With the Hate Crime Bill, S.909 moving towards a Cloture vote on shackling the Defense Appropriations Bill with this monstrosity at 1 AM Friday morning, the Rev. Ted Pike has put out another E-Alert HIT THE HATE BILL WHERE IT HURTS! 16 July 09 Pike intelligently points out that the way Senator Reid and his fellow thugs in the Senate Democratic leadership are trying to force through this legislation is itself an outrage, quite apart from the faults of the Bill itself.

Sen. McCain’s explosive rebuke of Senate hate bill leadership yesterday brought into high profile their Stalinist tactics and their vulnerabilities. Because of the hate bill’s inability to withstand normal legislative scrutiny, Democrats have: 1. Omitted adequate Senate Judiciary hearings. 2. Omitted any mark-up session (usually providing opponents in Judiciary with a second opportunity to debate a bill and offer amendments). 3. Omitted a Rules Committee session, providing a third opportunity for opposition to object. 4. Attached a discriminatory, unrelated, homosexual-protecting bill to the soldier-protecting arms bill.

This is an entirely valid point, and extremely important, because it gives Senators who may not have the nerve to face the vicious rage of the Homosexual Lobby a totally legitimate procedural reason to vote against Cloture.

Legislation of this importance should not be smuggled through.

Of course the reason the Senate Democrats want to smuggle it through like this is either that they think they lack the votes, or they fear the outage of the public if the contents of the Bill become widely understood.

On that matter I received an email this morning from a solid friend following my recent post:

I'm with you in opposition to, really, even the notion of hate crimes. But now, having just viewed the video featuring Pence and DeMint and the other guy, with all their talk about Christian pastors being forced to shut up by this bill, I looked at both the Senate and House versions. The House bill contains this: Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by, the Constitution. The Senate bill contains this: (3) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.

(4) FREE EXPRESSION- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual's expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual's membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs. So I don't get it. Where's the hazard to, say, a minister preaching from the Bible? Are there things elsewhere in the bills that nullify these straightforward statements?

I replied:

I thought the video dealt well with exactly this point.

1) The Bill will stimulate more aggressive enforcement of State laws, some of which are more vaguely written

2) It opens the way for aggressive litigation which, even if it is does not win at the end of the day, threatens the target with ruinous legal expenses. This is an abuse of the legal function but is standard procedure by DAs nowadays as Paul Craig Roberts says in his complaints about plea bargaining.

3) Talking about PCR and the precise language in the bill, consider his /articles/privilege-before-the-law

“How did we end up with racial quotas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly forbids them? It was primarily the work of one man, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) bureaucrat named Alfred Blumrosen, now a Rutgers University law professor. Blumrosen’s thoroughgoing and illegal rewrite of the Civil Rights Act was accepted by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971)…. Blumrosen ignored the act and its statutory prohibition against regulatory interpretation. He bet that he could get away with rewriting the act because of the courts’ deference to the regulatory agency Neither the clear statutory language of the act and the amendments nor the act’s unambiguous legislative history could prevent Blumrosen and the Burger Court from standing the Civil Rights Act on its head.”

With a power-hungry and legislating Judiciary such as we actually do have in this country specific language is no protection. The only hope is to deny them access to the area.

See also

/articles/record-shows-hate-crimes-prevention-bill-will-suppress-speechess-speech

While most of the open fighting on the other side is being done by the Gays (what a pleasure reading their websites) Blumrosen’s descendents are chilling the Champagne. Consider another foot-in-mouth comment from an ADL officer in Florida today:

“We've been in the hatred business a long time,” said Andrew L. Rosenkranz, Florida's regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, another of the series' sponsors. Rosenkranz said he was enthusiastic…It's a penalty-enhancement statute,” he said. “If there's overt evidence that hate was a motivating factor in the crime … [it] could bump it up from a third-degree to a second-degree felony with harsher penalties.”

Hate crime series brings bias to the floor DON CRINKLAW Sun Sentinel July 16 2009

In other words, the State will seize the chance to punish someone for his political opinions, if he gives it the chance by getting convicted of a conventional crime. Get ready for Life imprisonment for speeding while Republican!

In the first place, this bill is about privileging some favored groups . In the longer run, it is — and is intended as — a long stride towards political policing.