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When the world was new, my oldest and best friend was a second-year law student. We had a long discussion about "hate speech" and more specifically, "hate crime" legislation that was currently proposed.

I'll never forget his take on it: This is the worst thing ever to happen. The foundation of the law is that it regulates what you may DO, not what you THINK. These laws enhance punishments for whatever the Court thinks you might have been thinking when you committed your particular crime - say assault, for example. And since nobody can read minds, the Court can say that you were thinking anything it wants if it has already decided to lock you up, "essentially punishing you for thought-crimes."

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I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that intent, which is based on the perpetrator’s thinking, is often part of legal distinctions - for example degrees of murder and manslaughter. By analogy, hate can be an exacerbating factor that is reasonable to consider in sentencing, especially if it factors into the likelihood to repeat offending.

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Point well taken. I testified in a Medicare Fraud and Abuse case back in the 'nineties - for the defense. Besides being my first exposure to the FBI's lying under oath, the sentencing (the defendant lost) was informative, too.

This doctor had rocked the boat and offended the political machine in a large midwestern town, and the next thing he knew, FBI agents were in his office. He maintained his innocence throughout; my review of boxes and boxes of files indicated the same. A jury of inner-city women convicted him of one count, saying in later polling that they "didn't understand the testimony; it was too technical, but if the gub'ment charged him with thirty counts, he must be guilty of at least one." Of course, they were ignorant of the fact that even one felony causes a doctor to lose his license.

But at the sentencing, the judge enhanced the sentence because the defendant vehemently maintained his innocence, and therefore his "lack of remorse" was an aggravating factor. The Martha Stewart trial later took the same trajectory; her crime was lying to the FBI by saying that she was innocent when she wasn't. Another gub'ment travesty, IMHO.

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Mens rea requires knowing what you are doing is wrong and will result in a person's harm, but you do it anyway. Distinguish from involuntary. On the civil side, fraud requires intent or, in some cases "will blindness" versus negligence.

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Usually with different intent categories, we separate based on things like "Did you kill them on purpose or accidentally" as opposed to "Did you hate the persons race when you killed them or was some other reason".

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All our government agencies have been high jacked by ppl with a leftist agenda. This is true even in most state and local agencies.

Judges legislate from the bench, politicians are expected to pull a bait-n-switch or sell out to the highest bidder. Most ppl want term limits yet the ppl given the power to implement that are the very same that fight it. How is that representing the will of the ppl?

So much for a government by the ppl or for it.

You can hate all you want as long as you don’t behave hatefully or break discrimination laws, or call for violence/intimidation/vandalism all of which are illegal and immoral.

We need to be teaching history, civics, government truthfully and not the rewritten grievance version that attempts to justify racial Marxism ideology. It shouldn’t be whitewashed either. The truth will do just fine.

You can join the KKK, or be a part of the Nazi party as long as you obey all other laws. The KKK had rallies here in this state and they were spat on and poorly attended. Public opinion of such organizations has been total rejection for good reason. Trying to misconstrue every conservative voice as somehow synonymous with nazism or evil is also very off base and ignorant but that is the narrative Hollywood has been pushing for decades. No wonder young ppl don’t discern right from wrong.

The road back to sanity is long but it’s a road worth taking.

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It is also being pushed in our public schools at all levels. Everyone must consider himself a victim.

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re: term limits. The pols say that we already have term limits - elections - but to my mind at least, it's not working; the power of incumbency is too strong. It seems that while everybody wan't to throw the bums out, they LIKE their bum - and unfortunately that's the only bum they can throw out.

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Nov 27, 2023Edited
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Donald Trump represents an existential threat to their power...

After all, he got impeached for not accepting "agency consensus" on a foreign policy matter in spite of the fact that the president has the sole and exclusive authority to set policy.

The federal bureaucracy believes that IT is the government of the United States. They chafe mightily at the thought of control by duly elected and appointed political actors subject to accountability to The People.

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I remember the time when hate crime legislation was one of the popular topics. Advocates would usually cite the case of Matthew Shepperd, a gay man in Wyoming who was murdered in a horrible fashion, and a Black man in Texas (sorry I have forgotten his name) who was chained to a truck and killed by dragging. The irony is neither Texas nor Wyoming had hate crime laws, yet in both cases the perpetrators were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to execution.

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An unrepentant geek - and looking for some way to avoid work - I toyed with the idea of law school after med school but just couldn't afford it. Where most of my colleagues thought the law a morass of illogicality, I was fascinated by its logic and divers approach to solving problems.

But like the humanity it serves, the law doesn't always improve and sometimes even takes steps backward. I have always thought that hate-crime laws were simply one more way the elites had ginned up to extend their power, all the while beating the drum for "fairness." When the Ruling Class starts talking about fairness, we plebs should start packing our bags and put our hands over our wallets; somebody's going to lose money or go to jail.

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Hate crime laws were the responses of politicians who thought they had to do something to appease the voters.

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His name was James Byrd, Jr. It would take 5, maybe 6 seconds to find it on Google.

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The Matthew Shepherd killers were not sentenced to death, but they did get consecutive life sentences (for consecutive lives??)

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Yeah, what is it with consecutive life sentences? Are prosecutors and judges worried that someone will change the law and murderers will suddenly be freed?

