SOUTH CAROLINA: AG Alan Wilson Fights Demand For Legal Fees Over Marriage

Via the Associated Press:

South Carolina’s chief prosecutor says the state shouldn’t have to pay legal fees for a couple who challenged the state’s gay marriage ban. Attorney General Alan Wilson says in papers filed Wednesday he was merely defending the law of the land as it stood before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on gay marriage in late June. Attorneys for Colleen Condon and her partner Nichols Bleckley sued last year to get a marriage license. They have asked to be reimbursed $153,000 in legal costs.

A second couple is also asking to be reimbursed $92K.

Viral Video Of The Day

At the KKK rally in South Carolina on Saturday, one counter-protester thoughtfully provided musical accompaniment. The clip below has since racked up nearly 800K views.

(Tipped by JMG reader Daddy Ray)

Viral Photo Of The Day

The above tweet went wildly viral over the weekend. Yahoo News reports:

White-supremacist groups and African-American demonstrators clashed in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday, resulting in at least five arrests and seven people taken to hospitals as tensions — and temperatures — flared following the recent decision to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds. But it was the powerful image of a black police officer assisting a man wearing a black T-shirt bearing a swastika and struggling in the heat that resonated online. In the photo, the officer, Leroy Smith, is seen holding the arm of the unidentified protester as he helped him up the stairs and out of the sun. According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Columbia hit a high of 98 degrees Saturday. The image was uploaded to Twitter by Rob Godfrey, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s deputy chief of staff. And it quickly went viral.

The man's shirt advertises a neo-Nazi hate group.

SOUTH CAROLINA: The Flag Is Down

There was a huge roar from the crowd when a squad of South Carolina state troopers marched out. Chants of "USA! USA!" followed when one of the troopers began turning the crank to lower the flag.

UPDATE: Breitbart columnist reacts.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Gov. Nikki Haley Signs Bill To Remove Confederate Flag

The flag comes down tomorrow morning.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Confederate Flag To Come Down After Lopsided House Vote

Via the Washington Post:

The Confederate flag flying on South Carolina’s statehouse grounds is set to come down after the House voted 94-20 to remove it. The bill, passed early Thursday morning, now heads to Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s desk and she is expected to sign it. After more than 13 hours of debate — which became increasingly contentious as the night wore on — House Republicans and Democrats agreed not to amend the legislation with a proposal that threatened to make final passage more difficult. Just before 1:00 a.m. the lawmakers approved the legislation 93-27 in a critical second reading vote. Minutes later, the bill easily cleared the two-thirds threshold needed for it officially pass the chamber, a hurdle the Senate cleared earlier this week.

After its removal the flag will be displayed in a nearby museum. One of last night's most impassioned speeches came from Republican Rep. Jenny Horne.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Senate Nixes Flag

Only three senators voted to keep the flag:

The South Carolina Senate has voted to remove the Confederate flag from a pole on Statehouse grounds. The 37-3 vote Monday allows the state to remove the flag and the flagpole where it flies as soon as it passes the House and is signed by Gov. Nikki Haley. The bill must pass a two-thirds vote, which is likely to be held Tuesday. Monday's vote comes less than a week after the 15th anniversary of South Carolina taking the flag off the Capitol dome where it flew since the early 1960s and moving it to beside a monument honoring Confederate soldiers. Lawmakers had largely ignored the flag until the killing of nine black people during a Bible study at a historic African-American church on June 17.

SOUTH CAROLINA: GOP Rep Rants About "Abomination" Rainbow Flag During Debate On Confederate Flag Removal

Via Jezebel:

The debate is airing live on C-SPAN, which is a great time for some states’ rights grandstanding by Republicans looking to win reelection bids. Republicans like State Senator Lee Bright, who is circulating a petition to keep the flag, writing on Facebook, “Right now, we have an opportunity to protect the symbol of our Southern heritage. The Confederate battle flag proudly represents states’ rights, so let’s fight to keep it flying!” Just in case you had any illusions whatsoever about what Senator Bright thinks about his black constituents. Determined to make today a hateful twofer, Bright began his remarks this morning by inveighing against gay marriage and the Supreme Court, for some reason. He referred to the White House being lit up in what he called “abomination colors,” meaning the rainbow flag of LGBT rights. “We can talk about a flag all we want, but the Devil is taking control of this land,” Bright added.

