This claim ignores the fact that 45 states have their own hate crime laws and that violence against others is universally unlawful and routinely prosecuted. It also disregards the fact that general police powers belong to the states, not to the federal government.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) then makes a brief appearance (89 minute mark) to slander opponents of the legislation - how could anyone oppose legislation with such a noble goal? He claims that this is tantamount to saying that it is acceptable to harm people because you do not like who they are.

Don’t expect the application of this legislation to be the rare and exceptional prosecution that Attorney General Holder promises in his testimony. Janet Cohen testified that her upbringing in a racially divided America decades ago justifies passage of this law. She also proposes that prosecutions with the new law will be “wise” on account of Holder’s “brilliance and integrity.”

And to think, we were once a nation of laws, not of men.

This legislation doesn’t promote the rule of law, it undermines it. Prosecutions that favor one group of victims over another mark the destruction of equality before the law.

You don’t defeat politically motivated violence by politicizing the laws used to prosecute it.

Murder is always murder most foul. We criminalize rape, assault, vandalism, and criminal threats because they harm a citizen - not a super-citizen held in some special regard by the government.

For more Cato work on hate crime legislation, go here and here.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/01/hate-crime-legislation-a-shocking-disregard-for-federalism/