{"id":182736,"date":"2015-06-19T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/19\/in-south-carolina-the-judges-have-sympathy-for-the-families-of-terrorists-if-they-are-white\/"},"modified":"2015-06-19T18:34:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T23:34:00","slug":"in-south-carolina-the-judges-have-sympathy-for-the-families-of-terrorists-if-they-are-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/19\/in-south-carolina-the-judges-have-sympathy-for-the-families-of-terrorists-if-they-are-white\/","title":{"rendered":"In South Carolina, the Judges Have Sympathy for the Families of Terrorists \u2026\u2026\u2026 If They are White"},"content":{"rendered":"
At a bail bond hearing for Dylann Roof (no bail for murder, but $1 million for weapons charges), the families of the victims gave statements, as is common in South Carolina, the judge, who (unsurprisingly) has a history of racially insensitive comments, took pains to remind everyone that the family that raised a racist terrorists are victims in all this too<\/a>:<\/div>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The judge began the hearing with a statement of sympathy for those slain \u2014 as well as for Roof’s family.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWe have victims, nine of them, but we also have victims on the other side,\u201d Gosnell said. \u201cThere are victims on the other side, this young man’s family. No one would ever have thrown them into the whirlwind they have been thrown into.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>In a statement later, the Roof family extended its \u201cdeepest sympathies and condolences\u201d to the families of the victims. \u201cWords cannot express our shock, grief, and disbelief as to what happened that night. We are devastated and saddened by what occurred,\u201d they said, asking for privacy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Michael Daly pithily observed:<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Charleston County Magistrate James B. Gosnell began Friday\u2019s bond hearing for mass-murderer Dylann Roof by declaring that the killer\u2019s family members were victims as well.<\/span>

<\/span>At least he did not repeat an opinion that he offered in another proceeding a dozen years ago.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThere are four kinds of people in this world\u2014black people, white people, red necks, and n—rs,\u201d Gosnell advised a black defendant in a November 6, 2003 bond reduction hearing.<\/span>

<\/span>The comment led to a judicial disciplinary proceeding and a 2005 determination by the state Supreme Court. The court\u2019s written finding reports Gosnell\u2019s lame defense.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ah \u2026\u2026\u2026 South Carolina.<\/p>\n

Rather unsurprisingly, the accused is completely unrepentant over his acts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>More evidence also emerged that Roof, a high school dropout with a criminal record that began this year, may have been motivated by racial hatred. Law enforcement officials said he had confessed, and that during the confession, expressed strong anti-black views. Officials characterized him as unrepentant and unashamed.<\/span>

<\/span>Roof told officers that he wanted word of his actions to spread, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah \u2026\u2026\u2026 South Carolina.<\/p>\n

<\/a>And the cherry on this sh%$ sandwich is the fact that while that state and US flags were flown at half staff, the Confederate flag flying nearby has been kept at full staff, because the law drafted by South Carolina bigots forbids flying the flag at half staff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After Dylann Storm Roof<\/a> allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 miles away in Columbia, the state\u2019s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina\u2019s palmetto flag flew at half-staff as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina<\/a> and prayer vigils were planned. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature\u2019s own \u2014 state senator Clementa C. Pinckney<\/a> \u2014 had not died in the attack.<\/p>\n

But a third flag within view of the State House \u2014 a Confederate one \u2014 flew as high and as proud as ever, flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.<\/p>\n

This looked bad.<\/p>\n

But, it seemed, no one \u2014 particularly not South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) \u2014 could do anything about it. This was a matter of law. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,\u201d a Haley spokesman told ABC<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cOnly the General Assembly can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The law that moved the flag was quite detailed: The flag could not fly from the capitol dome, but had to appear at a memorial near the dome and could appear in legislators\u2019 offices. Legislators even specified the type of flag, its placement, and the dimensions of its display. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It ain’t all bad though, a Republican legislator in South Carolina has mooted a bill to take down that symbol of treason and racism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the wake of the shooting in Charleston<\/a> that took the lives of nine African Americans in a historically black church by a shooter with apparent white supremist sympathies, a State Representative from South Carolina announced plans Friday to introduce legislation that would remove the Confederate flag from the state capital.<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Norman “Doug” Brannon<\/a> said the motive behind the planned bill wasn’t politics, but instead the loss of a friend. Specifically, Brannon spoke of Democratic State Senator Clementa Pinckney, a pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the victims of the fatal shooting. <\/p>\n

“I had a friend die Wednesday night for no reason other than he was a black man,” Brannon, a Republican who is white, told Hayes. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 Small steps, I guess.<\/p>\n

I expect Brannon to be turfed out in the next election, and it is likely that he thinks that this is the case as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a bail bond hearing for Dylann Roof (no bail for murder, but $1 million for weapons charges), the families of the victims gave statements, as is common in South Carolina, the judge, who (unsurprisingly) has a history of racially insensitive comments, took pains to remind everyone that the family that raised a racist terrorists …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,1052,969,978,1001,1076],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-crimes","category-evil","category-politics","category-racism","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}