The taxpayers have been forced to subsidize public monuments to treason and slavery.  These are not American values.  The taxpayers have no reason to pay for displays of the emblems of our country's enemies or paeans to those who opposed everything we stood for.

Taking the symbol away, and the problem remains, it's just more hidden.  No one is talking about issues at hand, like what made a kid with blacks friends morph into a white supremacist in a matter of years and how he was able to kill 9 people in an instant.  That didn't happen in a vacuum, and if this were a foreign terrorist, we would not be discussing flags, we would dissecting the why's and how to prevent a occurrence.

The underlying issues are basically off limits so long as we focus on some stitched nylon that may or may not come down at a handful of places.

Deal with the actual issues and the symbols will take care of themselves.

NYShooter: "And, while the country is embroiled in this, manufactured, symbolic, mostly phony, 'issue,' [...] You gotta hand it to Jamie, and the Oligarchs, they really know how to toss around those shiny pennies, and laugh their asses off as we get all hot and red faced expressing our moral outrage while they steal our children's futures right out in the open, and right out in front of our morally indignant faces."

What's been truly "phony" here for far too long has been white Southerners' collective and uncanny ability over the last 150 years to re-characterize and romanticize its treasonous and ultimately failed effort to secede from the Union as some sort of glorious undertaking and noble cause, and one which was undertaken in the defense of state and individual sovereignty.

However, the actual historic record clearly says otherwise. In his infamous "Cornerstone Speech" of March 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens spelled out in remarkable detail the entire rationale for his faux-nation's very existence, which was to preserve and promote the South's "peculiar institution" of human slavery -- and perhaps more ominously, its proponents' crackpotted notion of the white man's inherent physical, intellectual and moral supremacy over his Negro chattel, which has remained with us ever since.

This aforementioned white Southern capacity to rebrand an otherwise truly immoral and anti-American stance as a regionally patriotic endeavor, is what ultimately anabled southern states to first underwrite and then impose Jim Crow-era segregation and discrimination upon their African American populations, following the North's aborted effort at Reconstruction in the years after the Civil War.

Therefore, I would argue that the post-Civil War resurrection and re-entrenchment of the Confederate battle flag within white Southern society has been wholly representative of that race-based undertaking. And as I noted the other day, that damned flag has heretofore been entirely symbolic of America's dark side and seamy underbelly.

Further, that flag's application as the most visible emblem of a truly dubious "Southern heritage" has been remarkably potent, and its effect has at various times proved quite quite lethal to those who from time to time have dared to challenge the prevailing social status quo in the region. (See "Freedom Riders," "Philadelphia, MS" and "King, the Rev. Martin Luther, Jr.")

If there's indeed been a silver lining to the black cloud that's shrouded the country since the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, it's that this tragedy suddenly and unexpectedly ripped the blinders off many, many people across the country, exposing to them the entirely mythological underpinnings of "Southern heritage" in a most remarkable way. Not surprisingly, they are repulsed by what had otherwise always been there for them to see, had they really only bothered to look.

And in that respect, I'd further offer that quite possibly not since Selma, has the progressive movement in the United States been presented with such a real and viable opportunity to push back forcefully against the still-very real idea of white privilege in our country.

Those who would continue to assert and propagate that ridiculous privilege both know it and are likely terrified by that prospect. That accounts for the increasingly shrill voices we're hearing from the far right in its desperate attempts to defend neo-Confederate symbolism, and further deflect the blame for the Charleston atrocity away from its inherent racism and instead onto the shortcomings of our legal and mental health systems.

Because if we can finally and forever discredit the singularly warped notion of white Southern identity politics which the Confederate flag and its related symbols have come to represent, it's not at all inconceivable and far-fetched that its noxious consequences will subsequently and quickly recede from American society. Thus, the case for true equality amongst all of our citizenry can be allowed to advance in a most significant way.

The very idea that "Jamie and The Oligarchs" are somehow orchestrating events here to their own immediate material benefit, well, I'll not give that distracting argument any undeserved credibility by going there. Rather, if history tells us anything here, it's that random and unforeseen events can sometimes hold profound and immediate consequences for both a nation's course and its people's destinies.

So, suffice to say that this is a very real window of opportunity that's been opened for us here. But that said, this window may not remain open for very long if we don't avail ourselves of this chance offering, and allow the winds of change to clear the air of the pungent stench of neo-Confederatism that permeates much of our national and our local politics -- even perhaps, I daresay, to the point of once and for all.

