America's New Culture Of Hate?

In Indiana, more than 1,400 mourners attended a memorial for a Korean student, one of two victims gunned down by white supremacist Benjamin Smith.

Attorney General Janet Reno spoke at Monday night's service for Won Joon Yoon. She called people who hate, "cowards."

Meanwhile, civil rights leaders are expanding their push for tougher federal hate crime laws. CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports.

Civil rights leaders, who met with President Clinton, feel the time has come for a toughening of the federal Hate-Crimes Act.

"It also would allow us to have jurisdiction we haven't had, jurisdiction to reach hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disability," said Bill Lan Lee, acting assistant attorney general on civil rights.

This, on the heels of recent deadly increases in racist and anti-Semitic violence - for instance, last week's murder of a gay couple in Redding, Calif.

Benjamin Williams, 31, and James Williams, 29, believed to be white supremacists, were arrested in connection with that murder and are now the prime suspects in the burning of three Sacramento synagogues. Both carried guns and one wore a bulletproof vest.

The Williams brothers had collected an arsenal of weapons and the names of most top Jewish leaders in Sacramento.

Police searching the brothers' house and car found weapons and hate literature linked to white supremacist World Church of the Creator, the same hate group that spawned Benjamin Smith, the Illinois hate-crime killer who struck last week in the Midwest.

But the Church of the Creator is anti-Christian, too. And some hate-group monitors think it's more likely the very religious Williams brothers belong to a Bible-following hate group.

Benjamin Smith

"We're looking at a generation that is more willing to commit violence and a great deal of violence for their beliefs," said senior intelligence analyst Mike Reynolds.

Investigators say they don't have an explanation for the sudden increase of hate crimes, but they do predict they'll have one unexpected impact. Last year, Congress voted down a bill strengthening the Hate Crimes Act; this year, its chances for passage look a whole lot better.

Add this new generation of religious zealots to the already well established white supremacist groups, like the Aryan Nation that marched this weekend in Idaho, and authorities fear that hate - and its backlash - will only grow.