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The Hate Crimes Prevention Act has passed the Congress and is now on its way to the Senate, where it is likely to pass and signed by President Obama. There are already similar hate crime laws in place, however, this bill imposes much stronger federal enforcement, a clear violation of the Tenth Amendment. It grants greater power to federal prosecutors to prosecute hate crime laws by prosecuting those who have been found innocent by local or state courts. The current bill will extend special privileges to gays and transgender individuals that are currently only granted to ethnic and religious minorities.In many western nations, an individual can be prosecuted by the government for certain speech. We still have the First Amendment but we are headed in that direction. Organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League have aggressively promoted hate crime legislation. These organizations have gone out of their way to vilify anyone who disagrees with their views on issues such as immigration and Israel. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center has viciously gone after CNN’s Lou Dobbs for his support of enforcing our immigration laws and the ADL has gone after Professor John Mearsheimer for his book critical of the Israeli Lobby. These organizations have endorsed Europe and Canada’s policies on prosecuting what they deem as hate speech. The ADL openly advocates for their model anti-hate law. In 1988 the ADL gave out an award to law student Joseph Ribikoff for writing a proposed hate crime bill that would criminalize hate speech against gays and minorities. In 2004 President Bush singed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act which mandates the State Department to monitor anti-semitism and defines it as “excessive criticism of Israel.”Â