Dana Milbank:
By Thursday morning, a Republican-led filibuster of the gun legislation had been soundly defeated. Obama called the [Newtown] family members immediately after the vote to thank — and credit — them for the reversal of fortunes. The legislation’s supporters in the Senate did, too.
“They spent all week fanning out across the Capitol,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), “and I think it’s no coincidence that we will end this week in a much better position than people thought we would a week ago.”
Lobbyists like this would be worth millions on K Street — but Hockley and her peers succeeded precisely because they weren’t the usual actors following the usual script. “At the start of the week I didn’t even know what a filibuster was,” Hockley told me Thursday beneath the cherry blossoms outside the Hart Senate Office Building.
Greg Sargent:
Senator Tom Coburn, a staunchly conservative Senator with impeccable “pro gun” credentials, has done us all a tremendous service: He has effectively demolished many of the arguments coming from the right against expanded background checks.
Coburn has sent a letter to his Senate colleagues making the case that his proposal for expanded background checks is better than the one produced by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey. But in the process of defending his own proposal from the inevitable claims by fellow conservatives that it would violate people’s Second Amendment rights, he effectively destroys that same argument as it is being applied to the Manchin-Toomey proposal.
Boston Herald:
Laura Nowacki clutched a wallet-sized photo of a glowing elementary-school girl and wanted to let every person lining the course in Wellesley know that Mile 12 of the Boston Marathon belonged to the smiling face with flowing blonde hair.
The young girl in the photograph was 7-year-old Grace McDonnell, one of the victims in the tragic events at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December.
Nowacki and eight others from the Newtown community will run the marathon Monday with heavy hearts and a true purpose as they raise money for Newtown Strong, which provides a scholarship fund for the siblings of the shooting victims...
The Newtown Strong group was not alone in remembering the students and teachers who lost their lives. The BAA announced that Mile No. 26 would be dedicated to the town.
Laura is a Newtown pediatrician and runner. And a Newtown mom. And my friend.
More politics and policy below the fold.
NY Times:
As families of the victims of the Newtown, Conn., massacre watched from the Senate gallery on Thursday, 68 senators, including 16 Republicans, voted to break a conservative filibuster to allow debate to begin on a bill that would expand background checks for most gun sales.
That a procedural vote was considered a breakthrough demonstrated how hard it has been to get even the most fundamental, common-sense reform of the nation’s inadequate gun laws past the gun lobby. Groups like the National Rifle Association still don’t want a background-check bill to come to a vote, but at least a few Republicans (and almost all Democrats) recognized how popular the bill is, and how politically unwise it would be to kill the effort before it reached the Senate floor.
The next steps are even more treacherous, and Thursday’s coalition will quickly begin to dwindle. There are several more potential filibusters to break, and the most extreme anti-gun-control senators — like Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah — are likely to erect procedural hurdles wherever they can.
Every reason to be realistic. No reason to give up.
National Journal:
How Pat Toomey Became the Face of the Blue State GOP
The senator from Pennsylvania could have followed Rick Santorum. Instead, he's moving to the center on guns and gay rights.
NY Times:
While the Senate has been consumed with a divisive debate over expanded background checks for gun buyers, lawmakers have been quietly working across party lines on legislation that advocates say could help prevent killers like Adam Lanza, the gunman in the Newtown, Conn., massacre, from slipping through the cracks.