U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder couldn’t wait to go before Congress and ask for expanded federal hate-crimes legislation after a neo-Nazi white supremacist fatally wounded a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum.__Specifically, Holder told the legislators that federal hate crimes laws need to be expanded to include crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disability. So Holder wins, hands down, the 2009 award for the “Most Despicable Display of Using a Genuine Tragedy To Advance Your Personal Political Agenda.”__Lordy, where did President Obama GET this guy? Holder must have dragged the deepest, dankest depths of the Potomac to dredge up this kind of chutzpah.__Exactly two days after Holder’s congressional testimony, a group of 30-50 black youths attacked a white Akron, Ohio family. Holder has uttered not a mumble about this being a hate crime. This is the same guy who took the entire country to task or our “cowardice” in not discussing issues of race.

Let’s be clear what Holder was hinting at: he was talking about our lack of courage, not his. I’m sure Holder believes he’s Mr. Intrepid when it comes to discussing race, his not addressing that nasty business in Akron notwithstanding.__Holder’s craven and poltroonish silence shows, precisely, what is wrong with the notion of hate crimes laws. At least three things stand out. One is insidious, and thus more pernicious. Advocates of “hate crimes” laws don’t just want the crime prosecuted. They want the violator’s ideas and beliefs put on trial. They want the law to make a statement saying, “These ideas and views are not acceptable.”__People who commit crimes with race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability as a motive should ALWAYS be put on trial. Their ideas NEVER should. Hateful beliefs and doctrines should get an up-or-down vote in what’s been called the “marketplace of ideas.”