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It’s to maximize time served, because someone can be eligible for parole after serving 20-25 years of a life sentence but then they have to serve time for the next “life” sentence. Also if some charges are downgraded on appeal, the consecutive sentence would stand and would have to go through appeal too.

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Ya mean "crime" was "crime?" Exhibit #377 (approximately) demonstrating that it takes Really Smart People to uncork the stupidest ideas.

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Nov 27, 2023
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Where did you hear it? I'm sure you'll supply the appropriate references for your big story.

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Nov 28, 2023
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Meghan Daum is a very liberal feminist. Even she has mentioned that the conventional narrative of the Shepherd story was bogus.

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You’re correct. Shepherd was killed over drugs. It had absolutely nothing do with homosexuality but they never let a crisis go to waste.

Locals knew the narrative was a pile of bullshit from the beginning.

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All crime is hateful and hate crime designation are virtue signaling nonsense. Either amp up the punishments or not but do not make it subjective and interpreted by corrupt prosecutors.

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Amp up punishments for that which Someone Else thinks that you were thinking at some time in the past? I'd rethink that, sir.

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I am completely against hate crime laws.

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Agree. The concept was imported from Europe. Our assault, battery, defamation, employment discrimination etc laws were sufficient. The motivation should only pertain to “intent” to do the act. “Mens Rea”. Not be a separate element.

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So am I. Murder is murder, rape is rape, and there is no reason to "enhance" it by adding "hate" to the charges. The motivation to murder doesn't matter; the murder itself is the issue. When a society can declare anything a "hate crime," we're all at risk.

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Me, too.

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I'm for it in very limited circumstances. For example, beating up two Jews and then saying "and the rest of you are next" or any other behavior that shows a true intent to intimidate a specific group of people by committing a crime against a member or members of that group. I'm against hate crime laws that assume a hate crime just because someone is a particular race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

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Already covered by extant law; some of which was itself already covered by extant law.

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I hate crime is one that puts into action an attack against a person simply because they are of a specific race, color or creed, not because they did something against you.

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And how do you prove that unless someone explicitly states it? And why should someone get punished harder for hating someone's race over other factors?

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Except that many of them DO openly and explicitly state that they targeted the person because of their race.

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That would make proving it easier...but still doesn't explain why that matters. Why does them hating some ones race (as opposed to personality or hair color or whatever) mean they should get different sentencing?

To me, if you spent a month planning to kill someone, the main issue is that you spend a month planning to kill someone. The fact that you did it because they were Asian as opposed to doing it because they cheated with your spouse is a much smaller part of the crime. And I am not convinced it needs to be a different category.

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I think it's because "they did it because they're a bigot" has a bigger emotional impact than many other reasons people have for committing crimes. People instinctively want enhanced punishments for that.

I agree that it should not be a separate law. But it would make sense to have a sentencing enhancement. After all, a person who commits a crime because they're a bigot is more likely to be a threat in the future. I see this as being similar to sentencing enhancements for committing a crime with a gun. Not that those enhancements are actually applied in practice....

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My concerns is that people will link the bigot part with the crime even if it didn't really come into play. Based on how people seem to operate these days, I don't find it far fetched to imagine someone committing a crime and the prosecution digging up a 10 year old FB post with a racist joke and then saying "See, he hates Samoans and he stole a car from someone who happens to be Samoan, so it is a hate crime, lock them up."

As with so many laws, adding more little bits and bobs to our laws just opens up more ways for people to manipulate the system. And I would prefer our laws remain as fair and agnostic as possible (which, they are already pretty far from that benchmark).

Most judges already have leeway with sentencing (except where we have forced specific sentencing). Why not just let the judge/jury decide the guilt of the base crime and then decide longer sentencing based on the circumstances (like we already do) rather than codifying it into a law?

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Hate crime legislation comes about because political leaders think that they have to do something about certain situations. It's a "we can't get him on this, but we can get him on that" type of bad law.

Having said that, clearly, a group of Palestinian supporters chasing Jewish students who were forced to retreat to a library and lock the doors should qualify for hate-crime application in addition to the common assault charge that they should face.

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Yeah, I don't think that the politicians that have pushed this legislation are actually doing it to make things better. They are attempting to criminalize how someone feels or thinks. As you said, they can't get you for speech because of 1stA, so they want to punish people for it on the back end when they commit some other crime.

My guess is that in the modern climate, any jurisdiction that does have hate crime laws would do their level best to NOT punish those Pal supporters. In the same way that I doubt they would use those laws to punish a POC who committed a crime against a white person. These laws are not meant to deal with actual hate, but to punish the 'oppressors'.

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The only valid criteria is the same criteria that has been used since laws were first put in place.

Malice.

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That isn’t a sufficient reason to have hate crime laws.

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Nov 27, 2023
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Indeed you cannot. Nor can you regulate the actions of criminals via laws but only punish them

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Of course you can. If you know you will hang if you come armed you don't come armed when commiting crime. Perhaps more to the point you won't come armed knowing your criminal confreres know this too, and you won't even get the benefit of a trial; you'll just be shivved where you stand.

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Rush Limbaugh said this way back in the ‘90s.

Sad that only now are people waking up to what they’ve wrought with their misplaced virtues.

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Once again,that 'ol slippery slope. And here we are.

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