Amy Klobuchar: “first, I wanted to make some comments about the hate crimes bill. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill. Actually…”

“first, I wanted to make some comments about the hate crimes bill. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill. Actually, this came out of my work as a prosecutor in Minnesota. We had a number of cases that involved crimes that were motivated by hate. Sometimes they were found to be hate crimes under our law; sometimes they were not. The ones I remember most--the little 14-year-old boy shot in the middle of the day by a guy who said he wanted to go out and kill a Black kid on Martin Luther King Day. We had a Hispanic young man who could only speak Spanish, working in a factory, and his boss got mad at him because he didn't speak English and he was speaking Spanish and he took a 2 by 4 and hit him over the head. We had a temple that was desecrated. We had a number of cases, but what I most remember about this was when the hate crimes bill was first introduced in Washington, I had the honor of introducing President Clinton when he announced his support for the hate crimes bill.”