Yesterday, Congress approved a measure to dramatically expand the existing federal hate crimes law, by adding it to an unrelated defense appropriations bill.  The measure would expand current law to cover virtually all hate crimes already covered by state law (both by adding gender, sexual orientation, disability, and transgender characteristics to a law originally designed to protect racial minorities, and by getting rid of the requirement that a hate crime effect federally-protected activities to be prosecuted in federal rather than state court.)

The…

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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has decided to oppose the federal hate-crimes bill. The Commission calls the bill a “menace to civil liberties” because “its most important effect will be to allow federal authorities to re-prosecute a broad category of defendants who have already been acquitted by state juries.” Thus, it will erode protections against double jeopardy.

In deciding to oppose the bill, the full Commission agreed with the position earlier taken by four individual Civil Rights Commissioners, who…

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If you were a tourist, would you like to come to a country where you could be tried twice for the same crime — even if you were found innocent the first time around? Not me. But the Senate will likely attach a bill that promotes such reprosecutions to the Travel Promotion Act, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Liberal Senators plan to amend the Travel Promotion Act, a bill to attract international tourists to the U.S., by combining it with a…

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On April 29, the House voted 249-to-175 to pass the federal hate crimes bill, which the bill’s supporters explicitly want to use to prosecute people already found innocent in state court all over again in federal court. Such reprosecutions are, sadly, allowed under a Constitutional loophole known as the “dual sovereignty” doctrine, which says that state and federal governments are different sovereigns, and that double jeopardy only applies when you are prosecuted twice by the same sovereign. (This loophole was established…

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On April 23, the House Judiciary Committee voted 15-to-12 to approve a dramatic expansion of the federal hate-crimes law. The bill, H.R. 1913, would add gender, sexual orientation, and transgender characteristics to a law originally designed to protect racial minorities. It also greatly expands the law’s reach over local offenses typically handled by state prosecutors, by eliminating many jurisdictional limits.

The bill would allow people who have been found innocent of a hate crime in state court to be reprosecuted in…

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Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for attorney general, is hostile to civil liberties. He has previously expressed veiled support for using the misnamed “Fairness Doctrine” to squelch “conservative critiques” and “conservative media,” such as Fox News (which Holder believes is anything but “Fair and Balanced,” contrary to its slogan). The “Fairness Doctrine” is designed to shut down conservative Talk Radio.

Holder also has advocated hate-crimes legislation to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify…

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As Cord mentioned earlier, Henry Waxman has been named incoming Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is a part. In his role, Waxman is likely to play an influential role in future tech policy fights involving issues such as universal broadband access and network neutrality. While Waxman has laudably defended civil liberties on many occasions, his record on telecommunications lawmaking is quite troubling.

Waxman has embraced forced openness for privately-owned…

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