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Hate crime legislation that's barreling through the identity politics - political-correctness-obsessed Democrat House and Senate has claimed another Republican 'victim', Representative Virginia Foxx (R) NC. The 'Matthew Shepard Act' misappropriates facts and our useless media, using the current climate of intolerance for opposing viewpoints, demands silence and seeks retribution against anyone who seeks only to acknowledge the facts.

We all remember Matthew Shepard. Everyone realizes that his killers needed to receive the death penalty. Or, at least those of us who still remember what 'justice' means, believe that. Since 1998 Matthew Shepard's name has been taken and marketed by various groups and artists to promote their agendas. Did Matthew Shepard die because he was gay? Or did, as Virgina Foxx asks, drug-fueled psychopaths commit this act and Mr. Shepard's name became misappropriated and misused to fuel this unneeded legislation?

Andrew Breitbart writes a powerful opinion piece today in the Washington Times...

Judy Shepard like other tragic symbols Cindy Sheehan, the Jersey Widows and Max Cleland are trotted out by Democrats to make their arguments not with facts and reason but with the threat that if you disagree with them, you will be publicly shamed as a "hater." This pathetic strategy works as Mrs. Foxx's instant apology illustrates.

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Mrs. Foxx joins me and gay journalist Andrew Sullivan as public figures who refuse to accept the Shepard mythology. We choose not to impugn Mr. Shepard's memory or grant his murderers committed a "hate crime," when it cannot be proved. The left will not accept this because it is built around divisive identity politics. It dismisses "E Pluribus Unum," America's formerly helpful marketing slogan, and promotes strategies that ensure the fault lines of ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation are exploitable for political gain.

On college campuses, in newsrooms and now in the highest corridors of power, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, the politically correct left is wielding its weaponry with the confidence that it can take down any group, anyone or anything. The thought police are now officially in charge.

The real hate crime these days is the Orwellian intimidation wielded by the left against those that don't think the way they do. It's worse than waterboarding.

What difference would 'hate crime' legislation have made in the sentencing of those two killers? They are put away for life. Would they have received the death penalty, under this new 'hate crimes' laws? No?

Then what freakin' good is it, except to give these candy leftists just another feel-good tool?

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h/t Connie Brimmer