One of the scarier trends over the past few years in legal issues has been hate crimes legislation.  To me, it's totally unnecessary, and is nothing more than liberal's way of silencing any opposition to them, bit by bit.  The reason it's such a crock is that if two people are murdered, one as a supposed "hate" crime and one for, say, money, the end result is the same; two people are dead.  It shouldn't matter why they were killed (assuming both were killed intentionally).  What's even worse about "hate" crimes is how one sided they are.  If a homosexual or other minority is murdered, then it's almost always automatically considered a hate crime if it's committed by a straight, white person.  However, if it's the other way around, then mysteriously, all cries of "hate crime!" are silenced.  Here's a perfect example.