What Is “Hate” Crime?

Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts � What Is “Hate” Crime?:

Group A disagrees with the outlook of Group B, and since Group A is comprised of people from a previously identified minority, they claim that the mere existence of Group B comprises a hate crime or promotes hate speech. I take HUGE issue with this.

Why is it illegal or hateful for the members of one historical culture to celebrate their history but not illegal for another? What makes the history and culture of one group of people any more important that the history and culture of EVERY group of people?

Reality, and this is just MY opinion, is probably that ALL crime is hateful. Murdering someone is pretty hateful. Raping someone is pretty hateful. It doesn’t matter what race, religion, nationality, gender, age, etc of the intended victim is: crime is hateful. If we must label these crimes as different from “regular” crimes because they target a minority, then how about if we call them “minority crimes”? Or does that make too many people think that a member of a minority committed the crime? It has always bothered me that one crime is considered more serious than another crime simply because of the protected status of the victim. Robbery is robbery no matter what protected group (or not) the victim is a part of. Murder is murder the same way.

Eliminating a corporate tax loophole or hamstringing American companies?

If you put tomfoolery into a computer

Quote Details: Pierre Gallois: If you put tomfoolery... - The Quotations Page: "If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
Pierre Gallois"

"Cannot Be Saved by World's Rich" by Marian L. Tupy (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"Cannot Be Saved by World's Rich" by Marian L. Tupy (Cato Institute: Commentary): "Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world in most indicators of human well-being. It scored a mere 0.472 on the United Nations' 2006 Human Development Index, which is measured on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher values denoting higher standards of living. The United States, in contrast, scored 0.948.

For decades, many development experts have advocated more aid and debt relief as solutions to African poverty."

"But aid has failed to stimulate growth in Africa. Between 1975 and 2005, for example, per capita aid to Africa averaged $24.60 per year. By contrast, in China, it averaged $1.50 and in India $2. Over the same period, Chinese and Indian incomes, adjusted for inflation and purchasing-power parity, rose by 888 percent and 174 percent respectively. In Africa, incomes fell by 5 percent.

Moreover, aid has encouraged waste and corruption. Inadvertently, it also has financed "around 40 percent of Africa's military spending," according to Paul Collier of Oxford University."

"Africa remains the poorest and least economically free region on Earth. The G-20 should do all it can to help Africa integrate with the rest of the world. It should eliminate remaining restrictions on African exports and end its farm subsidies. Africans, however, will have to make most of the changes needed to tackle African poverty."

Wild Wisconsin: Supreme Court Nomoniee

Wild Wisconsin: Supreme Court Nomoniee: "One standard: Do you support the constitution and have the qualifications for the job?

Avoid: Litmus tests. Be it issue, race, creed, or party. Please can we move past nominating people for the color of their skin or gender?"

Well said!

"The Immigration Fallacy" by Will Wilkinson (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"The Immigration Fallacy" by Will Wilkinson (Cato Institute: Commentary): "Nearly half the denizens of Canada's most populous metropolis (Toronto) were born outside the nation's borders—47 percent according to the 2006 census, and the number is rising. This makes Toronto, the fifth biggest city in North America, also the most diverse city in North America. Neither Miami, Los Angeles, nor New York City can compete with Toronto's cosmopolitan credentials.

Here is what Toronto is: the fifth most livable city in the world. So said The Economist Intelligence Unit in a report last year drawing on indicators of stability, health care, culture, environment, education and infrastructure. (The Economist's world champion of livability, Vancouver, harbors a treacherous 40 percent foreign-born population.) Toronto is wealthy, healthy, well-educated, and much safer than any sizable American city. In 2006, its murder rate was 2.6 per 100,000 residents, which makes it less than half as deadly as Des Moines, Iowa. The most culturally mixed city on the continent truly is one of Earth's closest approximations of urban paradise."

"The United States, this fabled land of immigrants, has fallen dismally far behind countries like Australia and Canada in openness to immigration. The Statue of Liberty may as well be moved to Vancouver's English Bay where the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" are now rather more welcome than in New York harbor."

"The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half" by Benjamin H. Friedman (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half" by Benjamin H. Friedman (Cato Institute: Commentary): "[C]onsider how much we spend on defense relative to both our purported rivals and our past. Our defense budget is almost half the world's, even leaving out nuclear weapons, the wars, veterans, and homeland security. It is also more than we spent at any point during the cold war."

"There are no enemies to justify such spending. Invasion and civil war are unthinkable here. North Korea, Syria, and Iran trouble their citizens and neighbors, but with small economies, shoddy militaries, and a desire to survive, they pose little threat to us. Their combined military spending is one-sixtieth of ours.

Russia and China are incapable of territorial expansion that should pose any worry, unless we put our troops on their borders. China's defense spending is less than one-fifth of ours. We spend more researching and developing new weapons than Russia spends on its military. And with an economy larger than ours, the European Union can protect itself. Our biggest security problem, terrorism, is chiefly an intelligence problem arising from a Muslim civil war. Our military has little to do with it."

Shooting Back: Guns in Churches

Shop.WND.com - A WorldNetDaily Exclusive!: "'Grenades were exploding in flashes of light. Pews shattered under the blasts, sending splinters flying through the air,' he recalls of the July 25, 1993, St. James Church Massacre. 'An automatic assault rifle was being fired and was fast ripping the pews -- and whoever, whatever was in its trajectory -- to pieces. We were being attacked!'

But van Wyk was not defenseless that day. Had he been unarmed like the other congregants, the slaughter would have been much worse.

'Instinctively, I knelt down behind the bench in front of me and pulled out my .38 special snub-nosed revolver, which I always carried with me,' he writes in 'Shooting Back,' a book published for the first time in America by WND Books. 'I would have felt undressed without it. Many people could not understand why I would carry a firearm into a church service, but I argued that this was a particularly dangerous time in South Africa.'

During that Sunday evening service, the terrorists, wielding AK-47s and grenades, killed 11 and wounded 58. But the fact that one man – van Wyk – fired back, wounding one of the attackers and driving the others away."

Montana Firearms Freedom Act

Montana Firearms Freedom Act
"AN ACT EXEMPTING FROM FEDERAL REGULATION UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A FIREARM, A FIREARM ACCESSORY, OR AMMUNITION MANUFACTURED AND RETAINED IN MONTANA; AND PROVIDING AN APPLICABILITY DATE."

This should be interesting.

Teen Homeschooler Arrested Under Patriot Act

Campaign For Liberty — Teen Homeschooler Arrested Under Patriot Act: "The Act's defenders denied it was ever abused (although the first man imprisoned under it was an innocent man punished despite his judge not thinking he deserved the sentence). Now the Act is being turned against ordinary Americans, and even teenage homeschoolers:

This latest outrage just demonstrates why government can never be trusted with any powers that compromise its constitutional limits. Even if you somehow trust the administration currently in power, that can change every four or eight years."