The other night, “CBS News” reported that more than four years into the Iraq war, violence was continuing “with no end in sight.”
This is an interesting choice of words. One cannot imagine, for example, the same news organization reporting that Social Security costs are going up “with no end in sight.” Nor are we likely to hear that environmental regulations are multiplying “with no end in sight.”
Clearly, there are times when major news organizations wish to alarm the public and times when they decidedly do not.
Take the issue of whether the nation needs a new federal hate-crimes statute. The House recently passed such a bill and sent it to the Senate. President Bush has promised to veto it. That means the public is in for a classic tussle over cultural and free speech issues.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things about this controversy that have yet to show up in news accounts. The Anti-Defamation League has been promoting state hate-crime laws for years now. According to the latest compilation, all but a handful of states have laws adding extra punishment to crimes involving “bias-motivated violence.” The majority of them cover religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender and disabilities.
Interestingly, there has been no credible showing that the many states that have such laws are refusing to enforce them. Certainly there has been no national scandal involving such a failure. So why has this issue reached the top of the legislative agenda in Congress now that the Democrats are in control? Perhaps the bill is red meat for key elements of the Democratic Party, including feminists, racial and ethnic minorities and, of course, gays and lesbians.
The bill in one sense is more symbol than substance. It sets up a grant program so that a state that already has a hate-crime statute can ask for federal help in prosecuting certain cases. It can also ask for grants to train local law-enforcement officers in how to “prevent hate crimes” or “combat hate crimes committed by juveniles.”
It should be emphasized that there has been no evidence that such programs are needed in specific states or that the states themselves are unable to fund such efforts.
Most press accounts have so far merely recited the fact that President Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. These accounts generally fail to cite any of a number of reasons the president opposes the measure, based on what he has said:
1. State and local criminal laws already provide penalties for the violence addressed by the proposed federal law.
2. Federalizing such a broad range of crimes would be inconsistent with the proper allocation of criminal enforcement.
3. The bill leaves out a number of citizen classes, including the elderly, members of the military, police officers and victims of prior crimes.
4. The bill may be unconstitutional in that the federal power to regulate crime has limits imposed by the Commerce Clause and provisions found in the 14th Amendment.
Some critics of the legislation refer to it as the “thought crimes” bill – and for good reason. One of those is Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Blunt recalled that in 2004, 11 people were arrested in Philadelphia “simply for holding signs and reading passages out of the Bible during a gay pride festival.” The men and women were ultimately each charged with three felonies and five misdemeanors. Among the charges were ethnic intimidation (a hate crime) and “inciting a riot.”
It cannot be proven that federal legislation in this area would produce more such incidents, but neither can it be proven that it would not.
A presidential veto of this legislation would not leave the country without protection against hate crimes; far from it. There has never been a letup in the push for expanding the coverage of existing state laws, nor is there likely to be. Rewriting state and local hate-crime legislation to increase penalties and cover new groups is one of those things of which it can truly be said, “There is no end in sight.”
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
