On Sunday a Mormon bishop was shot and killed in California:
(CNN) — A Mormon bishop was shot and killed in Visalia, California, on Sunday, police said.
The suspected gunman was killed later in the day in a gunfight with police, Visalia California Police Chief Colleen Mestas told CNN.
Bishop Clay Sannar, 42, was shot dead in an office at Visalia’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mestas said.
This got no attention in the left wing blogs. Is it less of a crime to kill someone in cold blood if you don’t hate them? Even if the killer hated Sannar, Sannar was out of luck with regard to hate crimes because he wasn’t among the protected.
Another non-incident got a lot of attention. This from Islamophobia Watch:
A drunk barged into a Queens mosque last night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs, cops and witnesses said.
Bill Jacobson notes that while this incidence was communicated this way:
– HuffPo: “In another brazen anti-Muslim incident, a man wandered into a mosque in Queens Wednesday night, shouting racial slurs and urinating on prayer rugs.” [strike through apparently added afterwards]
– Oliver Willis: “It’s like some political movement in the country is whipping up irrational hatred and bigotry towards a group of people who are different.”
– Loonwatch: “The backlash against Muslims continues. I am sure Islamophobes will give this guy a break and say he was drunk, but do you think they would have given Mel Gibson the same break for his drunken anti-Semitic tirade?”
– New York Magazine: “Last night a drunk man barged into a Queens mosque and urinated on prayer rugs while shouting anti-Muslim slurs. Another isolated incident? Or the continuation of a scary new trend?”
The truth finally found its way out:
Late Update: The New York Post originally reported Rivera using ‘anti-Muslim slurs’. But they’ve now revised their story. The NYPD would not confirm to TPM whether Rivera’s curses were tied to Islam. And subsequent reporting by the Washington Post suggests Rivera was so drunk he probably didn’t know he was in a Mosque. So probably just your standard random urination in place of worship issue.
Later Update: NYPD now confirming to TPM that they are not treating this as a bias case.
The spark the left was trying to fan into a flame has gone out.
Although the left and some here would have you believe that Muslims are the continuous victims of hate crimes, it just ain’t so.
WASHINGTON — Hate crimes directed against Muslims remain relatively rare, notwithstanding the notoriety gained by incidents such as recent vandalism at the Madera Islamic Center.
So who is more likely to be a victim?
Jews, lesbians, gay men and Caucasians, among others, are all more frequently the target of hate crimes, FBI records show. Reported anti-Muslim crimes have declined over recent years, though they still exceed what occurred prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The entire “hate crime” concept is absurd.
“Hate crime” is another left-wing, politically correct “feel good” testament to Ted Kennedy who believed that cold blooded murder being called cold blooded murder wasn’t enough. Ironically, though liberals like Kennedy sought to add the “hate crime” appellation to certain crimes they were also the first to prevent the use of capital punishment. Kennedy felt that the additional stigma of the term “hate crime” was going to help victims like Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.
The premise of hate crimes legislation is frightening.
By itself, hate is not a crime.
Congress, though, has specified that a criminal act becomes a hate crime when it is “motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” Stiffer penalties can result.
These aren’t hate crimes so much as they are “thought crimes.” One is potentially levied with greater penalties for the thoughts in one’s head. It’s straight out of the novel 1984.
The law was officially called
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Reporters must figure out whether to cast a particular incident as an aberration or part of a larger narrative. The widely read Talking Points Memo website, for instance, is reporting on the Madera Islamic Center as part of broader coverage of national anti-Muslim attacks. The presentation gives the impression of a trend, a cause for concern.
And still these things go on:
All told, 7,783 reported hate crime incidents occurred in 2008, including 1,381 in California. These incidents can take many forms.
It’s not working. It was stupid to begin with.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Hate Crime legislation is an injustice to the victims of crimes not considered in the category of those under the Hate Crime umbrella. What it does is place an arbitrary value on the lives of every victim of every crime, and determines that those motivated by hate are worth more than those that are not.
It also places an arbitrary value on the motivation by the criminal, and considers hate, as a motivation, of more import than all others.
Again, we see that intended legislation by the liberals and progressives runs counter to their ideology. Why is this, you ask? Because the liberal/progressive mindset portrays an equal value upon human lives, yet, their actions, such as hate crime legislation and abortion rights, belies their will to place differing values upon a human life dependent upon race, religion, class, etc. Simply put, they claim equality for all, yet practice inequality.
