George Will gives reasons to shun federal "hate crimes" legislation.
Political entrepreneurship involves devising benefits to excite or mollify niche constituencies. Hence HR 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, which has passed the House, trailing clouds of sanctimony -- lots of members announced their hatred of hate.
Hate-crime laws -- 45 states already have them; Congress does not mind being duplicative -- mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed because of thoughts that government especially disapproves of. That is, crimes committed because of, not merely accompanied by, those thoughts. Mind-reading juries are required to distinguish causation from correlation.
. . . Hate crimes are seven one-hundredths of 1 percent of all crimes, and 60.5 percent of them consist of vandalism (e.g., graffiti) or intimidation (e.g., verbal abuse). Local law enforcement organizations favor HR 1592, which promises money. Among the more than 200 organizations supposedly ardent for the bill are
the American Music Therapy Association, the Aplastic Anemia Foundation of America, Catholics for a Free Choice, Easter Seals, Goodwill Industries, the International Dyslexia Association, Rock the Vote, and the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics & Ritual. Who knew?
. . . Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute notes that prosecutors of supposed hate crimes must pry into defendants' lives -- books and magazines read, Internet sites visited, the nature of his or her friends -- to uncover evidence of unsavory thinking.
If the bill makes it to the president's desk, he probably will veto it because it is moral exhibitionism by Congress with no constitutional authorization. HR 1592 justifies itself under Congress's enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce. The bill simply asserts that hate crimes affect such commerce and are committed using articles that have "traveled" in interstate commerce. (MORE)