You say they are "blowing smoke", but you--again--fail to give specific rebuttals with counter-evidence. Instead, you rely on the disingenuous tactic of blanket dismissal. What AmRen and other sites post most often come from local media sources in the immediate area where the crime occurred. Since the mainstream media purposefully does not report these crimes on a national or even a statewide level, what I posted gives balance to the overall picture. What YOU are doing by dismissing what I posted out-of-hand without even bothering to read it is actually more telling than you may believe; you are willing to believe that whites commit more crime per-capita because that is what the mainstream media reports, even if it is only half the story, yet you ignore the rest of the story to give it balance, dismissing it as "biased and off-base". If one half of the story by itself seems "biased and off-base", shouldn't the other half of the story BY ITSELF seem "biased and off-base"? Here is an assignment for you, if you are willing to investigate the inherent bias towards whites in the mainstream media, as I have done years ago. Go to the Department of Justice's Crime Report and look at the crime statistics for 2005, which is the last year the crime report was completed. (2006 is almost done.) Gather all the statistics for crime based on race you find there. Next, go to any national mainstream media outlet, CNN or FOX or whatever, and tabulate stories you read on violent crime for the year. What you will find--with the singular exception of crimes too big to ignore--is a playing down or complete ignoring of black crime and a sensationalizing of white crimes. Where whites are the alleged perpetrators, they are identified by race. Where blacks or other non-white race are the perpetrators, they are identified by gender and race is omitted. There is a trend and it is not an accident. As I've said before, I don't hold that every single black person is a violent criminal or has such tendencies, but there are facts that are not being told by the mainstream media and it is that deliberate omission that allows BS laws like "hate crimes" and "gun control" legislation to win popular support. I do hold that, if the people were allowed to see everything, legislation would be more equitable for everybody. In re: Katrina. The MSM almost began reporting on the racial identity of the looters, until the levees collapsed. Then each media outlet was falling over itself talking about the racist white President Bush and FEMA not caring about the Katrina victims because they were black and about the racist white conspiracy to "blow up" only those sections of the levee that affected where blacks were living. What was deliberately ignored is the fact that the local and state governments (black mayor and governor) have primary responsibility to ensure their areas are prepared for any disaster and that funding is set aside for that purpose; the mayor and governor clearly failed, but national attention was focused on what Bush and FEMA didn't do quickly enough and blame for the failure was shifted from black leadership, where it belonged. Also, in re: Katrina, New Orleans has had one of the highest violent crime rates nationally long before Katrina. What happened in the aftermath of Katrina shouldn't have been surprising given the lawlessness and the blatant dereliction of duty by the local police. How many times have we heard of firefighters being unable to get safely to the scene of a fire because some idiots were shooting at them? Los Angeles in 1992 and Katrina. What took place in the Superdome in NO, the Astrodome in Houston, and all over the US where "refugees" were relocated did happen and no amount of hand-wringing or white guilt is going to change that. What happened was so big and so blatant that even international press took note. I would agree that in desperate times, desperate people do desperate things, so one might be able to explain the behavior of blacks post-Katrina as them being desperate, yet there is a marked contrast between the behavior of blacks in NO and the largely poor, rural whites of southern Mississippi, who were also overrun by Katrina, yet they banded together to help each other and law and order was maintained. I hope you didn't miss the difference because many in and out of those communities did see the difference. That is why I will put more weight on eyewitness testimony, especially of those national guard troops fresh from Afghanistan, than I will someone who only got news of Katrina from the MSM. So, if you are willing to provide something in the way of evidence or supported facts to counter what I have posted, then you will have contributed something to the discussion. Blanket dismissal is not a valid substitute. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