In all my years, I haven’t seen to many killing done because the killer loved the victims. the idea of hate crimes are a figment of the liberal left’s imagination. Murder is murder, killing is killing and the penalty should be the same.
Nothing says equality like singling out some crimes as being less important than others based on the race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc of the victim.
I’ve never been able to figure out how this gets around the whole “equal protection under the law” idea…
So, the many incidents of anti-Jewish violence that began spreading in Germany during the early 1930s can’t be categorized as something we might call “hate crime”?
Such emerging patterns of behavior are not something it might be best for society to try to recognize early, discourage, and perhaps give a bit more legal attention to?
It seems to me that the thought behind hate crimes is this: Sometimes the motives of someone’s actions make a difference in how harshly we judge it. But is that fair? Is that just? Shouldn’t we be just as harsh on criminals no matter what their motive is? Consider two cases. 1. An elderly black lady is murdered for the money she is carrying. 2. An elderly black lady is murdered because the murderer hates black people. Doesn’t justice come from trying to protect all citizens equally? How can one be less enraged about case 1? Both victims deserved protection from the law. To be just, I believe, we should punish each perpetrator just as harshly as the other. Each victim was wronged just as much as the other.
Or how about 3. An elderly black lady is murdered because she was in the way when the burglar was trying to escape…
or 4. How about an elderly black lady who was killed by some teens who just wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody? Does it matter if the teens are black or white? or asian?
If hate crimes get a stiffer sentence then maybe we should have lighter sentences for love crimes. These would include stalking, many rapes, and assault or murder due to jealousy.
@Greg
Typical of a liberal. Place an arbitrary value upon someone’s life over another, and then try to rationalize it as being ‘fair’ or, as you put it, “best for society”.
What gives you, or any other person in this world, the right to place differing values upon people’s lives simply because of skin color, economic class, sexual orientation, etc. ?
Now tell me how liberals are so ‘fair’ to people. I dare you.
@ johngalt, #9: “What gives you, or any other person in this world, the right to place differing values upon people’s lives simply because of skin color, economic class, sexual orientation, etc. ?”
Nothing.
Hate crime law isn’t about valuing the life one individual more highly than the life of another. It’s about the fact that some individuals are targeted for violence for no other reason than that they’re part of an identifiable group. A lot of people feel that such targeting is totally reprehensible, and should aggravate a criminal offense if it’s the primary motivation. The thinking is that failure to respond to such motivation can render an entire class of people more vulnerable.
@Greg
A part of an identifiable group? Like the elderly or Mormons?
So you think picking out the elderly for their vulnerability is less offensive than picking on someone for his or her race?
You think killing a Mormon is not as bad as killing a gay person?
Thanks for the update.
@Greg
We have mechanisms in place for that. If a person is “targeted”, and a crime is committed against that person, than the DA instantly has a “pre-mediated” factor in which to move the charge up to First-degree.
The only reason the “Shepard Law” was put in place was because the Big-City-Better-Than-Flyover-Yokels, presumed that the judge and jury would go light on the meth-heads who killed another meth-head (Who happened to be very small, and very gay.) There was never a rash of cases in which gays were being beaten for being gay. If there was, then first-degree assault can carry up to 20 years. If there were Judges and DA’s ignoring potential cases, than the FBI should have been brought in to investigate/prosecute those entities.
They both got life without parole for a non-pre-mediated murder… Which they fully deserved.
There was no “thinking” involved. It was motivated by politics and reactionary-politicians. It was the wrong “cure” for the wrong problem. The Gay-lobby finally got a “martyr” to bash politicians with, in order to gain themselves a perceived seat at the Big-Boy table like Sharpton and Jackson did by using the Blacks for leverage. Hell, at least in their case there WAS cases of institutional racism in courts and governments.
If a white woman is gang-raped, tortured and killed by 10 Crips of Compton who went to Beverly Hills because that’s where the white woman live, and they where calling her “white-bitch” the whole time, they would NOT be charged with a hate-crime. I guess Black gangsters can’t “hate”, or something…
Here’s the kicker…I don’t think they should be. They should be charged with First-degree rape-torture-murder, and when convicted, given the death-penalty.
Had “hate-crimes” been in Germany in the 30’s, it would have stopped nothing. Destroying the Jewish business’ on Krystal Nacht broke dozens of harsh laws, and yet was pushed by those in government poised to take absolute power. IOW, it’s not a good analogy.
