Three bills pending before Congress threaten your First Amendment freedoms significantly, plus threaten the ability of police to maintain law and order.
In one bill, your electronic and phone communications may constitute a federal crime if they pressure or upset someone. In two other bills, your speech and memberships may be used to convict you of a hate crime if you harm someone with a different religion or "sexual orientation" -- even if it is an orientation toward sex with children, animals or dead people -- plus the police can be charged with a hate crime if they injure or attempt to injure a minority or Muslim during arrest.
HR 1966, known as the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, says your communications via "e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages" may constitute a federal crime if the intent is to "coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress." Gee, guess all those angry messages from your soon-to-be ex can qualify as a crime if this law gets passed. Maybe even demands from a lawyer would be criminal if they "intimidate," and business negotiations if they "coerce." In fact, just about any electronic communication under this scenario can be considered a crime, since there is no requirement that it be aimed a particular person or cause actual harm, and just about any statement, opinion or joke can be distressing to someone.
Yes, it's sad about Megan Meier, the 13-year-old depressed girl who killed herself after some people sent her mean e-mails. But let's face it -- the state had laws already in place for prosecution; the state can strengthen those laws if desired; the girl didn't have to read the e-mails; and we all don't go off and kill ourselves when we read something mean. Thank God our celebrities have thicker skins, or every one of them would bump themselves off after reading the tabloids. Oh yeah, paper communications aren't targeted here, just blogs, e-mails and website versions of publications -- which are all at risk if this bill becomes law!
The real question isn't sympathy for Megan and her family. The real question is do we want to make it a federal crime to use electronic means to communicate? After all, this proposed law does not say it's a crime if you stick the same message in the mail or publish it in the local (dying) newspaper. The target here is all of the newer technology. Purveyors and users of this technology should take note, and fight this bill with everything they've got. If it gets passed, people can walk up to someone and intimidate them to their face all they want, but if they put their words in electronic form, they're doomed.
SB 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, is a total can of worms. It allows your "speech, beliefs and expressive conduct" to be used to prove a hate crime against you if the victim claims to be protected by race, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation of any type, even if their orientation is toward pedophilia, bestiality or necrophilia. If the person you punch in the face happens to be a child pornographer, he can claim that you committed a hate crime against him and get the feds involved. Or if a girl fights off a would-be kidnapper with her marching band baton (as happened recently), she may be guilty of a hate crime, especially if she belongs to a group that opposes pedophilia.
The proposed bill has other problems as well: it allows the feds to use juvenile crime records, and it asserts as fact ridiculous things like there are still "badges, incidents and relics of slavery," and "state and local authorities...can carry out their responsibilities more effectively with greater Federal assistance" (these are opinions!). Note that if you're a Christian or white, SB 909 does not aim to protect you, since its stated intent is only to protect religions and national origins "to the extent such religions or national origins were regarded as races at the time of the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution." Well, looking back in time over a 100 years ago, I don't believe that Christians or people of European heritage were considered a distinct "race." You can bet that Muslims may qualify for protection, however.
HR 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, is similar to SB 909 but without so many of the obvious problems mentioned above, and it is on the verge of being passed. Like SB 909, it protects "sexual orientation" without limit, and it allows the feds to pursue criminal charges even if the state has already tried you and sentenced you! That is, if "the verdict or sentence obtained...left demonstrably unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence." Let's not overlook the fact that both bills also require large sums of money to implement at the federal level, such as new hires for the Department of Justice, and they allow localities to ask for direct grants of up to $100,000. Politicians may support these bills solely because they expect to get money for their jurisdiction, and not because of the intrinsic value.
One more concern: both proposed hate crime laws put police at risk, since a person is guilty "whether or not acting under color of law" if he "willfully causes bodily injury" to a protected person, or if he "attempts to cause bodily injury" with a "firearm," "dangerous weapon," or "incendiary device." Police carry, aim and use guns, batons and Tasers, and they must often threaten and subdue people they are arresting. The vast majority of people they arrest are people of color. The suspects may also, whether known to the arresting officer or not, be cross-dressers or otherwise have "gender identity" issues, or be homosexuals or pedophiles or belong to a covered religion. With the passage of either hate crime bill, your local law enforcement agencies may be overrun with federal crime charges against police officers who "bodily harm" or even "attempt" such harm against these protected suspects, including black gang members, illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslim terrorists.
The above bills are not only abhorrent in their details, but also in the bigger picture sense, because they aim to trample on the rights of the states. Per the Constitution, criminal laws are supposed to be left up to the states to define, unless an act involves interstate commerce. In all three bills mentioned above, you will therefore find token references to interstate commerce as a means of trumping state laws. The hate crime bills even say that the remainder will stand if a portion is struck out as unconstitutional -- in other words, the drafters know these proposed laws are against the Constitution, and they anticipate challenges!
To protest any of these bills, go to www.Congress.org and enter your zip code to look up all your elected officials and their contact information. Speak your mind. Send them an e-mail to coerce and intimidate them into voting against these bills -- you know, threaten to vote against them in the next elections. If you don't, you may find that you are charged with a crime the next time you write such an e-mail, or that your statements against these bills are used against you in a hate crime charge one day if you ever happen to injure someone in a protected category.
