Ooh. That was scary. For one brief moment I found myself almost agreeing with George Bush about something.
Bush has threatened to veto newly passed hate crimes legislation that would extend hate crimes protection to gender and sexual orientation.
The White House, in a statement warning of a veto, said state and local criminal laws already cover the new crimes defined under the bill, and there was “no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement.”
I actually have some sympathy with the argument that federal criminal law has tended to trespass on what should be a state domain. Even Alexander Hamilton pretended to agree that, in the ordinary course, it should be up to the states to take care of the administration of criminal laws.
There has, over the course of the last 40 years or so, been a tendency for Congress to federalize what were previously solely state matters. Any time there is a perceived crime problem, (e.g., drugs, gangs, etc.) Congress passes another criminal law, usually jacking up penalties, and often making only a passing gesture toward establishing a basis for federal jurisdiction. Not only is the trend constitutionally troubling, but it is often a waste of federal resources. It is questionable whether the federal government does a better job than the states in battling street crime, for example.
As I said, I almost agreed with Bush on this, but not quite. In keeping with his normal pattern, he has chosen to oppose the exception, while he would certainly endorse the rule. History has shown all too well that, at least when we are not ruled by a right wing cabal, it is the federal government that has protected minorities, while it is the state governments that have afflicted them. Crimes motivated by hate are precisely the sort of crimes that the have been a primarily federal responsibility since the end of the Civil War. The first Civil Rights Statutes were designed to prevent hate crimes. There are a lot of crimes that we should probably de-federalize (and you can bet Bush would oppose touching a single one) but we should definitely not relieve the federal government of the responsibility of preventing hate crimes.
By the way, I fully recognize that the reason Bush gave for opposing the legislation is only a fig leaf, his real reason being his desire to play to his right wing religious base, which wants to preserve its own right to persecute gay people, while enjoying protected status themselves under current hate crimes legislation.
So anyway, I feel better. For a while there I thought I might be coming down with something.
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