Is it just me, or is it not legal to murder another person?  Listening to the proponents of proposed Hate Crime legislation, I, as a white man, apparently have the opportunity to kill non-whites and not be punished under existing laws.  To the rescue, the Federal Government and Hate Crime laws.  Now, if I, as a white man, kill a non-white, I will be prosecuted for hate.  The actual crime of murder, I suppose, will still be under review.

The idiocy of this proposal smacks of racism and a lack of understanding of how existing laws and subsequent punishments have been ignored in our society.  Perhaps if we, as a free thinking society, had not allowed our criminal judicial system to be overrun with defense attorneys allowed to pervert the system in aid of guilty clients, the sheep that constitute the majority of our population would not be so easily conned into more invasive governance.  Guilty of murder?  Death or life in prison.  No extenuating circumstances.  No special priorities based on social class or race.  Did the defendant knowingly kill the victim?  If the jury decides in the affirmative, there should be one simple penalty. 

Think of the streamlining the judicial system would experience if every case were established with one simple rule - did the defendant commit the crime?  Crime and punishment should not be concerned with WHY a crime was committed; only IF a crime was committed.