Obama 'Hate Crimes' Bill Unconstitutional

Story here. Emphasis mine.

"While the bill's supporters have very effectively framed the bill as one that will protect victims from criminal acts, the bill actually has very little to do with protection. Indeed, if the bill's drafters and supporters are to be believed, the bill only becomes relevant after a criminal has committed an already illegal act," Akers wrote.

"On closer analysis, the bill does not merely provide stiffer penalties for certain crimes but, rather, represents a substantive and fundamental shift away from the American ideas of free speech and God-given immutable equality and toward the European ideas of state approved speech, state endorsed morality, state-given egality," he said.

Foremost, the bill simply ignores the 14th Amendment requirements that all citizens be protected equally, providing special protections for homosexuals and others with alternative sexual lifestyle choices, he said.

"The additional criminal fines and prison sentences that would be created by H.R. 1913 are based not on whether the defendant intended to commit the act but on whether the defendant considered the victim's membership in the preferred class in choosing the victim. In other words, because penalties already exist for those who commit criminal acts, H.R. 1913 serves only to punish individuals for the beliefs, opinions, or convictions held at the time an act is committed," he said.

"As such, HR 1913 does not punish criminal intent, but criminalizes thought," he said. "Under the H.R. 1913, the speech of a criminal defendant and the mere membership of the defendant in a given group may be used as evidence of his or her biased motive."