DELAWARE WATCH
Yes, many conservatives do not like hate crimes laws outright. However, many believe the concept is just fine -- except for the fact that they are selectively enforced, i.e. not used nearly to the degree against a minority who commit a "hate crime" against a member of the majority (aka white person).
In addition, "hate crimes" laws have treaded dangerously close to free speech supression and even criminalization of thought.
Hube -
I'm with you on this. It is tough being white these days with all the unenforced hate crimes and all.
It is "hard work", as George Bush might say.
Didn't you ask me to look into the "straw man" argument on another blog? Sheesh!
Go back to your hating now, young man.
There isn't any need for hate crime laws. They don't really have anything to do with hate, only race. Hating a white guy and wanting to kill him is the same as hating a black guy and wanting to kill him.
What concerns me about the St. Marks incident is that the student was threatened with bodily harm. I couldn't care less about the race of the victim or the person making the threat. In fact, don't you think it's kind of weird that the cops are refusing to identify the victim's race, since that's what they will use to justify charging the criminal wih a hate crime?
It bothers me that the WNJ article states that a hate crime is a felony, while terroristic threatening is only a misdemeanor. The person who threatened the student should face strict penalties, don't get me wrong. But, he shouldn't get a stronger punishment just based on his victim's race.
Hube,
You know what? I can't wait until Newt Gingrich gives you permission to admit that Bush is a lousy Executive.
You, and the rest of the GOP's brainwashed dolts, are going to look like Wyle E. Coyote standing on what he thought was a rock ledge, only to find out as the dust settles that you are standing on thin air.
Why don't you admit it now and spare yourself the embarrassment?
I'm with Hube on this one. Hate crimes laws are BS in my book. This dope should be charged with terroristic threatening. Sorry to say, but though you may disagree, I do think it is the right of every American to hate whoever they want for whatever reason they want.
If a white guys murders a black guy because he's black, that should make no difference. The white guy should be charged with murder and be sent away with some soap on a rope for a very long time. Same with a black guy who kills a white guy due to racist motivations.
Hate crimes laws are one area from which I respectfully diverge from my liberal bretheren.
Mike -
"Hate crimes laws are one area from which I respectfully diverge from my liberal bretheren."
I'm actually with you both. I was just calling hube out on his BS about hate crimes against whites going unpunished.
If you look at the kinds of crimes that get the most attention from law enforcment, you can't make hube's point with a straight face.
Mike: if Jason would bother to do even a modicum of research, he'd realize that hate crimes statutes are indeed selectively enforced, even when the evidence of a "hate crime" is overwhelming. The only way it is "b.s." is in the same way that Costa Rica once had death squads and mass murders in the 80s, I suppose. 
Many different interracial crimes (and crimes in general) are way disproportionately skewed when comparing the group's proportion in the overall pop. -- against blacks, notably. But certainly, many of these crimes wouldn't qualify as "hate crimes." But if a black guy robs a white guy of his wallet, and says "f***ing cracker" in the process, does that then make it a hate crime -- or "merely" an economic-based one?
I actually have been swayed by (mostly leftist) arguments that hate crime laws are really no different from "degrees" of murder -- it goes to motivation. Whatever the motivation, the stiffer or more lenient the sentence. But again, "hate crimes" are selectively applied and enforced (I didn't even address "the kinds of crimes that get the most attention from law enforcment," b/c Jason's prejudgments keep getting in the way; however, hate crimes of the "appropriate type" -- like the WNJ's story today -- make the headlines) just like the death penalty, which is why I became an opponent of it several years ago.
BTW, just look at how Mr. Straw Man makes his "case": I say i.e. not used nearly to the degree against a minority who commit a "hate crime" against a member of the majority,
to which he says I was just calling hube out on his BS about hate crimes against whites going unpunished.
Of course, I didn't say "going unpunished." People who were proficient with the Dick and Jane readers in grade school see that I said "not nearly to the degree."
Hey, you hate crime haters, maybe you are correct. Maybe there are no such things as “classes” of persons who are particularly vulnerable. You know, like the elderly who because of their advanced years are particularly subject to financial exploitation. So, if they give their meager savings to a roof contractor who half fixes their roof for $75,000 because the seniors couldn’t understand the language of the contract—well, screw ‘em. It’s a free market. You sign the contract, you lose. It’s survival of the fittest after all.
Nor are there children who require special laws to protect them from physical and sexual abuse. After all, we could always point out, like our ever-sensitive Hube has here, those children sometimes commit crimes (like those 5 year olds who might touch each other’s genitals using the lame excuse of innocent curiosity) and the laws against their crimes are “selectively applied and enforced” compared to adults (less lengthy sentences, no public criminal record after they become adults, etc.). And that ain’t fair, gosh darn it.
Let’s just pretend that classes of people don’t exist at all and that being in a class that is, as a matter of fact, disadvantaged in some way (numerically, culturally, economically, etc.) makes one particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Yes, let’s just pretend and maybe we won’t have to listen to all those victims whining asking us to do something about it because, otherwise, it might cost us some money and we might actually have to admit that sometimes we also have acted like ruling-class assholes.
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