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Holy crap, "Dimitri Long" *is* white! I read the story and at no point did I even suspect that he could be white. Dimitri Vladivich or something I would assume is Russian or some other Eastern European, but Dimitri *Long*???

As someone who thought that the perp was black before I realized he is white, I am relieved that I think exactly the same about the perp now as I did before: He should be sent to prison for a long time for assault, but he should not be charged with any additional crime, nor have any additional punishment, merely because he committed his crime due to having a viewpoint that the overwhelming majority of Americans (myself included) finds repulsive. The Freedom of Speech declared in the First Amendment stands for the proposition that the government cannot tell individuals which points of view are correct and which points of view are forbidden. Dimitri Long's punishment should be no greater and no lesser than if he had attacked the victim because Long didn't like his shirt, or because the victim had broken Long's high score at pinball, or because Long was misinformed and thought that the victim was *opposed to* interracial dating. Justice Scalia had the right idea in RAV v. City of St. Paul, in which his majority opinion found that even though burning a cross in front of a black family's yard could be forbidden under numerous statutes that were viewpoint-neutral (such as arson, tresspass, intimidation, etc.), the First Amendment did not permit the city to prohibit the act under a "hate speech" ordinance that discriminated because of viewpoint (because, for example, it prohibitted calling someone a Popist, but not calling someone an anti-Catholic bigot). Therefore, the proper way of interpreting the Freedom of Speech is not to look at whether something is "speech" or whether such speech is "protected," but looking at whether the law being enforced is viewpoint-neutral. I think it's a shame that Scalia forgot about that when he ruled a few years later that laws that add punishment when a crime was committed partly because of the race, ethnicity or religion of the victim (i.e., "hate-crime laws") do not violate the First Amendment.

Punish Dimitri Long to the full extent of the law, but do not add punishment because he committed his crime because of a certain point of view. Society can tell Long that his racist viewpoint is appalling and wrong, but the government should not have the right to make such viewpoint a reason to treat him differently from someone who commits exactly the same criminal act.