THIS IS NOT GOOD

[Lumi]

Hate crime bill goes against Constitution




THROUGHOUT the Bush-Cheney creation of a society under surveillance and unprecedented government secrecy, I have often praised Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for resisting that administration's penchant for degrading the Constitution. But on July 16, he proudly watched as the Senate passed his "hate crimes" bill (the Matthew Shepard Act) that is the biggest expansion of federal hate-crimes laws since 1968 - providing extra prison time to committers of violent acts perceived to be based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability (adding to the previous classifications of race, color, religion or national origin).

On the Senate floor, John McCain, R-Ariz., cut to the unconstitutional core of this bill and all such "hate crime" legislation. Leahy's bill, as of this writing, the president is eager to sign.

Said McCain: "Our legal system is based on identifying, capturing and punishing criminals, and not on using the power of government to try to divine biases." In opposing what James Madison condemned as "thought crimes," McCain added: "Crimes motivated by hate deserve vigorous prosecution, but so do crimes motivated by absolute wanton disregard for life of any kind." No matter against whom.

Leahy's bill, like the counterpart "hate crimes" measure of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., that passed in the House this past April, violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection under the laws for individual Americans by setting up a special collective class of victims whose assailants, when convicted, will be given extra punishment for crimes perceived to be based on gender identity, sexual orientation or disability, among other biases.
Those who attack the elderly, police or those of the poor who are not among the "protected classes" would not get lengthier "hate" sentences than the law provides for the ACT itself. Doesn't this make lesser citizens of their victims?

Very late into the night on July 12, Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid slipped the Leahy "hate crimes" bill, as an amendment, into the $680 billion Defense Authorization Act. Leahy agreed with this avoidance of a full-scale floor debate. The amendment was approved by voice vote, following a 63-28 procedural vote that broke a Republican filibuster. All the 28 negatives were by Republicans. Harry Reid declared the vote "a victory for all Americans."

For some Americans more than others.

An editorial in the daily "Free Lance-Star" (Fredericksburg, Va.) in May warned: "Hate-crimes bill is an assault on the Constitution." (Full disclosure: The editorial mentions content I wrote for the Cato Institute.) Unique among daily newspapers, this paper occasionally runs educational articles on the Constitution, very much including the Bill of Rights. I wrote one for it on the First Amendment. Too bad other papers don't tell Americans who they are.

Trying to avoid criticism of the impending law by First Amendment protectors, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., had submitted an amendment to the Leahy measure that passed and says this law will not infringe on freedom of speech "if such exercise of religion, speech, expression or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence; or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another."

However, the bill still punishes a PERCEIVED hate crime.

That's the kind of broad language James Madison did not intend to encumber the First Amendment with when he wrote it. The ACLU now insists the Senate bill include what it calls the stronger protection of free-speech rights in the House bill. But the White House Web site points out that the House bill cites a hate crime is based on actual or PERCEIVED hate against a victim. Both bills include constitutional violations of double-jeopardy prosecutions by making it easier for the federal government to prosecute a defendant in a hate-crime case when the state says it cannot convict or chooses not to prosecute.

There were minor differences between the Senate and House "hate-crimes bills," requiring a Senate-House conference to resolve them. As I write this column, the conference hasn't happened yet, but I expect to see President Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, to delightedly sign it.

Almost as alarming as this invitation to state and then federal prosecutors to pursue "thought crimes" is a statement made by Leahy advancing the bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. The list of supporters he cited is too long for inclusion here, but among them are: "26 state attorneys general ... the Federal Law Enforcement Association; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association ... The National Asian Peace Officers Association; National Black Police Association, National Center for Women in Police ... 26 state attorneys general ... National District Attorneys Associations...and 44 women's organizations."

I have often reported on other such constitutionally disadvantaged groups: school boards, heads of school systems, principals and teachers who fail - while assiduously teaching to tests in reading and math under No Child Left Behind - to inform students of the roots of their individual liberties in the Bill of Rights. Absent from most classes are the dramatic stories of the long, tumultuous history of what it's taken to keep the First Amendment, due process, the right to privacy and the rest of the Constitution alive.

How many Americans of all ages know of James Madison writing to Thomas Jefferson: We have "extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind." But here we now have added federalization of one way not even Bush and Cheney ever thought of to undermine the 14th Amendment's "equal protection of the laws" for individuals, not protected classes.

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights

 

[Lumi]

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show (Update1)

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show (Update1)

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show (Update1)






By Bob Willis
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.
The world?s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.
?The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,? Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department?s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.
The updated statistics also showed that Americans earned more over the last 10 years and socked away a larger share of that cash in savings. The report signals the process of repairing tattered balance sheets following the biggest drop in household wealth on record may be further along than anticipated.
Spending Slumps
Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, decreased 1.8 percent in last year?s fourth quarter from the same period in 2007, exceeding the prior estimate of a 1.5 percent drop. Purchases also began sinking sooner than previously projected, registering their first decline at the start of 2008 rather than in the second half.
Treasuries headed higher after the report, while stock- index futures declined. Benchmark 10-year note yields were at 3.58 percent at 8:51 a.m. in New York, from 3.61 percent late yesterday. Contracts on the Standard & Poor?s 500 Stock Index were down 0.3 percent at 979.
Residential construction fell 21 percent during the period, almost 2 percentage points more than previously reported, aggravating what was already the worst slump since the Great Depression.
The Commerce Department also reported today that the economy contracted at a 1 percent annual rate from April through June after shrinking at a 6.4 percent pace in the first quarter, the most since 1982. The decline in the first three months of the year was previously reported as 5.5 percent.
Recession?s Start
The National Bureau of Economic Research, the accepted arbiter of U.S. business cycles, last year determined the recession started in December 2007. The private group is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Today?s updates are part of comprehensive revisions that take place about every five years and are more extensive than the changes announced at this time each year. Figures as far back as 1929 can be revised.
Over the most recent period, the third quarter of 2008 underwent one of the biggest changes, going from a 0.5 percent decrease in gross domestic product to a 2.7 percent drop. The new reading better illustrates the effect the September collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. had on the economy and credit markets.
The deeper deterioration last year underscores why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues at the central bank cut the benchmark rate to a record low and extended credit to non-banks for the first time since the 1930s.
The new GDP data also help explain why the unemployment rate shot up 2.3 percentage points last year, the biggest annual jump since 1982.
2001 Recession Milder
The revisions showed that the 2001 recession was less severe than originally estimated, reflecting a smaller decline in business investment. The economy actually grew 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the third quarter of 2001, erasing the 0.2 percent drop previously reported.
Personal income was revised up over the last decade, after the government boosted its adjustments for the underreporting and non-reporting of income using more recent data from the Internal Revenue Service. The increases in the most recent years reflect gains from rents, interest and proprietors? income. The government changed the way it accounts for natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, eliminating much of the prior volatility in income calculations.
More Savings
Higher incomes and less spending translated into bigger savings. The savings rate for 2008 was revised up to 2.7 percent from 1.8 percent. The rate shot up to 5.2 percent in the second quarter, the highest level since 1998.
The government revised corporate profits down for 2006-2008 and up for 2004 and 2005.
Finally, Commerce shifted food services, which include meals purchased at restaurants or served in schools, out of the food category. As a result, the Fed?s preferred inflation gauge -- which tracks consumer spending and excludes food and fuel -- was pushed up by 0.2 percentage point for the three-year period from 2006 to 2008.
The costs of meals away from home are not as volatile as fresh food, the government said, and therefore services should be included in the measure commonly known as the core index.