The federal spending bill that PROTECT has been campaigning on cleared its next-to-last hurdle yesterday, with a 71-28 vote in the Senate. Now the 2010 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Act moves to a joint House-Senate conference.
The Senate voted yesterday to confirm Laurie Robinson as head of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), the federal agency that oversees a variety of programs related to abused, neglected and exploited children at the Justice Department. Robinson, who brings extensive prior experience at Justice to the job, has fans in both the Democratic and Repblican parties in Congress. (See Newswire, May 7, 2009 )
The U.S. Senate will debate the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill today, which contains critical funding for provisions in the PROTECT Our Children Act.
Steve Shannon, who ran for Attorney General on a platform of rescuing children from the State's known child pornography traffickers, lost last night to Ken Cuccinelli.
"There is no such thing as 'child prostitution,'" wrote PROTECT national advisory board member Andrew Vachss in 1996. Now, there's new evidence his message is changing the way America talks--and thinks--about child exploitation.
