Second, Congress often gets carried away in its search for headlines by passing laws that impose absurd penalties. Third, Congress, like every legislature, is exposed to interest groups who ride politically fashionable hobbyhorses. A good example is the demand for a hate-crime law. A law should punish behavior, not the thought behind the behavior. A premeditated murder is worse than an unintended one, but it should make no difference whether the premeditation reflected a desire to get rich, respond to a Mafia contract, blow up a federal office building, or kill a black or a homosexual.
Some state hate laws go even further.
In California, you commit a hate crime if your motive for selecting a victim is political affiliation or position in a labor dispute. But at least the states differ in these matters, and so silliness can be discovered. I think we ought to keep silliness under control. But there is one area where Washington, D.C., and thus either Bush or Gore, can make a difference, and that is to help cities and states reduce drug abuse among criminals. The goal is not only to get drug-abusing criminals started on the road to recovery, but to insist that when in the community they stay clean or risk a return to jail.