"Kate’s Law would be enormously expensive, and there’s scant evidence it would be worth the cost. But hey, a white girl got shot. We have to do something," snarked former National Review writer Betsy Woodruff as she concluded her September 11 story "Is Kate's Law a Terrible Idea?"
To be fair, it is legitimate to argue whether, objectively speaking, Kate's Law as a matter of public policy might have unintended consequences which would outweigh the good that it is intended to do.
There's nothing illegitimate about an honest discussion and debate there, and, indeed in her story Woodruff did a decent job of fleshing out how some staunch conservatives, like Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, have voiced concerns about Kate's Law.
But that makes Woodruff's parting shot all the more disconcerting. She certainly knows better than to reduce the issue at hand in the same way that say a Chris Matthews might: raising the specter of racism as the animating force behind a cause being championed by conservative politicians.
