Unequal Protection In Obama’s America: Threaten To Kill A Christian? Probation! Burn A Muslim Prayer Rug? TWENTY YEARS in Jail!
05/13/2013
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Senator Jeff Sessions (R.-AL) is emerging once again as the patriot hero of the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration War.

However, Sessions played a less-noted but equally heroic role back in 2009, when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman  Patrick J. Leahy (Treason Lobby—VT) was similarly ramming through the so-called Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Under Sessions’ questioning, Attorney General Eric “My People” Holder  admitted that “hate crime” protections—triple penalties, triple jeopardy, expedited federal involvement etc. etc.—would not extend to groups like white Christians or servicemen.

Holder specifically said that neither homosexuals who committed crimes against Christian preachers, based on the latter’s religious-based opposition to homosexual marriage, nor Moslems who committed religiously-motivated mass murder against non-Moslems would be prosecuted under the Hate Crime Law. In effect, the legislation would institutionalize a two-tier, caste system of justice—and is therefore clearly unconstitutional. [See page 61 of the PDF here for Holder’s response to Sessions.]

Recent cases bring home the new Obama dispensation good and hard.

Daniel Sarno is a homosexual activist who had mailed anonymous death threats over the course of six months  to Family Institute of Connecticut Executive Director Peter Wolfgang and his staff because of the organization’s opposition to homosexual marriage. Sarno wrote things like:

No mercy for homophobes. I suggest you make your funeral arrangements real soon, Mr. Wolfgang.

[Guilty: Homosexual activist admits sending death threats to pro-life, pro-marriage leader by Ben Johnson, Life Site News, August 23, 2012.]

Sarno’s felonious actions are not in dispute: he has pled guilty.

But Sarno was not charged with a federal “hate crime.” Postal inspectors determined the mailbox Sarno was using to send the letters, took down his license plate, followed him home and, in May, 2012, confronted him. The plea agreement states: “Mr. Sarno agrees to plead guilty to an Information charging him with two counts of Mailing Threatening Communications, in violation of 18 USC § 876(c).” Interfering with the mails was what landed Sarno in federal court.

U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Bree Burns could apparently have sentenced Sarno to a maximum of 10 years in prison and imposed $500,000 in fines, according to the plea agreement.

Instead, she refused to punish Sarno at all—giving him five years of probation, no prison time, and no fine.

Judge Burns, who will turn 90 in December, is a 1978 Jimmy Carter appointee. (Her daughter, a Roman Catholic nun, is director of the New Haven-based Treason Lobby affiliate Apostle Immigrant Services).

Usually, it is the defense that plays the “crazy card” in an effort to subvert justice. In this case, however, Judge Burns took the initiative, calling the felon “clearly a disturbed individual who needs a great deal of help.”

(Maybe the rest of us could do with some “help” too—or at least protection. After Sarno’s guilty plea, he also allegedly sent a letter to his brother, threatening to kill him also.)

But, after all, Sarno was only messing with some Christians. Peter Wolfgang told VDARE.com:

He made it very clear that he hated me, because of my Christianity, because of my advocacy for traditional values, particularly the traditional definition of marriage, and he made it very clear that he was motivated by an animus towards Christianity and Christians.

Wolfgang sees a pervasive federal double standard against Christians. He says he’s opposed to the “hate crime” concept—as am I—but that, if it exists, it must be applied equally.

Wolfgang, by the way, says he has forgiven Sarno. He praised the investigation of U.S.P.S. Postal Inspector Martin Vega, and the conduct of Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham and even Judge Burns. In particular, Wolfgang emphasized that he believed that Sarno would never have been prosecuted at all were it not for AUSA Durham.

AUSA Durham did not return to my telephone call. But Press Liaison Tom Carson responded with the Feds’ plea agreement and the sentencing memorandum filed by Sarno’s lawyer. Carson wrote: 

We can only confirm the charges, and not comment as to why he wasn’t charged with other offenses.

VDARE.com has written about the theory of “exemplary sentencing.” It usually refers to shockingly draconian punishments employed in recent years to crush white working-class dissent  to elite-imposed racial change. But it should also refer to shockingly light punishment—such as is now meted out to members of politically favored groups like Daniel Sarno.

