[PornoDoggy]

Nice try, Mikey, but it don't fit. By hate crimes, what do you mean?

I don't think there needs to be a separate category of murder that is specifically for hate crimes, if that's what you mean. However, I don't have a problem at all with offering the "hate component" of the crime as a mitigating circumstance to, for example, increase the punishment that would result from a guilty verdict, in much the same way that killing a cop allows elevating a murder from 2nd to 1st degree. It may seem somewhat acadmic - but the LAW itself is academic.

As an example, take three taggers who vandalize a (car/building/bridge/???). Tagger A paints a realistic naked picture of Serge, except with a big dick. Tagger B paints "Save the (Trees/Whales/Unborn/????)". Tagger C paints "Death to the (blacks/whites/jews/arabs/gay republicans for allah/????)."

Again, I don't see the need for creation of a "new" crime for that final offense - but I do see it as a more "heinous" offense than the first two. Unlike some liberals, I don't regard "Tagger B" as "less" of a criminal because his crime is allegedly political; I see it as equal to that of the moron who was tagging just to be tagging.