Scalia (joined by Thomas and Alito) offered more of a rant than a dissent.  Scalia's characterization of the Court's interpretation of the law as "jiggery-pokery"  signals a polemic rather than a serious dissent.  "Established by the state," means what it says and says what it means. Because it was used seven times.  No need to go further. The Court is Just rescuing the law from drafting errors.   And, the rant was big on  personalized attack.  Scalia summarizes: The Supreme Court favors some laws over others and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.

permitting "unbanked" and "underbanked" customers to take out small loans, cash checks, pay bills, and open savings accounts --

But they want to keep flying the flag of the Confederacy, representing states that seceded from the Union, who wanted nothing to do with that other America and now want to forever honor and enshrine a symbol of slavery, oppression, discrimination, racism and division?  

Sure, that makes sense...

Because he has nothing to lose, he just says what he thinks, and people respond positively to refreshing candor v. pander.  

Social media have bypassed the Very Important People who decide who is worthy of attention.

Looking ahead to the November 2016 election, Mrs. Clinton leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 48% to 40%, in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup. Her lead grows to 10 points in a face-off with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and 14 points against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The survey of 1,000 adults, conducted June 14-18, found that Americans are almost evenly divided on whether they want the next president to be a Republican or a Democrat. But among many key demographic groups, Mrs. Clinton outpaces the support for her party.

For example, Latinos favor a Democratic president over a Republican by nine percentage points, but Mrs. Clinton's average lead over Messrs. Bush and Rubio is 42 points. Similarly, she draws more support than an unnamed Democrat among women under the age of 50.

Seems like things are tipsy-turvey from your description, Jim.  8 points isn't neck and neck, and 2 points behind that isn't a good a position to be in.

What happened to those double-digit leads?

That said, I quite obviously have no problem with the Baltimore ME classifying Freddie Gray's death as homicide, because he found probable cause to do so in his examination of the body. And that's because I, for one, do not believe that people possess an innate physical capability to nearly sever their own spines at the neck while their hands are handcuffed behind them.

But once again, you appear just as eager and determined as ever to prove to your own particular satisfaction -- if no one else's -- that a possible victim of alleged police misconduct was somehow primarily responsible for the fate which ultimately befell him (or her, as the case may be).

I'd like to know more about how/why Gray's death was ruled a homicide and if there was any pressure on the medical examiner to do so.

"I think that the media is giving Bernie a pass right now," McCaskill said in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he's a socialist. I think everybody wants a fight and I think they are not really giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they're giving to, certainly, Hillary Clinton and the other candidates."

Like so many of the other cocktail party chatterers who populate our Fourth Estate in the Beltway nowadays, the folks at Tiger Beat by the Potomac want to see a food fight in the Democratic Party, just like the one that's currently brewing in the GOP. And if they have to manufacture controversy where it might otherwise not exist in order to cause one, then so be it.

I don't disagree at all with Sen. McCaskill's contention that "[the media] are not really giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they're giving to, certainly, Hillary Clinton and the other candidates."

For whatever its reasons, that media establishment has deigned to cast Sen. Sanders as a useful agent provocateur in its own "War on Hillary and That Wayward Penis She Calls Her Husband." And in that regard, they see no real need to delve into his political history and background at the present time -- with emphasis on the phrase "at the present time."

Yes, it's true that Bernie Sanders is an avowed and unapologetic socialist, and that the media has thus far seen fit -- again, for whatever their reasons -- to ignore that fact. But let's realize that the media has also not shown much if any interest in Sanders' very real accomplishments as the longtime mayor of Burlington, VT.

That record shows him to be an effective public official whose tenacity, resolve, policies and actions were primarily responsible for the extraordinary rebirth of that once-decaying and derelict city, allowing it to move out from the shadows of its Industrial Age past and into a very promising future.

Bernie Sanders is one of the good guys. And quite honestly, the American people really should learn more about this rather remarkable man -- especially in face of the political milieu of opportunists, scoundrels and certifiable loons who are jockeying for position within the GOP.

That said, I also share McCaskill's belief that the Vermont senator is much too liberal to be elected president. And in that regard, I freely admit that my own support for Hillary Clinton is grounded primarily on that entirely practical reason. She's electable, at a time when the alternative being offered by the GOP is unthinkable.

But to be perfectly frank, that's certainly no knock on Sanders personally, but rather offers an entirely logical -- if altogether depressing -- conclusion about the currently polarized state of our country's politics as a whole.

So, it's not that Bernie isn't worthy of us. Far from it. Instead, I'd say that right now, we are not really worthy of Bernie. Further, I think Sanders himself is likely fully cognizant of the fact that he's unelectable, given the present political climate.

Rather, through his candidacy, he seeks to drive the public discussion to the left, away from the divisive clown car rhetoric on the right that captivates far too many people's attentions, and thus compel us to honestly confront real issues that truly matter in people's daily lives.