Observations

Former Twins outfielder Delmon Young got into a drunken brawl Thursday night while Detroit was getting ready to play the Bronx Bombers. While brawling he let out an anti-semitic remark which automatically upgraded his fight to a hate crime. If convicted he could get up to a year in jail.

As I've mentioned in the past, (and will continue to dwell on as long as I still have free speech) I have to caution everyone who thinks that "hate crimes" should be punished worse than their "non-hate crime" counterparts. If you do something horrible you should be punished for it. Your possible reasons for doing so should have no bearing on the outcome of the penalty.

If you burn a someone's house down on purpose, you should go to jail. You start a fire in someone's yard to scare them, you should go to jail. You beat someone up so badly that they die, you should go to jail. The list of crimes is endless, but the punishment should be swift and just.

Adding the word "hate-crime" to the event just gets more people riled up on both sides of any issue while blurring the issue of the real crimes. It also makes drunk people look even more stupid than they already are.

What Delmon did BEFORE slurring his words horribly should be enough to get a conviction if he really did do something bad.

The Supreme Court has ruled that "language to incite" is not protected by the constitution. Speech isn't free if it can be limited. All it takes now is the continued broadening of the phrase "language to incite" to stop people from freely talking about their deepest held beliefs.

You know the ones that are truly important to them. The ones that NEED to be protected.

And don't believe it's not already happening.