Regardless of whether you think “Hate crimes is a stupid concept” or not, it only takes a short run through the internet (e.g., http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/08/25/gop-rep-herger-right-wing-terrorist-a-great-american/ ) to locate many terrorist acts, committed by right-winger haters–who usually usually try, phonily, to set themselves apart from such violence.
@tadcf:
Is your idiocy genetic or as a result of some sort of injury?
I read the article that you linked and, clearly, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The person at the town hall meeting was jokingly referring to himself as a “right wing terrorist” which is a moniker which has been assigned to a broad swath of Americans by none other than the DHS and other gov’t groups.
I know it’s difficult, but try not to be a dumb ass.
As to “terrorist acts, committed by right-winger haters” you had better get busy because that contention by you was not sourced or cited in any way.
@Greg
Thank you for providing the audience here at FA another example of a liberal denying that which is true. I honestly do not know if it’s just that you can’t accept the truth, or that you won’t, but regardless, it doesn’t matter.
When two people are murdered, one because of racist motivation, the other because of some other reason, and the perpetrator of the murder based on race is given a harsher sentence than the other, even if both murders were done in the same fashion, a higher value has been placed on the life of the victim in the murder based on hate. It is undeniable. There is no other way to look at it.
When society deems this acceptable, and rationalizes it the way you do, it is inevitable that society will allow this inequity into other aspects of life as well. We see this in the targeted tax-credits liberals are so fond of. We see this in the government programs that have become entitlements. We see this in the affirmative action legislation enacted for ‘fairness’. We see this the media coverage of rallies or protests. The inequalties legislated by our elected officials, and given coverage by our media, are around us everyday, and they tell us that differing groups, whether they be of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, economic class or whatever else, have differing values placed upon their lives. Our society, in a race to be deemed the most equal, the most ‘fair’, has instead placed inequities upon us all based on whatever group one could be pigeon-holed into.
Martin Luther King Jr. would be aghast at the inequities in our society. His dream of man being judged upon “content of character” has not been realized. We, as a society, have continued upon the same path of inequality amongst men based on shallow identities that mean nothing, and show nothing of one’s true character. The superficial groupings that have become hallowed by society are what matters nowadays, just as it has for centuries and millenia around the world. We haven’t progressed as a society. We have regressed. Now, it means more for someone to proclaim he is gay, rather than straight. Now, it means more that someone is black, rather than white. Now, it means more when someone proclaims atheism, rather than having Christian values.
These truths one cannot deny, for they are part of our everyday life. Missed out on that job because you were white and the company is required by society to employ more blacks? Welcome to inequality. Missed out on a tax rebate because you made too much money? Welcome to inequality. Missed out on the perpetrator of the assault against you getting as much time in prison as the assault victim next to you, because he is black and you are white? Welcome to inequality.
Face it, Greg. Liberals have legislated inequality into our society, based on some superficial grouping, and claim to have done so in the name of equality.
Imagine the following scenario:
A man is found guilty of murder and now they have to decide if it qualifies as a hate crime for stiffer punishment. The defense attorney argues that his client has murdered lots of people and if you look closely at the demographics, you can find no pattern. He’s murdered people from all races, creeds, color, and Vietnam era veteran statuses.
This would never happen because it’s absurd, but if it did, and you support hate crime laws, wouldn’t you have to conclude that this person’s previous long list of murders would exonerate him of having committed a hate crime, and not support stiffer punishment?
@ drjohn, #8:
Federal hate crime law defines protected group characteristics very broadly, not specifically. It refers to race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability, rather than specifying blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, gays, etc.
The fact that the victim of a violent crime is part of an identifiable group while the perpertrator is not doesn’t itself suggest that a hate crime has occurred. Hate crime is statistically rare. It’s a focus of special attention because of it’s a potential social malignancy. If hateful people are selectively beating Jewish shopkeepers, or gay males, or members of whatever identifiable group of innocent citizens they’ve singled out, we’d be complete idiots not to give that fact more attention than a statistical rise in the number of random bar room beatings.
Some states include the elderly as a stated category in state hate crime laws. New York has done so in response to violent attacks on citizens motived by the simple fact that they’re elderly. Federal law hasn’t addressed this particular hate crime motivation, which I consider an omission. Other states have considered including the homeless, who have apparently become a focus of hatred. Unprovoked violent attacks against the homeless–one society’s most disempowered identifiable groups–have been on the rise.
I fail to see why this should even be viewed as a liberal/conservative issue. To me, it’s about a common sense societal response to what any responsible citizen should view as a highly negative tendency. It has to do with a special category of crime that begins with a denial that all men are created equal, and then goes on to act violently upon that denial.