Coulter Attacks SC Gov. Nikki Haley Over Confederate Flag: She's An Immigrant

Via Mediaite:

Ann Coulter has quite a knack for driving liberals crazy, but last night she made a comment that even has conservatives mind-boggled. On Fox Business Network, while talking with Kennedy about Charleston, Coulter brought up South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who announced she supports efforts to take down the Confederate flag at the state capitol, and said, “She is an immigrant and does not understand America’s history."  Haley was born in South Carolina. Her parents were immigrants. Coulter acknowledged this fact but otherwise stood by what she said in a pretty bizarre tweet this morning. Yes, in standing by her comments on Haley, Coulter invoked Major Nidal Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter), Anwar al-Awlaki (the U.S. citizen/Islamic militant taken out by a drone strike in 2011), and the Octomom, apparently lumping the Republican governor in with them.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Gov. Nikki Haley To Call For Removal Of Confederate Battle Flag

The flag's removal will require a two-thirds majority from the state legislature, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 106-64.

Southern Baptist Leader Russell Moore: Take Down The Confederate Battle Flag

"The Confederate Battle Flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents a defiance against abolition and against civil rights. The symbol was used to enslave the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, to bomb little girls in church buildings, to terrorize preachers of the gospel and their families with burning crosses on front lawns by night. That sort of symbolism is out of step with the justice of Jesus Christ. The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christians, let’s listen to our African-American brothers and sisters. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our shared history with them. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt—and as part of the Body of Christ we were all slaves too in Mississippi. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors. Let’s take down that flag." - Russell Moore, president Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptists Convention.

Todd Starnes is ever so pissed.

RELATED:  The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 expressly to support slavery after Baptists in northern states joined the abolitionist movement. But it wasn't until 1995 that the SBC marked its 150th anniversary by issuing a formal apology. An excerpt:

WHEREAS, Our relationship to African-Americans has been hindered from the beginning by the role that slavery played in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention; and

WHEREAS, Many of our Southern Baptist forbears defended the right to own slaves, and either participated in, supported, or acquiesced in the particularly inhumane nature of American slavery; and

WHEREAS, In later years Southern Baptists failed, in many cases, to support, and in some cases opposed, legitimate initiatives to secure the civil rights of African-Americans; and

Therefore, be it RESOLVED, That we, the messengers to the Sesquicentennial meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, assembled in Atlanta, Georgia, June 20-22, 1995, unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin; and

Be it further RESOLVED, That we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously (Psalm 19:13) or unconsciously (Leviticus 4:27); and

Be it further RESOLVED, That we ask forgiveness from our African-American brothers and sisters, acknowledging that our own healing is at stake.

ALSO RELATED: Several days ago the Southern Baptist Convention issued a formal declaration of civil disobedience against the Supreme Court should it rule in favor of same-sex marriage.

Charleston Mass Murderer Researched The Same White Supremacists Group Once Addressed By FRC President Tony Perkins

As I have mentioned here many times over the years, in 2001 then Louisiana state Rep. Tony Perkins addressed (photo above) the Council Of Conservative Citizens, an SPLC certified racist hate group with active chapters in more than a dozen states including South Carolina. Perkins' speech to the CCC (formerly the White Citizens Council) came only five years after he was fined by the Federal Elections Commission for lying about an $82K payment to Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Per its website, the CCC opposes "race mixing" and considers black people "a retrograde species of humanity."

Today we learn that another fan of the CCC is Charleston mass murderer Dylann Roof. The Inquisitr quotes from Roof's just-discovered manifesto:

"But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words 'black on White crime' into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?”

