We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It hasn’t been a good news week for the equality of all.  First, from Homeland Stupidity:

Prosecutors trying to put you in prison for a crime you didn’t commit can fabricate evidence, coerce witnesses into lying on the stand, and enjoy absolute immunity. They cannot go to prison. They cannot even be sued. They aren’t even likely to get so much as a reprimand from the bar association or from their bosses, even after publicly admitting to framing you.

It seems two teenagers were framed for and convicted of murder in 1977.  In 2003, their convictions were overturned because the key witness had committed perjury at the behest of the prosecutors.  But the Supreme Court was told yesterday in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee that the prosecutors shouldn’t be punished.  HS summed it up well:

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, the fact that prosecutors routinely get away with framing people or the fact that the government wants to keep it that way. The federal government, 27 states, and several intergovernmental associations all filed briefs in support of the prosecutors.

This is our justice system.

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And we’ve all heard that Obama signed the so-call “hate crimes” bill  last week, which results in more punishment for murdering someone because they’re gay than murdering someone because you wanted to steal their money.  This doesn’t sound very equal to me.  And, of course, the government now gets to determine our motive for murder, giving them more power to screw things up, à la Pottawattamie County v. McGhee above.

So how did this bill get passed after more than a decade of opposition?  It was attached to the latest military spending spree of $680 billion, which was a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t proposition.   According to Truthdig:

It was a clever piece of marketing. It blunted debate about new funding for war. And behind the closed doors of the caucus rooms, the Democratic leadership told Blue Dog Democrats, who are squeamish about defending gays or lesbians from hate crimes, that they could justify the vote as support for the war. They told liberal Democrats, who are squeamish about unlimited funding for war, that they could defend the vote as a step forward in the battle for civil rights. Gender equality groups, by selfishly narrowing their concern to themselves, participated in the dirty game.

William Grigg has posted a poignant analysis of the whole sorry situation titled Blood on Their Hands, complete with photos of the results.  Here’s an excerpt:

The difference between this measure and its predecessors is this: The leading elements of the “hate industry” — those sanctimonious scolds who make a handsome living tutoring the rest of us in the ways of “tolerance” — are now directly implicated in the avoidable mass murder of innocent people in the Near East.

For the squalid collection of pressure groups that promoted passage of the hate crimes measure, — the so-called Anti-Defamation League, the self-styled Human Rights Campaign, the fraudulently named Southern Poverty Law Center, et. al. — this is an entirely acceptable arrangement. Their fund-raising will prosper; their stature in Washington will continue to grow; their influence over law enforcement will expand; most importantly, the power of the state to persecute their political enemies will be significantly enhanced.

Oh, sure — the political trade-off behind this “victory” means that poor brown people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq will suffer violent death in their homes, streets, and houses of worship, cultivating understandable anti-American hatred that will yield a bloody harvest of terrorism and unending war.