The Colorado Independent

Posts Tagged Hate Crime

Hate crimes amendment scheduled for vote; Christian groups oppose law as ‘utter evil’

By | 07.16.09 | 9:28 am

** Updated**

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed the House by a wide margin in the spring. Debate included a rousing short speech by Democratic U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, who referenced the fact that Shepard died…

Why have we stopped talking about guns?

By | 06.14.09 | 7:59 am

You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. He’s 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.

Pro-gun gay groups take aim at hate crimes bill

By | 06.09.09 | 8:31 am

One month after successfully tucking an amendment into the credit card reform bill that expanded gun rights, a small number of Senate Republicans are looking at the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as another chance to score a victory for the Second Amendment.

The plan — to add an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons from one state to another in accordance with concealed carry laws. The possible rationale — to defend gay rights.

Tancredo’s Team America PAC backs staffer who committed hate crime

By | 06.01.09 | 12:38 pm

I just talked to Bay Buchanan, the co-chairman of Team America PAC and president of the American Cause, who is sticking by executive director (of both groups) Marcus Epstein after this weekend’s revelations about his 2007 arrest for karate-chopping a black woman while yelling a racial epithet.

Tancredo staffer pleads guilty to hate crime

By | 06.01.09 | 10:01 am

For years, conservative writer and activist Marcus Epstein has worked with the mainstream of the immigration restrictionist movement. He wrote speeches for former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., during his presidential bid, and he’s still working as the executive director of Tancredo’s Team America PAC, alongside Bay Buchanan.

Dobson’s claim hate-crime laws would protect pedophiles a ‘Pants on Fire’ lie

By | 05.17.09 | 3:05 pm

It didn’t work to call Matthew Shepard’s murder “a hoax,” so opponents of federal hate-crimes legislation are trying a new tactic: claiming the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which adds sexual orientation and gender identity to federal…

Judge adds 60 years to Andrade’s life sentence for transgender slaying

By | 05.11.09 | 2:49 pm

A judge sentenced the man convicted of killing transgender Greeley teen Angie Zapata to an additional 60 years in prison on top of a life sentence without parole already handed down last month. Finding Allen Andrade, 32, guilty of habitual criminal charges based on his six prior felony convictions, Weld County District Court Judge Marcelo Kopcow on Friday afternoon quadrupled the maximum sentences for each of Andrade’s convictions on three other crimes surrounding the murder, including a bias-motivated, or hate crime.

Hate-crimes prosecution could yield ‘mixed bag’ for Senate candidate Buck

By | 04.30.09 | 7:40 am

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s landmark hate-crime prosecution of a man accused of murdering a transgender Greeley teen could prove “very much a mixed bag” for the Republican, who emerged Tuesday as a candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election, political observers say.

Markey to House: Shepard, Zapata ‘two victims of hate crimes in my district’

By | 04.29.09 | 5:05 pm

An impassioned U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey invoked the brutal murders of gay college student Matthew Shepard and transgender Greeley woman Angie Zapata in her remarks Wednesday afternoon supporting federal hate-crimes legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Republican calls Matthew Shepard murder ‘a hoax’ in hate-crimes debate

By | 04.29.09 | 2:49 pm

A North Carolina Republican called the idea that Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay “a hoax” in the debate currently under way on the floor of the House of Representatives over legislation to expand federal hate-crimes law to cover sexual orientation.