Late last evening, the House Judiciary Committee passed an extraordinary hate crimes bill which finally addresses crimes directed against individuals because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. This hate crimes bill is necessary because federal prosectors are presently unable to bring cases against hate crime perpetrators unless they occur during particular federally protected activities. The heinous crimes such as those committed against Matthew Shepard and James Byrd have no place in civilized society.
It took 10 hours yesterday to pass the bill from Committee. I expect we may face a few more hurdles, but I am willing to continue to work through these until we can protect our citizens from these horrific crimes.
On another note, I wanted to thank everyone for their help in the drive to encourage people to sign the statement of support for HR 676. In the past couple days we have attracted over 10,000 signatures in support of my single payer universal health care bill. We have a lot of work yet to do, but I believe we are poised to accomplish great things in addressing our nation's health care crisis.http://johnconyers.com/node/116
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