LGBTQ news and entertainment
By a vote of 94 – 20 the South Carolina state House voted to remove the Confederate flag from state house grounds.
Earlier this week, the state Senate had passed the same measure. The bill now goes to Gov. Nikki Haley who supports the measure.
By a vote of 37-3 the South Carolina state Senate voted to remove the Confederate Flag from the State House grounds.
The issue now goes to the state House where it must pass by a two-thirds vote, then be signed by Gov. Nikki Haley.
This flag’s presence became a national story in the aftermath of nine African-Americans were murdered during a Bible study at a historic church on June 17.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says, “Today, we are here in a moment of unity in our state, without ill will to say it’s time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds.”
Bravo, Gov. Haley for an excellent speech and for stepping up.
|
| Pic via Facebook |
According to Salon.com, Gov. Nikki Haley may have had a change of heart over the weekend regarding flying the Confederate Flag near the state house’s ground.
The governor has announced a 4pm press conference for today where she will reportedly call for the flag’s removal.
Controversy erupted around the flag that has flown on South Carolina’s State House grounds since 1962, when it was put there in defiance of the civil rights movement, after it flew at full mast the day after the gruesome murder of nine African-American churchgoers by an apparent white supremacist.
Pastor and South Carolina Senator Clementa Pinckney was one of the victims of the church attack. His body will lie in state in the Capitol rotunda where the flag flies right outside.
After pictures of the alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, posing in front of a Confederate Flag surfaced calls for the flags removal grew quickly.
A MoveOn.org petition demanding Haley “Remove the Confederate Flag From All Government Places” has already garnered over half a million signatures.
Removal of the flag would require a two-thirds majority in the state legislature where Republicans outnumber Democrats 106-64.
Over the weekend 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for the removal of the flag as a symbol of racism.
In the aftermath of the horrific Charleston church shooting, the Confederate flag – long a symbol of racism to many in the US – still flies over the South Carolina capitol.
In a rare moment of unity, both President Obama AND 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney call for the the flag to be lowered.
Current GOP presidential candidates were not so brave.
Sen. Marco Rubio derided such calls as ignoring a “states rights” issue. While Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal sought to divert to a false “religious freedom” angle.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush still isn’t sure if the attack was racially motivated although the shooter has admitted to wanting to start a “race war.”
#HeadsInTheSand
|
| Former Texas Governor Rick Perry |
“This is the M.O. of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.” – GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry in response to President Barack Obama’s Thursday remarks.
Perry also shifted the discussion from guns to drugs, saying, “It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”
More at Right Wing Watch.
According to CNN, Dylann Roof, the 21 year old gunman who shot and killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, told investigators that he wanted to start a race war.
One survivor of the incident said that Roof responded to a man’s pleas to stop shooting by saying, “No, you’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country … I have to do what I have to do.”
His roommate told ABC News that Roof was “big into segregation.” And the Berkeley County, South Carolina, government tweeted a picture of him wearing a jacket with flags from apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that was ruled by a white minority until it became independent in 1980.
By telling authorities his aim, Roof admitted he attacked unarmed civilians for political purposes in an act of terror.
John Mullins recalls “racist slurs in a sense” that Roof made while the two attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina, though he also remembers him having black friends.
“He would say it just as a joke,” Mullins told CNN. “I never took it seriously. But … maybe they should have been.”
Joey Meek told ABC that talk of reinstating segregation was nothing new for Roof, his roommate. He’d been plotting something for six months, though “he never did any of that,” and authorities weren’t tipped off.
“I think he wanted something big like Trayvon Martin,” Meek said, referring to the black Florida teen whose shooting death at the hands of George Zimmerman — who was acquitted of murder — provoked huge protests. “He wanted to make something spark up the race war again.”
More at CNN.
In a stone cold sober opening, Jon Stewart began last night’s edition of The Daily Show with a joke-free monologue on the shooting deaths of nine black Americans in a South Carolina church by a white racist.
“I’ve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because of what happened in South Carolina.”
“Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them who wanted to start some kind of civil war.
“The confederate flag flies over South Carolina. And the roads are named for confederate generals.
“And the WHITE guy’s the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him.
“We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the things —al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS – they’re not shit compared to the damage we can do to ourselves on a regular basis.”
Police in Charleston, South Carolina say a white gunman killed nine African-Americans during a Bible study class at an historic black church on Wednesday night.
Police are searching for a white male, approximately 21 years old, with sandy blond hair. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
More at CNN.
UPDATE:
The suspect, Dylan Storm Roof, had been apprehended about 245 miles northwest of Charleston, according to USA Today.
Police said the suspect, from Columbia, S.C., had been sought in a black Hyundai with vehicle tag LGF330 and appealed to the public for any information on his whereabouts.
A Facebook page for a Dylann Roof’ carries a photo of a young man in a bowl-like haircut similar to the image in a surveillance photo outside the Emanuel AME church just before the killings Wednesday night. The page says he attended White Knoll High School in Lexington.
The Facebook page also carries a photo of Roof standing in in front of a swamp forest wearing a jacket with patches of the racist-era flags of South Africa and Rhodesia, the one white-ruled country now called Zimbabwe.
The Huffington Post is reporting that a grand jury has indicted former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager on the charge of murder in the April shooting of an unarmed black man, the prosecutor announced on Monday.
“I think the people of the 9th circuit elected me to be accountable to them, and that’s what we intend to do,” Charleston County Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said during a news conference following the announcement of the indictment Monday. “They have to know they have someone prosecuting the case who is accountable to them.”
Check back for updates.