President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris are in Atlanta today to meet with leaders of Georgia's Asian American community, as well as to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At some point today, they're also going to meet with Stacey Abrams, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and with recently elected Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
The trip was originally scheduled to be a rally to promote the American Rescue Plan, as part of the White House's "Help Is Here" tour, but the rally part was cancelled following the mass shootings in Atlanta Tuesday.
The president is scheduled to make remarks at Emory University at 4: 40 EDT, so here is your White House video feed:
And this will be your open thread. Have a good weekend, and hug the people/animals/books you love.
[ CNN ]
"I know we as a society, may not yet to the point where we can count on dispassionate prosecution for what this guy actually did, rather than for what we judge his motives might have been."
...he was clear about his motives. He has said he wanted to "eliminate temptation" by killing these women. This is the defence he has already offered.
I find this argument that we cannot consider prejudice valid as a motive very odd. We already judge murders according to motive- that's why you have murder in the first, second and third degree. It's why we understand that manslaughter is different from murder, and the horrible neologism "unlawful killing" is different from both. We understand there is a difference between negligent homicide and deliberate. Why is it that understanding a prejudice against women, or against Asians, or against Asian women is not sufficiently "dispassionate"?
"what this guy actually did"
You are deliberately ignoring a vital part of "what this guy actually did" to make this argument. "What this guy actually did" was murder members of a minority for the stated reason that they represented temptations to him. He deliberately murdered Asian women- that was "what he actually did".