President Clinton is likely to veto a budget bill funding the Justice Department because Congress failed to include his hate crime legislation.

Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy says the Republicans in Congress are racially insensitive for not including the provision.

I must be racially insensitive, too, because I think hate crime legislation is redundant.

President Clinton wants to make it a federal crime to do harm to someone if it is racially motivated.

The big question for me is why the victim is somehow more dead or injured if the attack is based on race, color or creed.

If you kill someone, it's murder. Does it really matter what motivated you? Isn't all murder hateful?

Any motive other than self-defense will land you in prison for a long time, so I guess I don't see what the point of hate crime legislation really is.

More than anything, though, I think hate crime laws are driven by political correctness.

Funny thing is how some crimes fit the mold and others don't.

The political correctness police don't patrol all the streets in the town of Hate.

Take Buford Furrow. The PC police have him under surveillance.

He's the guy who shot up the Jewish day care center in Los Angeles with an Uzi back in August.

His attack left five people wounded. Nobody died at the day care, but after he left there, he used a 9mm pistol to kill an Asian mail carrier.

Furrow is a certifiable neo-Nazi bigot. A nut case. He ranted to the cops about white supremacy and killing Jews to send America a message.

I remember the day that happened. I was sitting in the newsroom watching it unfold live on CNN via a helicopter from the local affiliate.

All the networks interrupted regularly scheduled programming. Newspapers from around the country sent reporters to the scene for first-hand coverage.

That guy is still in the news. The crime had all the right elements to be a big national story.

His victims were members of an ethnic group and he used a gun. And what a gun. An Uzi.

These factors made Buford Furrow the poster child for the proponents of gun control and hate crime laws.

And the national media, for the most part also proponents of gun control and hate crime laws, do their best to keep the story at the forefront of public consciousness.

The Furrow story was kept alive for weeks on the editorial and opposite editorial pages of big newspapers.

Of course the reason for all the hoopla surrounding this Furrow character is because he seems to prove the need for hate crime and gun laws.

But I tend to think just the opposite is true. To me, guys like Furrow prove the ineffectiveness of such laws.

For example, the 20,000 or so gun laws on the books didn't preclude an obviously disturbed Furrow from procuring an Uzi. Do you suppose a hate crime law would have deterred him?

Everything Furrow did is against existing laws. Harsh penalties will be sought for him. No hate crime law is needed to punish him.

Associated Press continues to cover the story nationally. Every time Furrow shows up in court for a hearing, there's a story moving on the national wire.

And, hey, that's OK. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with the fact that Steven Abrams doesn't get the same amount of ink.

Who, you ask?

Back in May, Abrams drove past the Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center in Costa Mesa, Calif.

There were about 40 kids on the playground. After he drove by, he made a U-turn and hit the gas. His car ripped through a chain link fence and plowed through the group of children before hitting a tree.

Two children died and five were hurt.

Abrams later told the cops he wanted to "execute" those kids.

If you want to rate these crimes on the heinous meter, I've gotta give Abrams the nod. I mean, driving a car through a crowded playground? Now that's really sick.

Besides, Abrams actually killed two kids.

But you know what?

There were no helicopters flying around Costa Mesa that day. There were no editorials proclaiming the need for car control the day after. There was no media frenzy.

The story was covered on Associated Press' national wire on the day it happened. The day after there was a short followup. That's it. No continuing coverage for that story.

No, the PC police don't even know that Steven Abrams exists. They're too busy monitoring Buford Furrow, I guess.

Apparently the murder and attempted murder of innocent children is front page news only if it is committed with a gun or if the perpetrator is a bigot.

Examples of politically correct coverage of stories abound.

There's the ongoing gay attack story from Wyoming.

That's where the two losers picked up a gay guy in a bar in Laramie, took him out in the country, robbed him, pistol whipped him and left him tied to a fence.

The gay guy died five days later in the hospital.

The case has received all manner of national attention.

But what about the case of the two gay guys who basically sodomized a young man to death?

They stuffed the victim's underwear in his mouth during the attack and he suffocated.

That story got virtually no media attention. Most people probably never even heard about it. I guess it's only PC to cover a story if you're a gay victim, not a gay perpetrator.

And you certainly can't be guilty of a hate crime if you're a member of some minority group.

The guys in Texas who dragged a black man to death are hate criminals. They are attracting national attention.

But the black guy in Chicago who crushed the skulls of a white man and his daughter gets a pass.

The man, 55, and his daughter, 22, were walking to a White Sox game in the company of a couple of the man's grandchildren and other family members. The assailant, age 19, for no apparent reason, bashed them over the head with a wooden table leg with a piece of steel on the end.

In Chicago, you can get extra time tacked on your sentence if you're convicted of a hate crime. But the authorities there determined this wasn't a hate crime.

And that may be the biggest problem with hate crime laws. They generally only cut one way.

We need to understand that all crime is hateful. Until we do, I don't think it's a good idea to single out some violent crimes or violent criminals as more hateful than others.

They're all hateful people. And they all deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. [[In-content Ad]]