Tina Smith: “there are few people I like more than my colleagues who are speaking against this amendment. They know that. They know I…”

“there are few people I like more than my colleagues who are speaking against this amendment. They know that. They know I respect their right to disagree with me. But I want to state for the record that if I believed what Senator Kennedy and I were doing was criminalizing thought, I would vote against this amendment. What we are doing is criminalizing actions. It is always the case in criminal law that you look at all of the evidence, and if it can establish that words and thoughts have led to actions that rise to hate crimes--William Rehnquist, the most conservative Justice we probably have on the Supreme Court, and maybe some would argue that a couple others are more conservative--held in a unanimous Supreme Court decision that existing hate crimes statutes are constitutional because they do not punish thought. They do not impinge upon the first amendment. They do not impinge upon the 14th amendment because it takes action to commit a crime, and the words and the thoughts are simply evidentiary materials that go into motive to establish a crime. You have to establish motive. This is simply an enhanced version of looking at the totality of a crime. If it can rise to a hate crime, it ought to be prosecuted. This is the constitutional law of America. We are simply saying there is a category of Americans out there who ought to be added to settled constitutional law of the Federal Government.”