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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flatsville who wrote (45645)	10/12/2000 6:15:33 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769669

Bush Would Sign RU-486 Restrictions October 12, 2000 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) - George W. Bush supports legislation to tighten standards for doctors administering the newly approved abortion pill RU-486, a spokesman said Thursday. Bush had been prepared to say he would sign such a bill, if elected, but wasn't asked at Tuesday night's presidential debate, said spokesman Scott McClellan. A Republican-sponsored bill, filed last week in both the House and the Senate, would set up restrictions on how the drug could be dispensed. It would require the prescribing physician to be legally empowered and trained to perform an abortion, properly trained in the drug's administration and have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Bush "would be inclined to support it. It provides certain reasonable protections for the safety of women,'' said McClellan. Abortion rights groups have denounced the bill, saying it would impose restrictions that would hamper the ability of many doctors to prescribe the drug. The FDA approved RU-486 on Sept. 28, ending a 12-year debate in this country. It gives American women a pharmaceutical abortion method already in wide use in France, Britain, China and 10 other countries. In the first presidential debate, Bush said he was disappointed in the FDA ruling but didn't think the president could overturn it. Gore said the FDA had concluded the drug was medically safe and he supported its decision. voter.com

To: flatsville who wrote (45645)	10/13/2000 12:05:54 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Actually, there is nothing in what I said that is contradicted in what you cited. It is only insofar as a crossed was burned to threaten and interfere with their civil rights that it was illegal. Cross burning per se is legal, as when the Klan demonstrates.........

To: flatsville who wrote (45645)	10/13/2000 12:43:54 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

III. Constitutional Challenges to Hate Crimes Statutes Free Speech Challenges: R.A.V. and Mitchell In 1992 and 1993, the United States Supreme Court decided two cases addressing the constitutionality of statutes directed at bias-motivated intimidation and violence: R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul4 and Wisconsin v. Mitchell.5 These well-known cases have now substantially defined which hate crimes statutes are, and which are not, acceptable under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Based on these cases, ADL has been strongly urging states to adopt penalty-enhancement statutes based on the League's model. In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Supreme Court evaluated for the first time a free speech challenge to a hate crime statute. In that case, the defendant had burned a cross "inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where the [defendant] was staying." The ordinance before the Court, as interpreted by the Minnesota Supreme Court, criminalized so-called "fighting words" which "one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouse anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." Fighting words are words which will provoke the person to whom they are directed to violence; more than 50 years ago, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire,6 the Supreme Court decided that such words were not protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, in R.A.V., the state of Minnesota argued that because all so-called "fighting words" are outside first amendment protection, race-based fighting words could be criminalized. The Supreme Court disagreed and struck down the statute. The Court held that because Minnesota had not in fact criminalized all fighting words, the statute isolated certain words based on their content or viewpoint and therefore violated the First Amendment. Based on R.A.V., hate crime statutes which criminalize bias-motivated speech or symbolic speech are unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny. Particularly, cross burning statutes or statutes criminalizing verbal intimidation are more suspect after this decision. However, in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Wisconsin statute which provides for an enhanced sentence where the defendant "intentionally selects the person against whom the crime [is committed] because of the race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry of that person." The defendant in Mitchell had incited a group of young Black men who had just finished watching the movie "Mississippi Burning" to assault a young white man by asking, "Do you all feel hyped up to move on some white people," and by calling out, "You all want to fuck somebody up? There goes a white boy; go get him." Noting that "[t]raditionally, sentencing judges have considered a wide variety of factors in addition to evidence bearing on guilt in determining what sentence to impose on a convicted defendant," the Court rejected the defendant's contention that the enhancement statute penalized thought. First, the Court affirmed that the statute was directed at a defendant's conduct -- committing a crime. The Court then held that, because the bias motivation would have to be connected with a specific act, there was little risk that the statute would chill protected bigoted speech. The statute focused not on the defendant's bigoted ideas, but rather on his actions based upon those ideas. Finally, the Court made clear that "the First Amendment . . . does not prohibit the evidentiary use of speech to establish the elements of a crime or to prove motive or intent." After Mitchell, challenges to penalty-enhancement statutes on the basis of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution appear to be largely foreclosed. State constitutions may, however, provide greater protection for speech than does the United States Constitution. Thus, notwithstanding Mitchell, states are free to decide that penalty-enhancement statutes violate their own state constitutional provisions on free speech. However, no state has done so and four state supreme courts have denied such a claim. The highest court in Oregon has rejected the claim that the Oregon Constitution prohibits penalty enhancement,7 and the Supreme Court of Washington upheld the constitutionality of the Washington statute.8 The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a motion by Mitchell, after the Supreme Court's decision, to assert Wisconsin state constitutional grounds.9 The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Ohio statute, after State v. Wyant10 was remanded by the United States Supreme Court. adl.org