One of the reasons I have not gotten upset

by the recent grand jury decisions in New York and Ferguson is that neither of the two men that were victims were clean to begin with. Both resisted arrest after committing crimes.

It's hard for me to get too worked up when someone does something stupid and gets hurt or wins a Darwin award over doing something stupid like that.

Now there IS a guy I could support down in Florida that got shot by a policeman but for some reason it hasn't made the big time because it seems like the media wants to follow losers around for some reason.

This guy in Florida was rummaging through his own car in his own driveway. Apparently someone saw him and called the police who showed up and probably assumed since he was black he must be up to no good and in the process of the ensuing discussion the man got shot in his own driveway.

The man was a 60 year old guy that was merely going through his car and doing nothing illegal.

It strikes me that this is the kind of guy the media should be looking at to use to stir up interest. He's pretty clean, seems to be a fairly solid respectable citizen and first and foremost he didn't swing on a cop or resist arrest.

Incidentally, while I'm at it, a few years back I had a neighbor that was an FBI agent and we discussed a few things in the driveway one Saturday morning. One of the things we discussed was the (then fairly new) hate crime legislation.

He hated the legislation because he felt (and I agree with this) that you can't really know what's in a man's heart when he does something.

Personally I'd have a pretty hard time as a juror in a hate crime trial. The state had best be doing their homework because they have to be able to prove to this kid what was going through the accused's mind when he committed the act.

Simply crossing racial lines doesn't cut it.

The example he used was someone burning down a black church. That sort of sounds pretty cut and dried...or does it.

There are any number of non-hate related reasons the guy could have had for torching the church, all of them bogus, of course. Still, none of them actually hate related.

Maybe they owed him money for something he did and they skipped out. Maybe the singing woke him up when he was trying to sleep in. Perhaps he got tired of having is driveway blocked every Sunday by the overflow of the parking lot.

Of course, none of these are a legitimate reason for torching a church. Still, none of these reasons are hate related.

As a juror I could easily send someone up the river for arson, the truth remains that unless the state could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the arsonist had hate in his heart when he lit the match I am very unwilling to convict a guy like that on a hate crime.

The state had best be able to present me an air tight case and show me what was in that man's heart when he torched the church.

The hate crime legislation makes little sense to me. It strikes me as unenforceable and when you think about it, only serves to act to stir things up even worse.

As a parting shot, I'd have to say an awful lot of crimes are hate crimes that have no racial overtones when you think about it. Have you ever heard of someone beating someone or robbing them because they loved them?


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Pleasant update. 

There are four does about 20 feet away from me out my window staring in. That is very good news. Last night there was a lone doe foraging and I feared the herd had been chewed up because I have seen a couple of deer that have been hit by cars in the general area. 

I was afraid the deer that inhabit my area had been hit and I am glad to see it is not so. I do love to watch those animals go about their business in my back yard.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY