And I hate people who ignored their workout lessons in grammar school. Not much I can do about that one, however.

What are you going to do about your hatred of ‘irresponsible people?’ Go cry some more.

You two will never understand that freedom comes resposibilities. So. If people can do whatever they like with impunity? Why can’t the majority have the right to mete out punishment for those whose chooses to be irresponsible? Fortunately. You two can’t control the world. and not everyone swallow your propagandas.
I hate irresponsible people. They are nothing but trouble.

Actually convicting criminals of hate crimes is hard, as it should be, because it involves proving not just the underlying crime but also proving bias intent. But classifying crimes as hate crimes, arresting and prosecuting suspects, and actually convicting some of them is important too. If you don’t believe that, just look at the results of the almost total absence of reports, arrests, prosecutions, or convictions for anti-disability hate crimes (and not because of any absence of these hate crimes). The result is that these criminals feel empowered and sometimes even think that their crimes and socially acceptable actions.

Unfortunately for you. You see what you want to you, not looking at the pooosibilitoes of people putting themselves in harms way. So if a woman dresses like a ho. Do you want to blame only the perpetraitior? Get real!

And before you single out LGBTQ for thinking with their primary sexual characteristics, remember the fact that you are (more likely than not) a man as well. And with what are we men frequently accused of thinking? ‘Cuz it sure ain’t the brain in our heads. Get a life, Mr C.

Furthermore, there is an enormous group whose very vulnerability has caused them to be targeted in America: the impoverished. We’ve been unwilling to call this group immutable, but it is more and more so every day. They are unprotected by hate crime laws, yet their vulnerability has caused them to be targeted by criminal politicians, financiers, and demagogues. If anyone deserves hate crime protection, it is this group, into which almost anyone could be irretrievably hurtled any time, and from which there is fat chance of extricating oneself. This group, however, cannot afford lobbyists; if they attempt to organize, they get Breitbarted; and the SCOTUS, having ruled that money is speech, is very likely to rule that those who haven’t got it should shut up. There is a reason that the organization that hosts this forum is called Southern *Poverty* Law Center, and poor-hating is a subject we’d better look at damned hard.

Likewise, the white supremacist Doesn’t think of his victim as a member of a minority, but by the time he acts, he has personalized his hatred to the point that it no longere makes any difference what race the victim is. I live less that 40 miles from the old Arian Nations compound and they perpetrated nearly as many crimes against other whites and they did against Jews or blacks.

If we were talking about “prosecuting a mere state of mind,” I’d be at the front of the crowd in opposing it. What I thought we were talking about was proving someone guilty of a crime and then also proving that ethnic or other similar hatred was a factor in that crime.

It seems to me that there’s plenty of precedent for that approach. We punish people more severely for rape if the victim is a child, for example, and the reason is at least in part because children are members of an especially vulnerable segment of the population and need extra protection. Likewise with what we call “elder abuse.”

A member of a minority group may also be considered especially vulnerable (minorities are by definition outnumbered), so it’s quite just, in my opinion, to offer them some extra measure of protection, too.

This state of blanket malice towards persons or people the perpetrators don’t even know is dangerous in the extreme, and a certain political party is engaging in it, but as I said, prosecuting a mere state of mind without a definable nexus is difficult, and potentially even more dangerous. This requires careful thinking out.

Our legal system already recognizes that the reason a crime occurred makes a difference in deciding what the crime is: a homicide committed during an armed robbery, for example, can be prosecuted as second-degree murder vs. just voluntary manslaughter if the accompanying felony is absent (at least in the state where I live).

In such cases, the law recognizes that the circumstances of the crime reveal an exceptional disrespect for the law and disregard for human life that deserves a more attention-getting punishment. I would argue that hate-crimes laws serve precisely the same purpose.

I know Dennis Mahon’s thinking doesn’t exactly correspond to reality, however, I have to ask as weather or not he actually thought he would help his cause by doing this, or if he just wanted to hurt someone he didn’t like and wasn’t even thinking about the consequences it would have on his own life if he was caught. One might as well almost say, when he was caught because it wouldn’t be easy to get away with a crime like this. The biggest reason the Unibomber got away with his crimes so long was because an introvert who lived along in the wilderness, and didn’t communicate with authorities until near the end of his terrorist career. Anyway, Its not like people are giving into threats like this in general.

It is a more usual process to take into account motivation and other circumstances during the penalty phase of a trial as mitigating or aggravating factors. I think that is where ‘hate’ aspects should be dealt with.

I don’t think it helps in the fight against racist violence. I think it confuses juries (as in this case) and makes some people think the accused are on trial for what they think rather than what they have done.