Thursday Links

• The House approved more money for the popular Head Start program Wednesday after rejecting a GOP-led attempt to allow religious groups participating in the program to hire and fire staffers based on religious grounds.

• All hospitals in Connecticut will be required to provide rape victims with emergency contraception under legislation approved overwhelmingly Wednesday by the state’s General Assembly. The legislation was adopted by wide margins despite the strong resistance of the Roman Catholic Church, which has said Catholic hospitals should not be expected to prescribe the drug.

• Oregon will become the seventh state to grant same-sex couples full marriage-style benefits allowed by state law, after the Oregon Senate approved a landmark “domestic partnerships” bill today. And in Massachusetts, gay rights advocates and state Democratic leaders are lobbying the national party to help them pressure a handful of state legislators to change their position and vote to kill a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.

• Lawmakers of both parties are making a new effort to pass a federal shield law to protect reporters from being forced to reveal their sources. The bill would write into federal law the protection for reporters now granted by 32 states and D.C., and would give government whistle-blowers more reason to reveal corruption when they know that reporters will be shielded in most cases from prosecutors' efforts to reveal information.