Finally!

The “knock-out game” – an ugly exercise in which one or more thugs sucker punch an unsuspecting pedestrian – has been in the news for several months, and seems to represent a resurgence in black-on-non-black crime (since the vast majority of assailants have been black, and the victims typically white or Asian). The feds have, at long last, gotten around to charging somebody with a hate crime in connection with this act - guess it's just a coincidence that it happens to be a white guy.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of the “hate crime” designation, because (a) a crime’s a crime, regardless of the motive – which is not always easy to prove - and every violent crime is already punishable at the state level, and (b) the category can too easily be turned into a political weapon to favor the sensibilities of some groups at the expense of others. But if the government is going to enforce this thing, it ought to enforce it across the board - which isn't going to happen under Eric Holder's radicalized Department of Justice (oh, and by the way, Eric: turning white people into second-class citizens in a spiteful, “hooray-for-our-side” policy of revenge for the wrongs suffered in past days by blacks is the sort of strategy that makes the words “civil rights” an obscenity when they come out of your mouth).

Better yet, drop the whole hate crime thing, and just prosecute to the max on (in this, and similar, cases) the underlying assault and battery, which is always repugnant, whatever the motivation.