These short news stories will come as no surprise to kossacks. Grassroots and local as they are, these stories speak, I believe, to national differences between the GOP and the Democratic party. Share these news stories with your Republican friends and family members and then ask them what is so prized about the Republican party values platform that they continue to remain Republican. Then ask them if now is the time for them to change their party affilation. (Bolded material is mine). Read below the fold.
First this from Susan L. Oppat, a news reporter for The Ann Arbor News:
Several donors, including the Livingston County Democratic Party, are offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who broke into a Hispanic woman's home last week, wrecked the interior, and spray-painted it with racial slurs.
Police were called to the house on Glen-Roy-Let near Portage Lake on March 4, when the woman found the damage.
Chief Steve Luciano said furniture was wrecked and glass was broken, and the entire house was ransacked. He said the woman had found excrement smeared on her door and a used feminine hygiene product on her porch in previous incidents.
Previous news stories about this hate crime revealed that the woman's home was so vandalized that it is no longer habitable. The town that the victim, a New York native of Puerto Rican descent who has adopted four children of different races, lived in (Portage Lake, MI) is over 97% white.
Now this from Associated Press Writer, Stephen Majors, as quoted in theledger.com:
The homeless would join groups afforded extra protection under Florida's hate-crimes legislation, leading to stiffer penalties for assaulting them, under a bill approved Tuesday by a Senate committee after spirited debate.
A rash of recent assaults on the homeless in Florida has led the bill's supporters to believe it's time to provide them with the same protection extended to groups such as gays, the disabled and religious and ethnic minorities....
The bill's five supporters ran into opposition from three [Republican] committee members who disagreed with affording some groups extra protection under the law.
"I'm against the bill for the people that it excludes, not for the people who it includes," said Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, who added that every violent crime is on some level a crime caused by hate.
Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon, said she would have a hard time explaining to parents why someone who hurt their son would receive a lesser penalty than someone who hurt a homeless person.
Using Bennett's tired old argument against hate crime legislation, he would probably agree that an armed bank robber has hatred in his heart toward bank employees and that that hatred caused the bank robbery, or that the crack addict mugging someone for their next fix actually hates the woman whose purse they are stealing. Funny how so many Republicans confuse greed and desperation with hatred. Thank the good Lord at least one Florida Republican stood up for the hate crime bill (Senator Jim King, from Jacksonville).
And finally this from Georgia: Democrat state Senator Vincent Fort has fought yearly since 2004--when that state's supreme court struck down the state's hate crime law for being too vague--to restore hate crime legislation to that state. Georgia is only one of several states that currently does not have a hate crimes law. On March 13th, the state's Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-2 to move Fort's hate crimes bill toward passage.
So, we see this week, as we have seen year in and year out since the 1960's, the Democrats push for justice for all as they understand well the prejudice that leads to acts of hatred and discrimination. The Republicans, on the other hand, continue to be the party of hate, the party of intolerance, and the party of injustice.