" how the FBI decides if something is a worth investigating as a "hate crime.""

From Rob:  " Hey As`ad, thought you might find this interesting (from a NYT report on the FBI not following up on attacks on Mosques): But Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent and now a senior policy counsel for the A.C.L.U. in Washington, said that two instances in which the San Francisco office did not pursue investigations stood out. One involved a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, who told agents in 2007 that he had received threatening calls from blocked numbers after including his phone number on fliers promoting an antiwar protest.  One caller told the student to be “very, very careful,” an F.B.I. report stated and added, “You wouldn’t want an accident to happen to you.”. The second used a racial epithet, the agents wrote, and told the caller to blow himself up “before we do it for you.”. The report went on to note that F.B.I. records indicated that a person whose name was redacted, apparently the student, had previously written e-mails that “conveyed hatred toward the United States and Israel and support for the Palestinian cause.”. A man named Snehal Shingavi said he was the one who had received the threats and spoken with the F.B.I. He said that the agency had not accurately characterized the views he had expressed in e-mails and added that it was improper to catalog political opinions attributed to him.  “The linking of my political activity with the decision not to fully investigate the death threats is very troubling,” Mr. Shingavi said.""  ( I knew Snehal, by the way).