Pierced

The New York Times' Bill Keller inexplicably whines about hate crime laws—Charles Pierce noticed.

...But this...

In most cases, hate crime laws take offenses that would carry more modest sentences — assault, vandalism — and ratchet up the penalty two or three times because we know, or think we know, what evil disposition lurked in the offender's mind. Then we pat ourselves on the back. As if none of us, pure and righteous citizens, ever entertained a racist thought or laughed at a homophobic slur.
Bill Keller, NYT

...is just a glib horror. How many of "us," no matter what we may think in the privacy of our own minds, have tied a black man to the bumper of a car and dragged him down a dirt road until his fking head popped off? If someone kills with unique savagery, and that savagery is based not in some dim psychological twisting but in coolly intellectualized race hatred, does the latter really have a constitutional protection because man is inherently a savage anyway?
Charles Pierce, Esquire

Bill Keller harrumphs.