Playing the “crazy card” is not quite as popular as the race card, but it’s gaining. However, as with the race card, only members of politically protected groups get to play the crazy card. As a militant homosexual, Daniel Sarno is in.

White, Christian, heterosexual, American veterans are out. They don’t get to play the crazy card, and don’t have federal judges fawning over them.

Former U.S. Marine Randy Linn, 52 found this out the hard way. Linn took offense at Moslems killing and maiming Americans overseas and at home—in particular the September 11, 2012 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. So, last September 30, Linn swigged 45 beers in six to seven hours, drove from his home in St. Joe, Indiana to Toledo, Ohio with three gasoline cans, entered an empty mosque, and set a prayer rug on fire.

That’s right, a prayer rug. No one was hurt.

Linn was charged with, and pleaded guilty to a “hate crime” last December. [Two-Count Hate Crime Indictment Returned Against Indiana Man for Attack on Toledo-Area Mosque, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Ohio, October 18, 2012.]

The feds charged that Linn had sought to burn down the mosque. But—45 beers or no—had an old U.S. Marine wanted to burn down that mosque, it would have been a heap of ashes.

Linn later had second thoughts, and sought to withdraw his guilty plea and to get a competency exam (i.e., play the crazy card). But U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary refused his request, and sentenced him to 20 years in prison and a $1.4 million fine. (Judge Zouhary, a Bush II appointee, is the son of Lebanese immigrants. His office refused to tell me his religion).

To add insult to injury:

Cherrefe Kadri, president of the Islamic Center, addressed Linn in court before he was sentenced.

"We don't feel anger as much as hurt that someone hated us so much," she said as he looked away.

She said what he did was an attack on all religions and the entire community.”

[Ex-Marine gets 20 years in Ohio mosque fire by John Seewer, Associated Press/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 16, 2013.]

Who does Kadri think she’s kidding? Neither Linn nor Kadri saw his act as “an attack on all religions and the entire community.” He thought he was defending the community.

Moslems, who have no concept of religious tolerance, routinely claim that attacks on Islam are attacks on all religions, and have demanded laws banning criticism of any religion. But these demands are just ruses with which they seek to establish Islam’s privileged position.

Note also that, although according to the Justice Department release linked above, Linn was officially charged with a “hate crime,” the relevant statutes are from §247 of the U.S. Code, i.e., Civil Rights laws, and not “Hate Crime” laws, which are in §249.

How could a “hate crime” be charged as a violation of a non-hate crime law? I repeatedly left telephone messages for U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach, and federal prosecutors Bridget M. Brennan, Ava Dustin and Gwen Howe-Gebers, who handled the case. I received no response.

The public information officer for USA Dettelbach’s office, Mike Tobin, replied to my initial inquiries with the exact charges against Linn (Damage to Religious Property (18:247(a)(1)) and Damage to Religious Property (247(d)(3)(1s)), Use of Fire or Explosive to Commit a Felony (18:844(h)(1) (2s)), and Use of a Firearm with Crime of Violence (18:924(c) (3s)). But Tobin did not respond to my follow-up inquiry as to how a “hate crime” prosecution can proceed via charges not in the Hate Crime subsection.

The apparent answer: the Holder-Obama Justice Department has chosen to treat Civil Rights violations as “hate crime” laws.  They don’t have the specific enhancements of the Matthew Shepard Act, but they pile on, for example, with multiple charges for what is actually same offense, part of the prosecutorial abuse analyzed by Paul Craig Roberts in his book The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice .

The charge of 18:924(c) Use of a Firearm with Crime of Violence (3s) is particularly problematic. First, the main federal crimes that this law is used for, bank robbery and kidnapping, have typically involved a firearm. The law was intended to permit prosecutors to super-charge defendants. A “plea bargain” under such overcharging is no bargain at all. Second, in this particular case, Linn didn’t draw his gun—if he had one: the feds merely alleged that he “appeared” to have one in the surveillance video (and, of course, Linn never got his day in court). To charge someone with using a firearm to commit a crime when he encountered no one sounds ludicrous to me.

(I would have liked to discuss all this with Linn’s public defender, Andrew Hart, but, tragically, he died suddenly after the trial of causes unknown, although only in his late thirties.)

If it sounds as if I am diminishing the severity of Randolph Linn’s crimes…I am.