The Inquisitr notes that the CCC's website has crashed today due to it now being linked to the Charleston massacre. The SPLC maintains a lengthy file on the CCC, here's an excerpt:

The danger of "race-mixing" has been a consistent theme for the group since the days of the White Citizens Councils. "God is the author of racism," said one story on the CCC's website in 2001. "God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God." After the NAACP declared its boycott of South Carolina in 1999 because the state continued to fly the Confederate battle flag over its Capitol dome, the CCC distributed a mock advertisement proclaiming, "South Carolina Now Has Whiter Beaches!" The Citizens Informer item urged whites to vacation in South Carolina and "enjoy a civil liberty that has been denied to them for many years at hotels, restaurants and beaches: the freedom to associate with just one's own people." Along with theological arguments, the Citizens Informer has published countless stories detailing "scientific" evidence for white people's inherent superiority.

According to the SPLC, the CCC calls LGBT Americans "perverted sodomites." The SPLC also notes that the membership rolls of the Council Of Conservative Citizens "overlap greatly" with those of the League Of The South, the racist group which recently distributed signs at an Alabama anti-gay marriage rally addressed by Roy Moore, whose return to the Alabama Supreme Court was bankrolled by the League's former president.

Tony Perkins and other hate group leaders regularly scream with outrage when the LGBT movement is compared to the black civil rights movement. Yet time after time after time after time we find that both movements share common enemies. The next time Perkins appears on cable news, we need to pressure every outlet to mention what HE has in common with confessed mass murderer Dylann Roof.

Mike Huckabee: If Only Somebody In That Church Had Been Carrying A Gun Too

Todd Starnes writes at Fox News:

President Obama had a moment to bring healing to the nation, but he chose to play politics instead, using the terrible massacre in Charleston to call for a crackdown on guns. Everything with this administration is about politics. Everything. Gov. Mike Huckabee told me he was disappointed with President Obama’s “grandstanding.” “All the proposals this president has put forward on gun control would not have stopped this shooting,” he said. According to the GOP presidential candidate, one thing might have stopped the tragedy: A pistol-packing church-goer. “The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or (if) there had been an off duty policeman somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter," Huckabee said.

UPDATE: Right Wing Watch has the video.

E.W. Jackson Blames Charleston Murders On Gays, Liberals, And President Obama

Jon Stewart: I Can't Joke About This

Jon Stewart opened his show last night with a somber, joke-free monologue about the mass murder in South Carolina.

"Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them who wanted to start some sort of civil war. The confederate flag flies over South Carolina. And the roads are named for confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing—al Qaeda, ISIS, they’re not shit compared to the damage we can do to ourselves on a regular basis."

SOUTH CAROLINA: Confederate Flag Flies At Full-Staff Outside Capitol Building

Via NBC News:

In solemn tribute to the nine people gunned down at a Charleston church, two flags atop the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, were lowered to half-staff on Thursday. They will stay there for nine days in honor of each victim. But in a bewildering display, a Confederate flag on statehouse grounds is still flying high. It wasn't an oversight. It's because of state law, according to reports. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has jurisdiction over how and when state flags fly — but the Confederate flag is under the authority of the state's General Assembly. It can't be changed in any way without a sign-off from the General Assembly, The Washington Post reported. A state press secretary confirmed that detail to the online magazine Slate. "In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag," the press secretary said. "Only the General Assembly can do that."

The Confederate battle flag and its display is legally protected under the South Carolina Heritage Act, which was enacted in 2000.

Today's New York Daily News

SOUTH CAROLINA: Newspaper Apologizes For Gun Ad Next To Shooting Story

The Hill reports:

Charleston's Post and Courier apologized Thursday for publishing an ad for a local gun range next to a front-page story about a mass shooting in the city. “The front-page sticky note that was attached to some home delivery newspapers on the same day as this tragedy is a deeply regrettable coincidence,” the newspaper said in a statement, according to blogger Jim Romenesko. “We apologize to those who were offended.” “It was just unfortunate timing,” an advertising department manager told Romenesko. “The ad had already been scheduled.” The ad attached on Thursday morning’s cover of The Post and Courier promotes a shooting range in Summerville, S.C. It lists a ladies night event and says, “$30 gets you everything.” Among the products included in the ad are “50 rounds of ammo,” a “pistol or revolver” and a “range pass” for shooting.

Tweet Of The Day - E.W. Jackson

(Tipped by JMG reader Mark)

Alveda King: South Carolina Murders Happened Because We Allow Abortion

"Dr." Alveda King has had three abortions, so she totally knows what she talks about.