Not much time today

Workout notes 3100 yards of swimming, including 1000 of warm up, 10 x 100 on the 2 (no flip turns, 1:40-1:44 each), 10 x 50 (fly/free with fins) on the 1, 500 pull (8:4x).

Then 4 miles on the treadmill (9:50 pace, “cross country I” program ) then 3 miles of walking outside.

I felt ok about my workout until I read about Doctor Andy’s sub 24 hour Western States 100 miler.

Topics of the day

Barack Obama Endorsed (in the primary) by an Illinois Republican! In fact, this well respected Republican even made a campaign ad for him. To read more, go to JCCPA’s Prairie State Blue diary.

To see the ad, click here.

Speaking of Illinois Republicans, here is one who not just talks the talk, but walks the walk as well.

A lasting sense of duty moved State Rep. Jim Watson, a Jacksonville Republican, to reenlist in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

He says he increasingly felt the need to do more as his former civil service unit based in Camp Pendleton, Calif., was called to its third tour of duty in the Middle East. “I don’t think we can sit back and let the same guys carry the water over and over and over,” he says.

Frankly, I know nothing about this guy’s politics, but I sure know something about his character.

Personal: someone’s take on a child forcing a plane down due to throwing a temper tantrum. The actual incident is detailed here; I like the author’s comment that this child’s behavior affected many people; not just the parents.

Recent Events Those who have read this blog are aware of the Leonard Pitts incident.

Well, today, our paper published two editorial columns.

First, Mr. Leonard Pitts: Here, he discusses the harassment incident. The whole column is worth a read. Here is my favorite part:

I grew up in the slums of L.A. and started college at 15. I won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and have been married to the same woman for 26 years. I’m also kind to children and play a mean game of Scrabble. So I wonder: What do these people think they have accomplished in life that makes them my better? Do they really think it’s enough to have less melanin in their skin?

The Neo-Nutsies have been responsible for frustration and anger these last days. They’ve also been responsible for joy. Thanks to them, I’ve received a tidal wave of ”hang in there” and ”we care about you” and ”what can we do to help” from colleagues, readers, friends and strangers all over the country. People have volunteered to guard my front door. A self-described ”big ole white guy” I’ve interviewed a couple times called from Louisiana to say he had my back. Contributions have been made in my name to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Credit the Nutsies for that.

I feel a little like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. They say you can tell who a man is by looking at his friends. Which is true. But I believe you can also tell by looking at his enemies. Apparently, I have managed to make enemies of haters, bigots and other low, pathetic men.

I must be doing something right.

Now for Ms. Parker, who takes on the issue of hate crime: should be have hate crime legislation on the books at all? Do these laws do more harm than good?

First, some background facts: contrary to what some believe, African Americans HAVE been convicted of hate crimes against Whites. From the FBI (2004 data)

By Bias Motivation

In 2004, racial bias motivated more than half (53.9 percent) of the 9,021 reported offenses within single-bias hate crime incidents; religious bias accounted for 16.4 percent; bias regarding sexual orientation, 15.6 percent; ethnicity or national origin, 13.3 percent; and disability bias, 0.8 percent.

Law enforcement agencies reported 4,863 offenses within single-bias incidents that were motivated by the offender’s racial bias. Among those offenses, 67.5 percent resulted from an anti-black bias, and 20.5 percent were due to an anti-white bias. Slightly more than 5 percent (5.2) of racially motivated incidents were driven by an anti-Asian or Pacific Islander bias, 2.0 percent involved a bias against American Indian or Alaskan Native races, and 4.8 percent were directed at groups of individuals in which more than one race was represented (multiple races, group).

Of the 1,480 reported offenses within single-bias incidents that were motivated by the offender’s religious bias, 67.8 percent were anti-Jewish, 13.0 percent were anti-Islamic, 3.9 percent were anti-Catholic, 2.9 percent were anti-Protestant, and 0.5 percent were anti-Atheism or Agnosticism. Bias against other (unspecified) religions accounted for 9.5 percent of the hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias, and bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group) accounted for 2.5 percent.

Note that hatewatch groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center keep track of groups like the JDL and the Nation of Islam, as well as Nazi and KKK groups.

Here is an Illinois list (2004 data?)

City Chapter Group

· American Thule Society
Neo-Nazi

· Council of Conservative Citizens
White Nationalist

· White Revolution
Neo-Nazi
Beardstown
· Brotherhood of Klans Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Berwyn
· Brotherhood of Klans Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Bloomington
· Creativity Movement
Neo-Nazi
Chicago
· American Renaissance/New Century Foundation
White Nationalist

· Council of Conservative Citizens
White Nationalist

· Creativity Movement
Neo-Nazi

· Ecclesiastical Council for the Restoration of Covenant Israel
Christian Identity

· Nation of Islam
Black Separatist

· National Alliance
Neo-Nazi

· National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan

· National Socialist Movement – NSM
Neo-Nazi

· New Black Panther Party
Black Separatist

· Save Our State
General Hate
East Peoria
· Creativity Movement
Neo-Nazi
Joliet
· Creativity Movement
Neo-Nazi
Mount Morris
· Aryan Anarchist Skins
Racist Skinhead
Quincy
· National Socialist Movement – NSM
Neo-Nazi
Schiller Park
· National Socialist Movement – NSM
Neo-Nazi
Skokie
· Jewish Defense League
General Hate
Troy
· Brotherhood of Klans Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan

Note: The East Peoria group is long defunct with their leader in prision. Our local neo-nazi group hasn’t made the list as yet.

