"Biden did the right thing granting clemency to 37 federal death row inmates."

Writes Russ Feingold (at The Hill).

With this courageous action, President Biden has lived up to his promise as the first president to openly oppose capital punishment and secured his legacy as a champion of racial justice, compassion, and fairness.

If he's truly opposed to capital punishment, he should have commuted the sentences of all 40 federal death row inmates. That would have taken more courage. The 3 excluded from this show of empathy were the 3 most famous. Applying principle to them would have kicked up a much bigger political storm. So where is the principle?

President Biden has shown clear moral leadership by commuting these 37 federal death sentences. Not only does this action effectively fulfill his 2020 promise to end the death penalty at the federal level, it should also serve as a model and an incentive for state leaders to follow suit.

No. The "37" says it all. You need to save all 40 before you can claim "clear moral leadership." The real test would be sparing those last 3: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Robert Bowers, and Dylann Roof.

That would be difficult. That would take courage.

Biden just commuted "most federal death sentences" — that is, 37 of them — but in all this mercy, he left 3 men doomed.

I'm reading "Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office/Thirty-seven inmates will serve life without parole. Three others, involved in cases of 'terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,' still face execution" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Who were the 3? 

Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

What made those 3 stand out in that collection of 40 murderers? Oddly enough, the link on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev goes to at 2020 article titled, "Death sentence overturned for Boston Marathon bomber." Bowers and Roof are alike in that their victims were chosen based on the group they belonged to and the killings took place in a house of worship. But what makes Tsarnaev like them?

What puts the 3 in one set is their fame. Anything else? Who were the 37 who received commutations? It's easier to spare nobodies.

Biden is, it seems, trying to rack up achievements. (Did you hear the one about the Equal Rights Amendment?) Should he be doing that after we've learned so much about how not there he is these days? His party has been voted out, he's already gone, and we don't know who is acting in his name. That's the real outrage here.

"Hours after the Fulton County district attorney announced felony murder and other charges against the former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks... a number of Atlanta police officers called in sick just before a shift change Wednesday evening."

"The city was left scrambling to cover absences as the Atlanta Police Department tried to tamp down rumors of a mass police walkout that spread widely on social media.... 'We do have enough officers to cover us through the night,' Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) told CNN. 'Our streets won’t be any less safe because of the number of officers who called out.'... 'This is not an organized thing, it’s not a blue flu, it’s not a strike, it’s nothing like that,' Vince Champion, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, told NBC News. 'What it actually is is officers protesting that they’ve had enough and they don’t want to deal with it any longer.'... Champion added that many officers felt prosecutors had not publicly shared sufficient evidence to back up the charges leveled against Rolfe, in part because the district attorney only released a video still that appears to show the former officer kick Brooks rather than the full video itself.... Although the quick action in Atlanta has been praised by civil rights advocates and hailed as a victory for activists, some in the police department have decried the quick process. Bottoms said that morale in Atlanta’s police department was at a low.... 'The thing that I’m most concerned about is how we repair the morale in our police department,” Bottoms.... 'and how do we ensure our communities are safe as they interact with our police officers.'"

WaPo reports.

In the comments over there, somebody says:

They harassed the guy for 45 minutes and when he panicked and grabbed their taser, they shot him when he was running away. Then kicked him. Sorry guys, if you think that's what policing is, you should be calling in sick.

Why do these cops think someone like Dylann Roof should be gently apprehended (and given a cheeseburger) but a black guy should be harassed? And that he isn't expected to panic? And that those cops couldn't let him run, and go after him later?

That draws this sarcasm:

Cops should wait until 0.1 milliseconds before the stun gun barb pierces the cornea of the eyeball before shooting the perpetrator in the kneecap of their non-dominant leg to slow him down and then snuggle him into compliance.

“The rise of the bowl cut has nothing to do with the hairstyle itself, or the view that it’s somehow a cool or attractive hairstyle to be emulated.”

“In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s precisely the fact that it looks silly that it gained traction as a white supremacist symbol. Mark Pitcavage, the senior research fellow with ADL’s Center on Extremism, compares [Dylann] Roof’s bowl cut to Hitler’s mustache: an objectively ridiculous-looking, yet distinctive enough feature that it can be easily subject to memeification. Yet the rise of the symbol is inextricably tied to part of a larger effort to canonize Roof within the white supremacist movement. The ADL started seeing white supremacists incorporate the bowl cut into their iconography around 2017, a few years after the Charleston church shooting. Pitcavage says this timing is significant, in large part because in the immediate aftermath of the Charleston shooting, many white supremacists either disavowed Roof or expressed disapproval of his actions — not necessarily for moral reasons, but because they believed violence would attract undue scrutiny to the movement.”

From “How a White Supremacist’s Haircut Became a Symbol of Hate” (Rolling Stone).

"'I don’t really,' Trump said when asked... whether white nationalists were a growing global threat. 'I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It’s certainly a terrible thing.'"

WaPo reports.

Trump said he had not seen a manifesto, purportedly from one of the attackers, that named him as an inspiration for white identity ideology.... The alleged shooter wrote that he was a supporter of Trump in one sense but not completely: “As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policymaker and leader? Dear god no.” In the document, the man also stated that he was following the example of notorious right-wing extremists, including Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

Dylann Roof will represent himself.

He's on trial for murdering 9 persons in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.

What has he got to lose?

"FBI: Breakdown in background check system allowed Dylann Roof to buy gun."

