Yeah, that is pretty much the issue at hand. Evangelicals want to say that some lynchings don't matter as much as others. It sort of reminds me of some statements from "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. A part of the Farm constitution read "All Animals are created equal", then later when the animals went back to check they found at some point it was changed to read "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others"

I think Orwell got that idea based on what religious peopel say at first, contrasted with what they say about people who don't share their beliefs.

@snytiger6 Like I said, I assume they want to elevate lynchings that are motivated by things that federal law deals with, to be federal crimes, and that's the reason for the irony-meeter-pegging qualifications. But ... lynching is such an extreme act of violence, it seems like it'd be simpler to just raise all such acts to be federal crimes, so we don't even get bogged down in divining what the predominant motivation was. Just take it off local law enforcement's plate. After all, it's local law enforcement that has a history of sweeping such things under the rug anyway.

How many lynchings are there, actually, anyway? A hundred per year? Give them all to the feds, I say. Maybe that evokes some slippery-slope concerns that we'd federalize too many things, get away from "home rule" and "states rights" too much. I don't pretend to know enough about the legal precedents work ... I'm just finding it so obnoxious and self-defeating to overthink it like this. There must be a better way.