Supporting hate-crime laws seems like a no brainer to a lot of people. It's sort of like banning "partial-birth" abortion in that regard. Let's make racism a crime! Let's stop killing babies! What's to argue!

Well, everything's always more complicated than it seems, and the truly tough issues often come with very slippery slopes. I saw this story in the UK about a teenage girl charged with a crime for refusing to sit next to Pakistani kids. It seems like a fine example of how easily criminalizing certain types of behavior can lead to criminalizing certain types of thought (however reprehensible it may seem).