"Hate" crimes

[Tex]

A week before Christmas in New Jersey, approximately 11 students ganged up on and beat to a pulp an 8th-grader, apparently out of revenge for his accidentally hitting a girl with a basketball. Reading this already gets me hot under the collar, but I went ballistic when I saw this in the article:

The victim, who is Hispanic, suffered severe injuries, and it was possible he may lose sight in one eye. It is not believed, however, that he was the victim of a hate crime. Police said the student who threw the first punch was also Hispanic, and the other students all come from diverse backgrounds.

WHAT? Not a victim of a hate crime? The kid's face gets bashed in so badly that he needs reconstructive surgery, and it's not a hate crime?

Oh, oh, wait, I forgot. Hate is for race-based crimes only. Lucky for those lowlife teenagers they weren't all white, or then they'd REALLY get it.

This is what the legal profession has added to society: "hate" crimes, John Edwards, and the the movie The Firm. While the rest of us are actually out there producing valuable goods and services for society, these guys spend their lives figuring out how to word parse.

Bunch of damn leeches.