Mr. Nieporent and I have had a little tiff over at Charles Austin's site about "terrorism". Mr. Nieporent thinks that the justice system in America is fine without refining crimes down to "hate crimes" or "terrorism".

In many ways, I agree with him. It's an overcomplication to designate "hate crimes". It goes too many ways.

"Terrorism" might be a tad different. You'll have to take my word on this, but when we went into Afghanistan I saw a short film on MSNBC, "Inside Afghanistan", in which a prisoner-of-war in one of the northern camps was asked about Osama Bin Laden. He was interpreted as saying, "Osama is a terrorist. He does terrorism. Like a doctor does medicine, Osama does terrorism." Yes, Mr. Nieporent, there are different classes of crime.