Quote:
Originally posted by Ump20
Might I suggest that instead of spending billions of dollars on stopping illicit drugs we do as William F. Buckley advocated ten or fifteen years ago and legalize them. ... Jim/NYC {bastion of liberal ideas}
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First time I ever heard Mr. Buckley called (even by inference) a liberal. Libertarian, maybe. ;-)
Trying to steer this back to umpire protection laws, we already have laws on the books making some people "more equal than others." (literary reference:
Animal Farm)
In many states, the punishment is more severe if you murder a police officer than if you murder Joe Citizen. Does anyone know if there have been any studies to show that these laws resulted in a reduction in the murder rate of police?
The main problem I have with hate crime is the state is faced with either trying to prove thought crime (i.e. the murder is punished more severely because of what the person was thinking), or they have to take the shortcut to just declare that ALL white on black crime, gentile on Jew crime, straight on homosexual crime, etc. is by definition a hate crime.
The first option (thought crime) is highly disturbing because what thoughts will be declared crimes next? The second is disturbing because of the
Animal Farm reference ... some people are "more equal" than others in the eyes of the law.
All life is valuable. All persons are equal, with equal rights, and deserving of equal protection under the law. If the assault and battery laws were enforced, we would have no need for special laws for sports officials.
[Edited by Dakota on Mar 1st, 2001 at 02:29 PM]