Obviously we cannot permit people to go around torching property. But for the feds and Judge Zouhary to make such an extraordinary example of a working-class white Christian just for burning a Moslem prayer rug seems to me to be both unjust and insane.

And it is a howling injustice for burning Moslem prayer rugs to be treated as equal or superior to death threats against Christians. Not only is Christianity America’s de facto national religion—I write as a Jew—but unlike Islam, its adherents are not waging war on us. And, unlike Islam, Christianity is not an ideology of conquest and genocide.

For a proper analogy, it is as if a Jew broke into a structure belonging to the American-based, Nazi German-American Bund during World War II, and set a picture of Hitler on fire.

In theory, such a crime would have received a slap on the wrist, and the perpetrator would have enjoyed great public support. Except that it couldn’t have happened.

On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Nazi declaration of war on America, the Bund shut down voluntarily. The feds, instead of defending the rights of Bund members and using exemplary sentencing against its enemies, hunted down and arrested Bund members, and revoked the naturalization of immigrant German American citizen members, deporting them to Germany.

So: no punishment for repeatedly threatening to murder Christians simply for being Christians—vs. 20 years in prison and a $1.4 million fine for an arson that did not seek to harm anyone, and which burned one lousy prayer rug.

In effect, Judge Zouhary appears to me to be establishing Islam as a privileged religion, while Judge Burns is working to delegitimize Christianity and disenfranchise white America Christians.

For perspective, let’s look at two other recent crimes involving religious “hate”

  • On May 22, 2011, Shaul Spitzer, 17, a member of the Sverer Chassidic sect, firebombed the home of Aron Rottenberg, 44, seeking to murder Rottenberg and his family. Rottenberg sustained burns over 50 percent of his body.

Spitzer was the butler of the Sverer sect’s Rebbe [Grand Rabbi] David Twersky in New Square, N.Y. The arson was motivated by the Rebbe’s religious hatred of Rottenberg and other dissidents. It was the culmination of a campaign of religious terror, i.e., a textbook religious “hate crime.” ‘ [Shaul Spitzer Sets Aron Rottenberg on Fire in Hasidic Religious War, By Pete Kotz, TrueCrime.com, May 25, 2011 at 9:21 am]

And yet the feds ignored the case.  Instead, Spitzer was charged in state court “with first-degree attempted arson, first-degree assault and second-degree attempted murder.” [Chasidic Teen Gets Seven Years for New Square Arson Attack, Jewish Telegraphic Agency/New York Jewish Week, April 19, 2012.]

Spitzer pleaded guilty, in order to protect the Rebbe and avoid a trial. State Supreme Court Justice William A. Kelly sentenced him to a measly seven years.

Significantly, Kelly denounced “the cynical people” who had complained that his sentencing was influenced by political pressure from the Rebbe.  [Shaul Spitzer gets 7 years for New Square arson attack by Steve Lieberman, Journal News, April 18, 2012.]

Wherever would he get that idea?

Fifteen of Mullett’s followers were sentenced to one to seven years each in federal prison for the same atrocity against dissidents: Forcibly cutting off the hair of two women and the beards of six Amish men.

According to AP, “The defendants were charged with a hate crime because prosecutors believe religious differences brought about the attacks.” The feds had sought a life sentence.

To add injury to injury, the feds have isolated the convicts in eight different prisons, hundreds of miles away, all but one of them outside of Ohio, making them vulnerable to prison violence, and making it almost impossible for their relatives, who do not drive or fly, to visit them.

Five members of a breakaway Ohio Amish sect head to federal prison on Friday to begin serving sentences for hate crimes, leaving behind a tight-knit religious group coping with the absence of parents for nearly 50 children.

Ohio Amish families struggle as beard-cutting prison terms get underway , Reuters,April 12, 2013

All these so-called “hate crime” and civil rights laws, whether on the state or federal level, are politicizations of the law. They violate the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, and our cherished  Anglo-Saxon legal traditions. They are designed as weapons with which to disenfranchise white, heterosexual Christians, and legally privilege those who hate them. They must be abolished by any means necessary—whether Congressional repeal or federal lawsuit.

Constitution, we don’t need no steenkin’ Constitution!

Nicholas Stix [email him]  is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.

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