In one bill, your electronic and phone communications may constitute a federal crime if they pressure or upset someone. In two other bills, your speech and memberships may be used to convict you of a hate crime if you harm someone with a different religion or "sexual orientation" -- even if it is an orientation toward sex with children, animals or dead people -- plus the police can be charged with a hate crime if they injure or attempt to injure a minority or Muslim during arrest.
HR 1966, known as the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, says your communications via "e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages" may constitute a federal crime if the intent is to "coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress." Gee, guess all those angry messages from your soon-to-be ex can qualify as a crime if this law gets passed. Maybe even demands from a lawyer would be criminal if they "intimidate," and business negotiations if they "coerce." In fact, just about any electronic communication under this scenario can be considered a crime, since there is no requirement that it be aimed a particular person or cause actual harm, and just about any statement, opinion or joke can be distressing to someone.
Yes, it's sad about Megan Meier, the 13-year-old depressed girl who killed herself after some people sent her mean e-mails. But let's face it -- the state had laws already in place for prosecution; the state can strengthen those laws if desired; the girl didn't have to read the e-mails; and we all don't go off and kill ourselves when we read something mean. Thank God our celebrities have thicker skins, or every one of them would bump themselves off after reading the tabloids. Oh yeah, paper communications aren't targeted here, just blogs, e-mails and website versions of publications -- which are all at risk if this bill becomes law!
The real question isn't sympathy for Megan and her family. The real question is do we want to make it a federal crime to use electronic means to communicate? After all, this proposed law does not say it's a crime if you stick the same message in the mail or publish it in the local (dying) newspaper. The target here is all of the newer technology. Purveyors and users of this technology should take note, and fight this bill with everything they've got. If it gets passed, people can walk up to someone and intimidate them to their face all they want, but if they put their words in electronic form, they're doomed.
SB 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, is a total can of worms. It allows your "speech, beliefs and expressive conduct" to be used to prove a hate crime against you if the victim claims to be protected by race, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation of any type, even if their orientation is toward pedophilia, bestiality or necrophilia. If the person you punch in the face happens to be a child pornographer, he can claim that you committed a hate crime against him and get the feds involved. Or if a girl fights off a would-be kidnapper with her marching band baton (as happened recently), she may be guilty of a hate crime, especially if she belongs to a group that opposes pedophilia.
The proposed bill has other problems as well: it allows the feds to use juvenile crime records, and it asserts as fact ridiculous things like there are still "badges, incidents and relics of slavery," and "state and local authorities...can carry out their responsibilities more effectively with greater Federal assistance" (these are opinions!). Note that if you're a Christian or white, SB 909 does not aim to protect you, since its stated intent is only to protect religions and national origins "to the extent such religions or national origins were regarded as races at the time of the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution." Well, looking back in time over a 100 years ago, I don't believe that Christians or people of European heritage were considered a distinct "race." You can bet that Muslims may qualify for protection, however.
HR 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, is similar to SB 909 but without so many of the obvious problems mentioned above, and it is on the verge of being passed. Like SB 909, it protects "sexual orientation" without limit, and it allows the feds to pursue criminal charges even if the state has already tried you and sentenced you! That is, if "the verdict or sentence obtained...left demonstrably unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence." Let's not overlook the fact that both bills also require large sums of money to implement at the federal level, such as new hires for the Department of Justice, and they allow localities to ask for direct grants of up to $100,000. Politicians may support these bills solely because they expect to get money for their jurisdiction, and not because of the intrinsic value.
One more concern: both proposed hate crime laws put police at risk, since a person is guilty "whether or not acting under color of law" if he "willfully causes bodily injury" to a protected person, or if he "attempts to cause bodily injury" with a "firearm," "dangerous weapon," or "incendiary device." Police carry, aim and use guns, batons and Tasers, and they must often threaten and subdue people they are arresting. The vast majority of people they arrest are people of color. The suspects may also, whether known to the arresting officer or not, be cross-dressers or otherwise have "gender identity" issues, or be homosexuals or pedophiles or belong to a covered religion. With the passage of either hate crime bill, your local law enforcement agencies may be overrun with federal crime charges against police officers who "bodily harm" or even "attempt" such harm against these protected suspects, including black gang members, illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslim terrorists.
The above bills are not only abhorrent in their details, but also in the bigger picture sense, because they aim to trample on the rights of the states. Per the Constitution, criminal laws are supposed to be left up to the states to define, unless an act involves interstate commerce. In all three bills mentioned above, you will therefore find token references to interstate commerce as a means of trumping state laws. The hate crime bills even say that the remainder will stand if a portion is struck out as unconstitutional -- in other words, the drafters know these proposed laws are against the Constitution, and they anticipate challenges!
To protest any of these bills, go to www.Congress.org and enter your zip code to look up all your elected officials and their contact information. Speak your mind. Send them an e-mail to coerce and intimidate them into voting against these bills -- you know, threaten to vote against them in the next elections. If you don't, you may find that you are charged with a crime the next time you write such an e-mail, or that your statements against these bills are used against you in a hate crime charge one day if you ever happen to injure someone in a protected category.
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