for abuse committed on tribal lands. Republicans saw the move to load a popular bill with controversial elements as a provocation and objected to the Native American provisions on constitutional grounds. Democrats rejected a Republican alternative, arguing it didn't go far enough.
Continued resistance became less tenable for the GOP after its less-than-stellar performance among women voters in November's election. In February, House Republicans capitulated and allowed a vote on an almost identical version of the bill, which passed 286-138. It was the third time in two months that House Speaker John Boehner let a Democratic-supported bill reach the floor despite opposition from a majority of his own party -- a clear sign that Republicans wanted to put the issue behind them.
"When I see how quickly it got done, I'm feeling -- it makes me feel optimistic," Obama said sarcastically as he signed the bill Thursday.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden offered special thanks to Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who supported the renewal despite opposition from many in her party.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Eric Holder and members of the House and Senate from both parties joined Obama for the signing ceremony. Biden, who wrote and sponsored the original law in 1994, credited survivors who brought attention to the issue by speaking out despite the pain of reliving the attacks they endured.
"It brings it all back like a very bad nightmare," Biden said.
It was just days after the weddings that the assaults started, recalled Diane Millich, a Native American and advocate who introduced Biden. She said her ex-husband would mock her defenselessness by calling tribal police and sheriffs, who refused to act until he showed up with a gun.
"All the times I called the police and nothing was done only made my ex-husband believe he was above the law and untouchable," she said.
Linda Fairstein, the former chief sex crimes prosecutor for New York County, said domestic violence remains a huge problem in many Native American and ethnic communities, where women have been less able to seek recourse.
"This gives access to tens of thousands of victims who have just been denied access to the criminal justice system," Fairstein said in an interview.
Although the Violence Against Women Act has been credited with helping reduce domestic violence incidents by two-thirds since its inception, advocates were careful not to suggest that the problem has become any less urgent. Some questioned the accuracy of the new Justice Department data and whether the decline really represented fewer women reporting attacks.
"Having worked in the field, I don't think things are that much better for women," Fairstein said. "That's why these protections are so important."
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed an order authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting across-the-board reductions that he opposed but failed to avert.
Obama acted Friday, the deadline for the president and Congress to avoid the steep, one-year cuts.
Obama has insisted on replacing the cuts, known as a "sequester" in government budget language, with tax increases and cuts spread out over time. Republicans have rejected any plan that included tax revenue.
The government says the reductions will soon result in furlough notices to government employees and will trim government spending on defense contracts and in domestic government programs. Active military personnel and anti-poverty and low-income assistance programs are largely protected from the cuts.
