Hate crime legislation as I have said many times before is unequal protection under the law and is therefore unconstitutional.

If a crime is committed with intent to intimidate and terrorize then add that too should be made illegal. But not just against minorities but against any person. Why should a minority enjoy a legal protection that I, as a non-minority, do not benefit from?

it still strikes me as a piece of legislation that is going to slowly erode our basic freedoms.. assumption of innocence and all that silliness. in the case of intent to commit a crime.. you better damn well have caught them in the car outside the bank.. there are a bazillion times i've tried to figure out how to do some grand illegal scheme.. just to figure out how it could be done.. not that I ever intended to do it. anywhoo! it depends too much on the circumstance as to whether or not it was a hate crime as such, and frankly I am of the opinion that the people who are elected as judges in our society really have very little contact or understanding of the society from which the persons accused of crimes come from(mostly). there is a whole different level of society and different rules to play by. and the imposition of polite' society upon that structure won't work. and yes, I know that there can't be a different set of rules for different segments of society.. although the idea of a jury of your peers? peers? I would be willing to bet, that if I were accused of a crime and a jury of ex-musician/chef/proto-artists/alcoholics would see my point, and why I did something... jimmy sunday school who is supposedly my peer.. yeah... notso much.. anyway.. enough babbling.. I don't think he's going to veto anything.. I mean he's got almost a perfect streak of not doing so.. why mess it up so close to the end of his run?

oh.. and someone who is covered tit to taint with aryan brotherhood tattoos more than likely did kill the black guy. to display ones beliefs/hate so strongly.. yeah... throw the hate crime law at him..i bet it'd stick.

But will they do the same for a black militant Muslim gang member who is out of the prison system who mugs a white person? Same scenario, so it is a hate crime.

Nope. Just white folk.

Hahaha. Not quite.

Ah, I do love it when people fall for the fake news (video included).

No more nebulous than any other crime with motive as a factor.

What? You're telling me that sometimes authorities have to make judgment calls, so it's OK to add more cases where they have to make judgment calls, instead of trying to keep it as straight forward and defined as possible?
You can't be serious, would you want Bush's justice department making judgment calls on your behavior?

When you don't let authorities make judgement calls, you get abominations like mandatory minimums and three strikes.

Judgement calls are what the court system is about.

But shouldn't the jury be making the calls, not elected DAs?

The problem is that its not about hate. If person A kills person B and person A hated person B and killed them because they hated them then it still isn't a hate crime unless person B is in a -sh-sh-sh-sh-sh - we aren't supposed to say this out loud - a PROTECTED CLASS consisting mostly of gays and blacks.

Again, I ask, why are they safer from person A than I am if A, for example, hates me too. Maybe A hates everybody. Now that I think about it, it puts me at risk. If mean if A wants to kill me, Mr. Black and Mr. Gay but he's only got one bullet who's gonna get the cap? Me, that's who. Why? Because killing me gets him 7-10 but killing either Mr. Black or Mr. Gay gets him 30-40 or whatever the insane difference between the sentencing is.

Another stupid, feel-good law. Just like the abominations HM pointed out earlier.

Yes, this law is stupid.

No, it is not without merit.

Like someoneorother said, a burning cross is more than arson and littering. A crime done with the express purpose of terrorizing an entire group of citizens - a hate crime - should be persecuted more harshly than something else.

A group of hoodlums going around beating up totally random people is dangerous, but only a small risk to all individuals. They should be charged for assault, battery, etc.
A group of hoodlums going around beating up every [gay/black/white/straight/funny-lookin'] person they run into is a lot more than just that. It's a direct message of terror to ALL people of the aforementioned catagory. It's a 'get out or get the shit beat out of you'message. It's a hate crime.

Maybe a better idea would be to scrap bullshit like 'hate crime'- all violent crimes are motivated by hate in some way - and instead make it a terror crime, or something.

From the U.S. Department of Justice · Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics
White women are raped 44.5% of the time by white men and 55.5% by non-whites.
Black women are raped 0.0% of the time by white men, and 100% by non-whites.
Does that mean 55.5% of the white women get justice under hate crime laws and none of the black women?

That statistic can't be true. To suggest that non-white women are never raped by white men is simply incorrect.

It'd be interesting to know how they conducted the survey that it could provide such a bias.