@Greg
And because of that, you fail to see the inherent wrongness of legislating values placed upon people simply for their skin color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, etc. No amount of your spinning can overshadow the fact that inequality amongst victims is the result of “hate crimes” laws.
You cannot tell me that when two people are murdered, that one’s life is so much more valued by society, that the perpetrator of the crime should receive extra penalty for the act. It is not about mitigating hate due to superficial groupings, despite your claims and those of the proponents of “hate crime” legislation. It is about human value of life, as it should be, but the liberals have it wrong.
All life is precious, Greg, and no one, regardless of any factor, should have his placed above another’s. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Robbery is robbery. Your assertion that “special attention” should be placed upon those crimes committed in the name of hate implies that those motivated by other factors should receive less attention. And the result is the arbitrary values placed upon a man’s life by factors defined by society. Sounds like inequality to me, and that is something that liberals are very good at legislating.
@Greg
So, then the response to that crime is to begin with a denial that all men are created equal, and sentence them based on that denial?
You don’t see the wrongness in such thinking?
It’s kind of like when your parents tell you that two wrongs don’t make a right. Yet, you want society to put that concept into practice, and then call it justice. Is it justice that murdered not in the name of “hate” has their murderer given a lighter sentence? You don’t see how that places less value on that person’s life? You don’t see how that is legislating inequality?
@johngalt, #19:
Yes, I do see the wrongness in such thinking, as I’ve stated. But that’s not really the thinking behind hate crime laws. That’s only a way the thinking can be depicted to create a devisive wedge issue from what should be a unifying, common issue.
@Greg
It doesn’t matter what the thinking behind the laws are. It matters in the practice of the laws, and there isn’t any way your comments get around the fact that “hate crime” legislation creates inequities in human life, of both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes. So much for all men created equal.
-Cripes.
“To be thick…as a brick.”
Thick as a brick?
What position, I wonder, did conservative Log Cabin Republicans take on the Hate Crimes bill?
Maybe they’ve also been driven out of the Big Tent and banished to the outer darkness for embracing Centrist heresy.
@Greg
As Patvann said, “To be thick…as a brick.”
It doesn’t matter what position other groups encompassed under the GOP umbrella took. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. And my stance, and that of many other conservatives, is that it is wrong to fight against discrimination, and discriminatory acts, including those termed “hate crimes”, by using discrimination, and discriminatory acts themselves. Nothing like perpetuating that which you claim to be opposed to, huh?
Look.
*Scoots soapbox into position*
The bottom line is this:
The Leftist (Neo-Fabian) has no longer a deserved place at the table for setting the “tone” for any discussion regarding the punishment for the wicked among us.
At the same time as arguing to utilize bigotry to “fight bigotry”, they have in far too many past instances proven their ignorance, ineptitude and hypocrisy, when presented with the opportunity to administer said justice.
If they claim the the “hatecrimes” are broad enough to protect all, then why not accept “All are equal under the law”….
Thick as a freakin brick.
Lets take one little peep into their modus.
Tookie Williams killed a teen-aged Asian girl by shooting her in the face with a shotgun. This was AFTER her had already killed her family while they worked in their little shop. He had a “habit” of choosing little Asians to torment. He was 6’ tall. Weighed 260, and had 23” arms.
She was 90 lbs, and 17 years old. And he already had the money.
You may assume it wasn’t much money, and you can bet it wasn’t his first robbery of Asians.
This was only one morning in Tookie’s storied life as a drug dealing, gangbanging bullying thug.
He receives the death penalty, and after 20 years or so the Fabians of this state (and others) finally ran out of ammo in their “lawfare” to save this “man”, and he is at last given a date with death.
(Spits)
So a few months before that date, the Fabians pay some “writer” to ghostwrite a children’s book under Tookie’s name.
See, after 20 years or so, (and starting with the last failed appeal) he suddenly finds God, and is now HELPING the other death penalty “victims” lead rich and fulfilling last-days.
Bless his little warm heart.
In the end, Tookie dies a comfortable death, while the mostest bestest and mostest famous of the present-day Fabians, stand outside the prison weeping, singing, and lighting candles on his behalf.
(After spending the day at an abortion-rights meeting, I would envision…)
There was, in-fact, hundreds of these insane assholes outside the walls that night. It was pathetic, to say the least.