This has been on my mind lately as I have followed the story of the six boys who knocked a boy of another race unconscious and kicked and stomped him on the face and head while he lay helpless on the ground. There had been racial tension in the community, and it seemed that if any crime qualified as a hate crime this one did, yet the six who did this have not been charged with a hate crime and I have heard no discussion of that possibility. I don't understand why they have not been so charged. I keep coming back to trying to distill the elusive quantifiable criteria from the realities that I see. If we as a group cannot reach consensus on the definition of a hate crime, how can we as a group discuss the existence of hate crimes or determine if a particular crime qualifies as a hate crime? When we attempt to legislate attitudes we frequently find ourselves in these "well, I know it when I see it situations" which are almost impossible to adjudicate without clear, measurable, quantitative criteria for definition. Since those criteria vary from person to person, depending on their individual attitudes, we place ourselves as a society, in a no win situation. Notable examples would be laws about discrimination and obscenity. The finest legal minds in the world have struggled with these concepts and not been able to formulate precise, quantifiable criteria. It is doubtful that we will either. However, making the attempt does lead one down various paths of understanding of viewpoints other than our own. Angel

If the laws were applied equally across all races, I would have less of a problem with them. But, they are applied according to a politically-correct subjective criteria that changes by jurisdiction. If you look at the Department of Justice's crime statistics, you will find that blacks commit far more violent crime than whites and far more interracial violent crime, yet the number of blacks charged with hate crimes is far less than whites committing similar crimes. (Not saying that the entire black race is violent or has such tendencies, but on a per capita basis blacks do commit more violent crime than whites.) If we are to be a truly colorblind society, which is the purported goal of multiculturalists, then we absolutely cannot have laws on the books that in theory or practice favor one race over another. That is perhaps my primary disgust with "hate crimes" laws that appear to be colorblind, yet clearly favor those who are not of the white race. In my research, I did find one interesting possibility in re: hate crimes laws. Backlash. While most people more-or-less went along with the laws because it seemed like a good idea, many people have begun to question the unequal application of them. As a result of that backlash, more law enforcment officers/district attorneys are starting to apply them more equally, which means that the real "hate criminals" are getting charged with the crimes they commit. Therefore, the application of the "hate crimes" laws is starting to conform more along the lines of the Department of Justice's crime statistics. Needless to say, this unintended consequence is causing an uproar in certain circles. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

By your words, you are defending the belief that the only truth that is factual is what appears in the mainstream media. "The fact that races are different couldn't be true because I didn't read it in the newspaper." "Bush couldn't have lied about Iraq because the Republican Party website didn't say so." "Only white people are capable of being racists or committing 'hate crimes' because my TeeVee says so." Your post lacks any intellectual basis for a legitimate rebuttal of anything I posted. Are you going to say that eyewitness testimony is invalid because it doesn't fit your political views? Are you going to say that there wasn't mischief and anarchy of a racial nature during Katrina and immediately afterwards because you didn't see it on TeeVee? Unless you have something specific and factual that rebuts the HOAXES as presented, then you have nothing to contribute to the discussion. I will continue to put "more stock" in eyewitness testimony from Katrina--especially when the testimony came from MANY races and many vocational backgrounds involved--than I will do your misinformed, lacking-in-firsthand-knowledge opinion on what happened. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

Each state, city, etc can define its own criteria for bias crimes or hate crimes. I'm sure an Internet search can provide you with the exact conditions that a particular municipality uses to define bias crimes. I don't recall hearing of a robber insulting a wealthy person while robbing them... usually any communications seems to be limited to "give me your money" or something to that effect. And I don't know if economic status qualifies as bias under most statutes. Again, you can probably find your state's bias crime definition with a simple Google search. As far as rape, I don't know if it can be said that a rapist 'frequently' whispers gender-biased insults during an attack. In cases I've heard of the rapist usually tells the victim to be quiet, and maybe not much else. Road rage doesn't seem to result in criminal charges unless the ethnic or racial insults are followed up by violence. People in traffic shouting would be hard to prove unless there were witnesses around and police nearby to confirm who said what to whom.. Road rage crimes *are* often prosecuted as bias crimes when they turn violent. Similarly, people getting into a shouting match on the street usually isn't a crime, unless one person threatens another. This *can* be prosecuted, bias or not; I had such cases come up when I was serving on a grand jury years ago.