By Ted PikeHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said Democrats will soon formulate a strategy to pass the federal hate crimes bill, HR 256. This comment should deeply concern all freedom-loving Americans.
What is Pelosi's strategy? Several aspects can be reasonably speculated.
The present hate crimes bill now in the House Judiciary Committee, the David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act, is not the real federal hate crimes bill for which most Democrats lust. It is a three-page abbreviation of the 5-page hate bill which passed the House two years ago. It only grants the federal government power to invade states' rights in law enforcement to punish violent hate crimes, not all bias crimes against persons or property.
Yet even this intrusion is unprecedented, uniting federal and local law enforcement into police state jurisdiction over violent hate crimes. It would also elevate homosexuals to special federally protected status as well as create a bias motivation justice system, enforceable from the federal level. Such bias motivation as a criterion for federal intervention would soon broaden, through judicial precedent, into a national speech crime law, as happened in Canada. HR 256 also gives the federal government the potential to punish "as a principal" those whose vehement criticism of homosexuals or other federally protected groups might "abet" (Webster: "incite") acts of violence against them (USC Title 18, Sec. 2[a]).
Since it will erode our First Amendment free speech, disregarding the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Tenth Amendment guaranteeing states' sovereign rights, even the stripped-down HR 256 should be shocking enough to raise a howl of protest to Washington.
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