And the next week, (and you can bet you next paycheck), most of these same dickheads see another shiny protest, and they rush to the scene, so that they can march and scream: “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE” to the rest of us who can’t get seem to be able to forget how that little Chinese girl must have felt, after watching her family get slaughtered in front of her, have her self physically, and sexually violated for another hour, and then watch as a 260 lbs man, (with his 2 “friends” watching) point and shoot a 12ga sawed-off shotgun at her face from 1 ft away.
But to the leftist, that’s old history, and Tookie was now “another” man!!!
The leftists pull this crap at every chance they are presented with it. One wonders that if Hitler was charged, convicted and threatened with hanging for instigating Kyrstal Nacht, would Greg and his merry band of Fabians support that punishment?
Or would they pay to get him a ghostwriter?
To you Neo-Fabian Leftists who “think” you have the moral authority to determine ANYTHING about “justice”…
Fuck you. I’ve had enough of your version of “justice”.
You may now return to defending child-rape-after-drugging, done by famous directors who run from prosecutors, and who now poshly live in Europe, and continue to push for abortion clinics in Black neighborhoods.
For those Patriots’s who have read through to the bottom of my little rant, here is the new Home-page for the Department of “Justice”, under the control of “men” who sees America as no better than the worse that’s ever existed:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/department_of_justice_ditches.html
(Betcha that DoJ site changes soon…)
Oh yeah…
In November, (after we vote) me and my larger-than-me brother are going to dress up in military-like uniforms, carry clubs, and go to the Blackest part of Richmond CA. to see if we can get “hate crimes” and voter-intimidation charged against us prosecuted, or have the charges dropped by Eric Holder after not bothering to show up in court, after being released for less bail-money than a DUI warrant.
Oh wait..I’ll get shot, and the killer will get off due to realized, and legitimate temporary insanity.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!!!!
Meh. Maybe I’ll just sit here and type to a brick.
Then vote.
@Patvann, #25:
I believe you’ve conflated several different issues with the matter of hate crime law, and mixed in some broad generalizations about all progressives that are based on things that are offensive about a few.
The late “Tookie” might or might not have been guilty of a hate crime. He might have only been a genuinely evil human being, totally incapable anything remotely resembling normal empathy or compassion, who finally got what he had coming. His actions were sufficiently horrendous to render the question of whether or not a hate crime was involved purely academic.
Had Tookie’s crime been less horrendous–for example, if his victims had somehow escaped death–and if he’d been deliberately targeting Asians out of a passionate hatred for Asian, hate crime law suddenly becomes relevant. It could translate into a significantly longer sentence. I approve of that result.
I won’t even go into the suggestion that some debaucherous film director hiding out in Europe indicates that all progressives are pro-child molester. While a few truly contemptible human specimens can be found on either side of the political divide, a majority on both sides are basically good people.
Hey tdcf…..
I’m eagerly awaiting your next visit.
I want to hear you talk about the terrorist who took the hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters yesterday.
I want to hear you talk about how this person was right wing [snicker].
I can hardly wait.
Come on back man…we love to point and laugh at you.
Hate crime legislation is bigotry. Affirmative action is bigotry. Liberals are bigots. They place huge amounts of value on one or more groups in America and leave the rest out to dry. Thats the root of the problem here. Don’t let people be rewarded or punished based on their actions, but on what demographic they fit into 🙄 . You can see it in the way they treat anybody that disagrees with Obama. RASCIST! RASCIST! RASCIST! Thats all I ever hear when I try to have a good moral debate with these people! Can you imagine the outcry, and race war, that would have erupted following John McCain or Ron Paul getting 97% of the white vote?
@Wyatt
As I stated to Greg, numerous times, above, liberals legislate inequality in our society, and do so while they tell us it’s in the name of equality.
Any reasonable person can see that fighting discrimination, with discrimination, or bigotry, with bigotry, is not only hypocritical, but purely wrong, as well. Yet, Greg, and his liberal and progressive friends, see nothing wrong with it. One has to wonder how much they pay their chiropractors to fix all the damage from the back bending and body twisting they have to do, just to make sense of what they claim. Simplicity is obviously not in their vocabulary, otherwise, they would desire, as intelligent people would, that a murder be deemed a murder, an assault be deemed an assault, and a robbery be deemed a robbery, without placing extra adjectives before them.
Someday, the overwhelming majority in this country will wake up to the progressives’ society destroying intentions, and vote them all out of office. Until then, we are stuck with people whose lack of intellectual honesty places us all in danger.
@ Greg
Pffft.
Have a nice day.
10/21/23 – Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll found fatally stabbed outside her home