To hear members of Congress talk, if they didn't protect us, criminals would run amuck committing crimes against people they dislike or even hate. From the office of Earl Blumenauer, the congressman from Portland: "Today, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., voted to protect Americans by expanding the definition of hate crimes and providing law enforcement officers with the tools they need to prosecute these heinous crimes."

The House had passed a bill, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which Blumenauer says would "provide the necessary resources to state and local governments for the investigation and prosecution of these crimes."

This implies, wrongly, that crimes are not being prosecuted now.

As Blumenauer notes, the bill was prompted in part by the murder in 1998 of Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming, who was tortured and left to die near Laramie in 1998. According to testimony, his assailants attacked him because he was gay. But the killers did not get away. One pleaded guilty and the other was convicted, both in state court, and both are in prison for life.

Blumenauer says in Oregon this year, four hate crimes have been reported so far. "Just last month," he wrote, "a man and his boyfriend were on a spring-break trip over the weekend when they were beaten unconscious on a beach in Seaside. Last November, a 20-year-old woman was walking along a street in Aloha, when a man asked for a cigarette. He asked if she was gay and when she said yes, he then started berating her about her sexual orientation. Eventually he pushed her and she fell to the ground. She tried to defend herself, but he knocked her back down and struck her in the head with a rock."

If that's what happened in these instances, serious crimes were committed under Oregon law. No federal legislation or other involvement is necessary for the victims or witnesses to report, the police to investigate or the state to prosecute crimes such as intimidation or aggravated assault, let alone murder.

If we're going to remain a country with a federal arrangement in public administration, it would be useful for Congress to remember what that means. Among other things it means that the national and state governments have different roles.

If that's not the intention or the plan, we could simplify things greatly by abolishing the states and putting the burden of running everything, including the prosecution of criminals driven by bigotry, on Uncle Sam. (hh)