Atop the South Carolina statehouse, both the national and state flags flew at half mast yesterday. But not the Confederate Flag. The symbolic reasons loom large. The literal reason was uncovered by a reporter. “The flag is part of a Confederate War Memorial, and is not on a pulley system, so it cannot be lowered, only removed.” That actually sounds like an ideal solution.

+ “That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it.” In The Atlantic, Ta-nehisi Coates argues we should take down the Confederate Flag.

+ When Supreme Court justices wrote their opinions in a case related to the Texas DMV’s decision to reject license plates proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, they never imagined “that a white racist who posed in front of a car with a Confederate license plate would assassinate nine people in a historic Charleston, South Carolina, church, mere hours before the opinion would be read aloud.” From Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick: Reality Strikes the Supreme Court