Right?? Why can't people see that?

Yet the penalties for treason are not the same as the penalties for theft or assault. The penalties for killing someone on purpose is not the same as killing them by accident.

Motivation is always important in crimes. Furthermore, like a previous poster said, if the motivation is to take the law into your own hands and control segments of the population through terror, then law enforcement has a burden to stomp it out. While people will always hate, they will always kill and steal, we make laws and punishments to discourage people from such actions. If you disagree with that, then you disagree with our whole legal system.

That's because treason, theft, assault, murder (first or second degree) and manslaughter are all different crimes with different elements. The differing penalties have nothing to do with motivation in those instances.

I thought manslaughter was unintentional while murder was intentional? I have no idea on the degree of murder though.

In that sense, and generally speaking, yes. Intent to kill is an element of murder; it is not an element of manslaughter.

But that's not the same as talking about motivation, or intent in the sense of motivation. Talking about motivation raises the question of whether someone who kills another because he is mad at him (motivation = anger) should be punished differently from someone who, say, kills another for money or beause the victim is black/Muslim/gay . . . .

Generally speaking, people who say there shouldn't be hate crime legislation are people who A) as MysticCat stated, don't realize that motivation and intent matter for most crimes and/or B) are not identified as members of power minority groups who tend to be the victims of hate crimes.

Got it.

Agree.

There is no way someone should burn a cross on a Black person's lawn and get charged with vandalism or trespassing. The same is true with spray painting swastikas on synagoges. I heard that this week someone walked in to a mosque and starting peeing on the prayer area and rugs. Is that disorderly conduct?
The thing about hate crimes is that you have to put yourself in the complete shoes of the minority group. That includes historical and socio-political context.

I also contend that intent/motivation is a factor in sentencing even if not explicitly. People who kill because they fear for their safety are usually not treated the same (by courts and/or juries) as people who kill for insurance money. Our legal system does not take kindly to people who use crime to enforce a vigilante form of justice or control. We don't like it when drug dealers try to silence witnesses. We don't like it when people shoot up abortion clinics and we don't like it when people try to intimidate or kill people because of their religious beliefs.

I completely agree. I think it's incredibly naive to think that hate crime laws should be abolished and they should be treated as normal crimes for all the reasons you guys have been stating.

Regarding this particular stabbing, I get the sense this guy was not in his right mind. Something seems off, but I guess we'll see what happens with that.

And finally, regarding the unfair and unbalanced reporting on cable news networks... the fact is the only "fair and balanced" network is C-SPAN. Period. The key to watching cable news is filtering out the bullshit and recognizing that everything--including how they choose headlines and what stories get the most time--in full of bias.

:rolleyes: You can sit at the grown-up table when you don't use liberal (or conservative) as a slam.

And I see hate crimes essentially as terrorism. It's an attack not just on the individual harmed but on the larger community.

Yep because it illicits fear and control based on group membership. Crime is as formulaic as any other human behavior. We can predict when hate crimes will increase and which groups will be the growing targets.

More losers:
Drunk shouts 'terrorists,' urinates on mosque rugs
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38863919

or C) People who realize that hate is in the intent for many (if not most)violent crimes, whether they be based on race or the fact that your wife is sleeping with another guy.

And I'm not sure how one defines "minority groups" since we're all minorities.

Furthermore, it's a bit difficult to discern whether or not the crime was motivated by hate for a certain group...

This is sort of unrelated, but this is an interesting story....
http://reason.com/blog/2008/03/07/pu...k-and-step-awa

It's a story about how a man was reprimanded for "Racial Harassment" for reading a book about how Notre Dame students fought the Klan in 1924 in front of African-American employees.

Are you serious?

Absolutely.

So . . . huh? The analogy just fails everywhere - there's no 'social control' aspect to killing your wife's lover. There is a strong precedent for the law to protect the minority from the majority - hate crime laws make tons of sense from that standpoint, and seem very American (in a variety of good and bad senses).

Luckily, the law does it for us, so we don't have to rely on specious interpretations of "minority" that lead to things like "we're all minorities."