WaPo reports:

Roof had been arrested for possession of narcotics in February, a felony charge that alone did not disqualify him from buying a gun. But [FBI Director James B.] Comey said Roof’s subsequent admission of the drug crime would have triggered an automatic rejection of his gun purchase if the information had been properly recorded in criminal-record and background-check databases.

Instead, Comey said, the data was not properly entered in databases of criminal records that are submitted by state, local and federal law enforcement agencies, and in records kept by the bureau.

So, now I see what information and data did. Information failed to get properly recorded. Data didn't get properly entered. Were any human beings involved?

Seriously, who screwed up? I can't tell from those sentences.

I haven't read any commentary on this story, but I assume this is an occasion to criticize Obama (and others) for calling for more gun control and to repeat the standard line that what we need is to enforce the law we already have.

"Over the course of centuries, black churches served as 'hush harbors' where slaves could worship in safety..."

"... praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah... rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement," said President Obama in his eulogy for Clementa Pinckney.

... We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.

Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas.  He didn’t know he was being used by God. Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace....

The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley... how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond — not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life.

Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood -- the power of God’s grace.... As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other — but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift....

I've highlighted the most religious part, including the brief exploration of the notion that God used Dylann Storm Roof pursuant to his famously "mysterious" ways. I've left out the material that was more specific to the individual man, Clementa Pinckney, and the various policy proposals — take down the Confederate battle flag, improve the schools, deal with possible racial bias in prison systems and in policing and job hiring, restrict guns. You can read all that at the full transcript at the link.

What's missing from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's "I'm sorry."

Here's the full transcript. I'll boldface what stands out to me:

Thank you, your Honor, for giving me the opportunity to speak. I would like to begin in the name of Allah, the exalted and glorious, the most gracious, the most merciful, 'Allah' among the most beautiful names. Any act that does not begin in the name of God is separate from goodness.

"This is also not to say that we should make this horrific event all about white women, or all about white womanhood. It’s not."

It's not to say it... except to the extent that you just did. It's not about you... but it's not not about you.

(The link goes to a New Republic article titled "I Don’t Want to Be an Excuse for Racist Violence Anymore/White women’s passive role in racist attacks like Charleston," by Chloe Angyal.)

"As we said in the Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you."

Said Felicia Sanders to Dylann Roof, who listened by video feed and could be seen standing, noy moving, looking blank.

Felicia Sanders is the mother of victim Tywanza Sanders, the first of the 9 persons Roof shot. According to this account in The Washington Post, Tywanza, 26, was the first person Roof shot, but not the first person Roof targeted. Roof aimed first at the oldest person there, a woman, Susie Jackson, 87. And Tywanza "put himself between the 87-year-old woman and the gunman and sought to talk him down." Roof shot Sanders and then Jackson.

Such strong and profound expressions of Christianity rarely appear in the media. Truly awe-inspiring.

Here's a new photo of Roof that's turned up. It would be ludicrous, like some nonracist's parody of a racist, if the fact of the massacre didn't block any possible comedy:



The NYT found the picture at a website (which it doesn't link to) that "features dozens of photos of Dylann Storm Roof...  posing with weapons, burning an American flag and visiting Southern historic sites and Confederate soldiers’ graves.... posing with wax figures of slaves."

It... concludes with a section labeled “An Explanation.” “I have no choice... I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

That reminds me in some ways of the Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who is carefully profiled in "The Inexplicable/Inside the mind of a mass killer," in The New Yorker a few weeks ago:

He made himself a sort of military commander’s uniform, in which he photographed himself before the crime; he consistently referred to a large organization, of which he claimed to be a prominent member but which does not exist; in his manifesto he interviews himself as if he were a hero; and the impression this gives is of a person who has erected a make-believe reality, in which his significance is undisputed....

ADDED: "I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight"... so, he chose the church — and unusually kindly people — because it was so easy. He "explained" that as "bravery," because he was all alone.

Dylann Storm Roof.

"The gunman wanted in the killing of nine people at a prayer meeting at a historic black church in this city’s downtown area was taken into custody Thursday morning in North Carolina."

Mr. Roof’s Facebook profile picture shows him wearing a jacket decorated with the flags of two former white supremacist regimes, in apartheid-era South Africa and in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe....

“I have to do it,” the gunman was quoted as saying. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

The link goes to the NYT where the top-rated comment — with 2,427 up-votes — sets out a bullet-point list of possible reasons why this happened:

• Hysterical, paranoid gun culture enabled by states trying to outdo each other with permissiveness

• Hysterical, hate-mongering right-wing TV "news," talk show hosts, web sites

• Foaming-at-the-mouth incitements to racism

• Continued un- and underemployment

"A white gunman opened fire Wednesday night at a historic black church in this city’s downtown, killing 9 people before fleeing and setting off an overnight manhunt...."

The NYT reports, based on statements from the police.

City officials did not release information about the victims and did not say how many people were in the church during the shooting. Hospital officials declined to comment....

In the first hours after the shooting, the police blocked reporters and passers-by from approaching the church, opposite a Marriott Courtyard hotel, because of a bomb threat. Many among the news media cluster were political reporters in town to cover campaign events of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush....

“It’s obvious that it’s race,” [said Tory Fields, a member of the Charleston County Ministers Conference]. “What else could it be? You’ve got a white guy going into an African-American church. That’s choice. He chose to go into that church and harm those people. That’s choice.”

UPDATE: The gunman is captured. New post here.