Secondly, in the brutal Knoxville case (and it WAS an unspeakably brutal crime, and those who did it should be punished as severly as the law allows), the POLICE who investigated the crime chose to not pursue it as a hate crime. Remember that there are strict legal definitions as to what constitutes a hate crime, and the hate on the basis of XXX must be provable in a court of law.

Thirdly, what the accused was thinking at the time of the crime DOES matter. Example: suppose someone walks in to find their spouse having sex with someone else and ends up killing one or both of those caught in adultery. That case is diffrent from the case where, say, some thug mugs someone and kills them. Intent matters.

Now for Ms. Parker’s column

[...]The fallacy of hate crime laws — the prosecution of which requires a degree of mind-reading not yet available to most Earthlings — has been cast into stark relief the past few weeks following an interracial rape-murder that has bestirred white supremacists and led to death threats against an African-American columnist.

The spark that caused the firestorm was the brutal rape-murder of a young white couple, Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, who were carjacked last January in Knoxville, Tenn. Five blacks — four men and a woman — have been charged in connection with the slayings.

Because the story didn’t receive national media attention, some commentators and others have asserted that the media do not treat racial crimes equally. [...]

Hate crimes are not defined only by motive, but by their effect on other members of the same group. The argument for hate crime laws is that crimes motivated by animus toward an individual because of race, sex, gender identity or disability victimize all members of that group by causing fear and intimidation.

Adding still more fuel to the media bias claim is a group of white supremacists on one side and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts on the other. Pitts drew fire when he pointed out that the Knoxville incident wasn’t considered a hate crime and refuted claims that black crime is underreported. He ended his column with four words for whites who feel oppressed: “Cry me a river.”

That’s pure columnist flare, but decidedly, um, gutsy considering the likely reaction from people who are not widely known for tolerance. A neo-Nazi group has posted Pitts’ address, phone number and his wife’s name on its Web site, Overthrow.com. Pitts has received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, including several death threats that are being investigated by the FBI. Obviously, Overthrow’s editor and the 280 contributors to his American National Socialist Workers Party are the definition of a fringe group that doesn’t deserve so much attention. But the same also might be said about those who commit “hate crimes.”

In 2005, among about 7,000 hate crimes — mostly characterized by intimidation (48.9 percent) and simple assault (30.2 percent) — just six murders and three forcible rapes were reported as fitting the hate crime definition, according to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report. [...]

Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have insisted that hate crime laws are necessary because crimes that make minority communities fearful “damage the fabric of our society and fragment communities.”

The Duke and Knoxville cases cast serious doubts on that premise. It is human nature to resent groups and individuals deemed more special than others. Signaling through laws (or media treatment) that one group’s suffering is more grievous than another’s – or that one person’s murder is worse than another’s — is also likely to fragment communities, as well as to engender the very animosities such laws are meant to deter.

Emphasis mine.

Here is what she doesn’t appear to get, or want to get: hate crimes aren’t about one group’s suffering being more important than another. (remember, Blacks and Whites have been charged).

It is the damage done to society by these crimes. A couple of examples:

• When thugs of one race makes it all but impossible for someone of another race to pass though a neighborhood, society suffers.
• Hate groups try to intimidate people into keeping quiet or into voting in their own interest. Note that one hate group targeted journalists and recently a city council person in Louisville, KY.

And one final thought: suppose someone misread Ms. Parker’s column to say that she actually believed that Mr. Pitts actually brought this harassment on himself (and she did NOT say that).

What would happen to Ms. Parker? Would “we” (meaning: people like myself) post her personal address and phone number on a website? Would we make hate calls to her, or would we litter her neighborhood with flyers filled with vile lies?

No, we would not; Ms. Parker could say whatever she wanted to say and still live in peace.

I admit that liberals have had campaigns against certain columnists (Couter, Imus) but these have been “if you company buys ads in the media that carries his/her columns, we’ll boycott that compnany”, and even these economic boycott threats have been denounced by other liberals!

I needed to edit this post a bit because I forgot to state where I stand: this might sound a bit strange but I tend toward being against hate crimes laws. Why? Well, one can see that they aren’t used all that much. Don’t get me wrong: there are laws against slander, laws against intimidation, laws against making threats and laws against inciting others to do criminal acts. These are already on the books.

And remember the 2000 Presidential debates (Bush vs. Gore). I am not a fan of President Bush, as anyone who has read this blog knows. But, there was question about then Governor Bush not supporting a hate crimes law in light of an ugly incident in his state where some white guys drug a black guy behind a pickup truck to his death.

Bush responsed something to the effect (bad paraphrase from memory): “you know what happened to the man who did that? He was executed; what more do you want?”

You know, he was right, that time.