Keith Ellison: “it is horribly sad that anyone would want to vocalize hateful ideas, but it is not illegal. What Don Imus said about…”

“it is horribly sad that anyone would want to vocalize hateful ideas, but it is not illegal. What Don Imus said about African American women was legal though deplorable. But violence is not. Violence is different. Violence is acts, if motivated by hateful thoughts, that make an impact on the community that is much more harmful than to the individual. It expands to an entire community and injects an immobilizing, terrorizing fear into that community which makes it even more wrong than an act against an individual. When Eric Richey drove his Mustang into the largest mosque in Ohio on September 16, 2001, he didn't just destroy a building, he injected fear into an entire community. My question is this: Why do you want to protect thugs and hatemongers? Why don't you want to stand with the civilized community and say, hate is wrong and we must stop it now?”