A story in the Wall Street Journal highlights the difference between a reactionary government like we had from 2001 to the start of 2009 and a new Washington crowd with a somewhat more progressive mindset. For eight years, there were folks trying -- and sometimes succeeding -- in trying to put America on the wrong track. Now we're finally headed in the right direction, but we're using a Baldwin steam locomotive when we need a Japanese bullet train to catch up to where we need to be:
Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification -- 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.
Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, set aside land in the West from development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army's Future Combat System.
Rob Nabors, the White House's deputy budget director, called the series of new laws "a very, very quiet but important victory."
Look, clearly it's going to take years to fix things that we're sometimes screwed up with something as easy as one quick stroke of a pen. That said, I think that President Obama and the leaders of Congress need to start shoveling that coal a lot faster. You need to be givin' her all she's got, Captain.
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Never understood "hate crime" legislation - is a murder worse because someone did it out of hate? Doesn't giving a group a hate crime classification give the impression that somehow they are inferior and need "special" protections?— bird11
Bird, I imagine you'd agree that the 9/11 attacks were worse than just a murder of several thousand people.- Comment removed.
- Doesn't giving a group a hate crime classification give the impression that somehow they are inferior and need "special" protections?...............Anyone can be the victim of a hate crime. It's not dependent on minority status.
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Funny how those "quiet victories" manage to take away my right to equal protection under the law.— jmc- MSL - you seriously don't believe the courts are going to be packed with hate crime cases where heterosexual white male Christians are the victim do you?? Trust me after the last two nights at the Bank I was more than capable of perpetrating a serious crime purely out of hatred - Yankees fans aren't a protected class are they???— bird11
- "Bird, I imagine you'd agree that the 9/11 attacks were worse than just a murder of several thousand people." No I wouldn't - from a legal point of view. Would 9/11 have been less heinous if someone blew up the Twin Towers because their ransom demands weren't met? Anyone can have a motive for a crime. Are greed, jealousy, or doing it for kicks OK while hatred is not? A classic Philly example - would the Patrick Conroy murder be worse if the scum that killed him had decided they wanted to beat up the next "white" person instead of just the next person??— bird11
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Swifty, isn't that the same Rev. Wright that served two tours in Vietnam as a medic? Let me guess, he ran around and treated the enemy instead of our guys, right?— SteveMG- "Would 9/11 have been less heinous if someone blew up the Twin Towers because their ransom demands weren't met?" . . . . . Well, I'd wonder if we'd be fighting a trillion dollar global war on extortion for decades to come. A hate crime is a crime against a class of people, not just the victim, just as 9/11 was an act of "war" against western liberal democratic society. A hate crime law is intended to avert retaliatory violence or vigilante justice for such acts, and vindicate public outrage.
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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