True, and no liberal hunting with his buddies to show his manly prowess ever shot a friend in the face! And no, I don’t hate Chaney, I just thought he should have lost his job for lying to the American public.

Cap’t Jack

If we consider the earlier lie, the Florida voting results, he’d never have had the job in the first place. 

Occam

Oh no Occam, that had to do with “hanging chads”! Such BS.

Cap’t Jack

Cheney was a nightmare all around; I want to be guilty of hate crimes against him.

Occam. - 14 April 2012 09:58 AM

If we consider the earlier lie, the Florida voting results, he’d never have had the job in the first place. 

Occam

There it is again, the “Gore won Florida” meme.

1)  Probably nobody (Occam included) will ever know who won Florida in terms of voter intent as expressed on legal ballots

2)  Gore engaged in clear gamesmanship by challenging in only two (make that “a few select” since I don’t remember the number—except I think it wasn’t just two) counties the overall vote total based on known statewide imperfections in machine voting
3)  If the SCOTUS had let the Florida Supreme Court decision stand then Bush almost certainly would have won the state (based on a coalition evaluation of ballots)
4)  Counting overvotes as well as undervotes (overvotes were explicitly invalid under the law at the time), Gore probably would have won, but
5)  the aforementioned review of ballots found literally thousands were cast illegally (by felons and others voting illegally).

So, if Gore’s advantage in the “voter intent” recount of all ballots had given him the edge, would his victory rest on an advantage produced by illegal votes (felons tend to vote Democrat, apparently)?

Nobody knows (not even Occam).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/12/MN78177.DTL

What we know is that Bush won Florida under the method literally used by the state for that election prior to legal challenges:  Votes counted by machines with a known error rate (in most Florida counties).  It is arguable (and Florda Secretary of State Harris did so on the basis of advice from her Democrat-leaning legal team) that is was the intent of the law to prefer the machine count where nothing more than normal machine error affected the final count.  Simply note that the state’s procedure for very close elections was to perform a machine recount.

Sorry for the digression, but this important point of history has way too much misinformation surrounding it.

I also don’t remember the specifics, but there were a fair number of minority voters turned away from the polls across the state by challenges that weren’t really justified.  Only a few of the precincts had Democratic lawyers there to advocate for the voter, and most of the challenges were rejected so the person could vote.

Occam

Occam. - 15 April 2012 06:00 PM

I also don’t remember the specifics, but there were a fair number of minority voters turned away from the polls across the state by challenges that weren’t really justified.  Only a few of the precincts had Democratic lawyers there to advocate for the voter, and most of the challenges were rejected so the person could vote.

Occam

There are many such unsubstantiated claims.  Various left-wing media sites did a tremendous job of promoting them.  There were some who were turned away from the polls because their names were erroneously placed on a list of names to be removed from voter rolls.  But the number was far smaller than the estimated number of felons who voted illegally.

You did remind me of one other factor that probably influenced the vote:  The election was called early for Gore in 2000 (@ 7:50 Eastern), which may have suppressed the vote in the more conservative Panhandle region of Florida.  Florida lawmakers expressly requested that the media refrain from calling the election prior to Central time zone voters having their chance to vote.  The networks didn’t come through.

http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/ARTICLES/ElectionNight/pe2000elecnighttime.php

U.S. Civil Rights Commission report on the 2000 vote in Florida:

http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.htm

This Commission had plenty of liberals on it and held public meetings encouraging testimony from persons with stories of voter intimidation and suppression.  The pickings were thin.  You can probably still find the dissent of two members of the Commission online if you look for it.

I was in NC shortly before the election. The area was blanketed with fliers and mailings stating the election had been changed from Tues to Wed and that the polls will be closed on Tues. My relatives were part of the army of volunteers countering the claims. They also had early voting, so they were busy driving people to the polls to vote while I was there. It was funny driving around the rural areas. EVERY property had a sign. The McCain/Palin would often be on the edge of the property facing the neighbor’s Obama/Biden sign. Many properties had more than one sign, husband and wife with different political leanings.

Before this thread got completely derailed, I found this response to be the most helpful:

dougsmith - 13 April 2012 08:21 AM

Well, presumably part of the point of having punishment at all is to deter socially unacceptable actions. Beating someone up is socially unacceptable since it brings pain and suffering to the person beaten up. Hate crimes, though, can have wider effects: someone is beaten up as a representative of a particular, historically maligned minority group. So while a crime done towards an individual can perhaps lead to retributive acts by members of that person’s family, hate crimes can cause wider scale social disruptions. As such they are more socially unacceptable than crimes against individuals, so deterrence is harsher.

I’m still not convinced but this line of reasoning helps me to process this. It’s about potential disruption to society. I’ll have to do some more thinking on this. Thanks Doug.

asanta - 13 April 2012 12:45 PM

FreeInKy - 13 April 2012 07:26 AM

I’m an unabashed liberal. I have great sympathies for victims of all crimes, regardless of the motivation of the perpetrator. But for the life of me, I can’t understand why we need hate crimes laws. It seems that if you perform a violent act against someone, it really makes no difference to your victim what your reason is for perpetrating the crime. Why should it matter?

But I am willing to reconsider, if someone can convince me of the need. I just don’t get it.

The KKK are a hate group. They specifically targeted blacks, who were easy visual targets, but would also target you if were known to be Catholic or Jewish. They killed with impunity. This was very effective in intimidating entire populations, until they were broken up by the FBI. Please explain why this sort of crime should NOT receive a harsher penalty?

Good example. If ever a group deserved to be treated more harshly, it was the Klan.

FreeInKy - 16 April 2012 05:47 AM

I’m still not convinced but this line of reasoning helps me to process this. It’s about potential disruption to society. I’ll have to do some more thinking on this. Thanks Doug.

You’re welcome.

Your concern may arise with groups like atheists who want to express their right to blaspheme. They are also doing something that is clearly socially unacceptable, and which has caused social disruption, but which we say should not be punished. The same could be said of people expressing gay or interracial love, at least in certain communities.

How do we distinguish a hate crime from a valid wish to express a socially unacceptable view or way of living? Well, seems to me that one difference is that in the case of a hate crime someone is actually injured. The other cases are (or would be) “victimless crimes”. Being offended is not typically something that we consider a valid source of injury. So if you’re offended by someone blaspheming your God, or two people holding hands downtown, you have no legal standing to go to the police and get things changed. But with hate crimes there is a legitimate fear or concern among members of the persecuted group that they will be targets of physical abuse. And that’s a different issue entirely.

dougsmith - 16 April 2012 06:22 AM

Well, seems to me that one difference is that in the case of a hate crime someone is actually injured.

A neighborhood KKK cross-burning would then be okay so long as it met fire safety and pollution standards?

I just looked it up to learn that the KKK cross burning is illegal. I didn’t expect that! 

Bryan - 16 April 2012 08:43 AM

dougsmith - 16 April 2012 06:22 AM

Well, seems to me that one difference is that in the case of a hate crime someone is actually injured.

A neighborhood KKK cross-burning would then be okay so long as it met fire safety and pollution standards?

OK, fair enough. I think in this case it’s considered an incitement to violence, which is also generally illegal.

Why is, then, the circulation of the Black Panthers’ “dead or alive” posters not considered an incitement to violence?