Hate Crimes

The "hate crime" is a ridiculous invention of the legislature. (You'd never find a so-called activist judge come up with that one.)

I think the designation "hate crime" is unconstitutional. The underlying concept is that the performance of a crime while thinking bad thoughts is a separate crime.

For example, shooting up a McDonald's is a crime (attempted murder, various firearms charges, whatever).

But shooting up a McDonald's when you're a black man and hate white men? Well, add another count to the indictment.

See what I mean here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/01/national/main166708.shtml

Now, you'd think the First Amendment would protect speech, right? When your speech takes the form of a crime, it doesn't. Instead, it makes the crime worse.

That's fucked.

People should be allowed to express their thoughts. The decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court say so. The highest realm of speech, according to legal precedent, is political speech. The lowest is obscenity (whatever that is). Everything else falls somewhere in the middle. It's like Dante's circles of hell.

The there are hate crimes, where the perpetrator of a crime (i.e. something that's already illegal and punishable in some way) gets punished more than he might, just because he's thinking thoughts that are unacceptable to the legislature.

Get that--unacceptable to the legislature.

The legislature. The government.

Here's the government punishing you for what you think. No shit. It seems to have slipped under the radar of most people, even the Right. (Of course, the Right doesn't really believe in free speech anyway. That's why you're called a traitor if you question the government, when a Repub is running things).

The First Amendment was designed to protect the citizenry from the government's attempts to silence it. With hate crimes, the government is punishing people for expression.

Someone will read this and disagree.

But do you think that a black man shooting up white men is not a political act?

Let me put it another way. You can shoot up a McDonald's if you want, and pay the price. But I don't think you should have to pay a higher price because you hate the people in it than you would if you did it because your order was fucked up at the drive-thru. The act is the same. Laws should punish acts. Hate crime legislation punishes you for your thoughts, not your acts.

When the government is telling you what thoughts are appropriate, that's a problem for everyone.

Words matter

I'm not going to talk about the Virgina Tech guy. He was crazy. We can't protect ourselves against crazies who don't care if they die. And this will always be true, anywhere in the world.

Here's what I want to say today, regarding language:

The members of the political right use the word "Liberal" the way Hitler used the word "Jew."

Next time you hear W say it or Rush Limbaugh say it, make the mental switch. It's interesting.

Fearless Leader, Part II

George W. Bush's staff all hate his fucking guts.

Seriously.

How do I know? Easy.

In every job I've had, one of the top tasks I had, explicit or not, was to make my boss look good. Everyone has that same duty. You make your boss look good. He or she looks good to his or her boss. Everyone gets paid. Everyone continues to get paid. That's how it works.

But W. Boy, they hate him.

W has been on television and the radio for six years saying, "noo-q-lar" instead of "noo-clee-ar."

His staff obviously have not clued him in that he sounds like a dumbass Texas dipshit when he says that. (Even my father, an ardent Repub who still believes there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though the administration acknowledged there weren't, is annoyed by "noo-q-lar.")

See, if W's staff gave even the smallest shit about how W is perceived, someone would pull him aside and say, "Mr. President, dude, it's nuclear."

And he'd change it because he seems desperately not to want to be seen as the dumbass he is.

But no one's done it. No one will fix this one small-yet-enormous thing.

They hate his fucking guts.

Other possibility: They have told him, and he got shitty and told them to go fuck themselves.

Either way, he really is the dumbass he appears to be.

Fearless Leader, Part I

This morning in a press conference, our President accused the Democrats who are trying to remove funding for the "war" (police action?) in Iraq of not wanting our troops to have enough bullets.

This is the same guy whose (former-heh) Secretary of Defense once said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Presidential Politics

Apparently Christopher Walken is running for president.

No, really.

http://www.walken2008.com/

Or maybe not:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/walken.asp

I'm not against it, though. At least the name Christopher sounds like a president.

Unlike Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin, who just announced he's running.

Well, fuck that.

I'm not voting for anyone with a stupid name. Not Tommy, not Mitt, not Newt, not Oloveuse (look it up), and no, not Barack.

I could vote for Chuck, Mike, Christopher, Jim, John, Bill, even Dennis and Rudy (maybe). Hillary, possibly, though that sounds like the name of a girl husband-shopping at a bar mitzvah. Wesley? He better come off as an ass-kicker. Same with Maurice.

Names mean a lot. I know a woman who named her sons Lance and Bruce so they'd be good in the arts.

Keep in mind, none of these people is responsible for his or her name. Blame the parents. But it seems to me that if parents wanted their kids to be president, they'd have given the kids presidential names. For example, Christine Todd Whitman--totally ready to be president, name-wise. I think she should stop calling herself Christy if she wants to keep going.

I heard a comic once who said his name was Truitt K. Beasley, Jr. Then he'd say, "Thanks, dad!" Hilarious. (He went by Killer Beas.)

On the presidential front, Newt, with any luck, is just fucked. Of course, my theory on Newt is that he's such an asshole because he's a freaking salamander. Who wouldn't be pissed?