I rise to speak on behalf of my substitute amendment along with Senator Grassley and other cosponsors, and I call up the amendment, No. 2095. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report. The assistant legislative clerk read as follows…

I want to make sure everyone knows that the Republicans have an addition to the Violence Against Women Act that we think will strengthen it. For instance, there are a couple of additions from what we talked about yesterday. We got a letter…

No. 2095 takes the part of the bill that reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act and continues those, but it does important things that are not in the underlying bill: No. 1, a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for aggravated…

this letter says that they strongly support two provisions in our substitute bill. It says we have a mandatory minimum for protection of child pornography, and they feel strongly that possession of child pornography is a serious crime that…

I rise to speak in favor of Gregg Costa and David Guaderrama for their nominations to the Federal district bench. I want to say that Mr. Costa--and I will mention this again--asked not to be confirmed until after the case that he was…

I came to the floor yesterday to talk about the important work on this bill that has been done by Senators on both sides. Republicans and Democrats agree that we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and that we should have the…

And it also does what the Cornyn and Klobuchar amendments attempted to do and assure that we get this backlog of people who have committed rape off the streets. Please support this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

I thank the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority has 12 minutes. The Senator from New Hampshire.

I thank the Senator. I would just say I have had a long record in this area. When I was a member of the State legislature, Texas passed the most far-reaching protection for victims of rape in the whole country. I was the lead sponsor of…

It is my pleasure to be able to introduce our guest Chaplain, Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston. He is a native Texan and attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. For 17 years, Pastor Osteen worked behind the scenes…

what is the time allotment at present? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority has 12\1/2\ minutes total.

I rise to talk about the Violence Against Women Act. Senator Leahy, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a bill that has many good parts, and I was listening to the things he said about it and agree with many of them…