{"id":143885,"date":"2018-01-04T23:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T04:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=143885"},"modified":"2018-01-04T23:00:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T04:00:53","slug":"missouri-lawmaker-not-punished-over-remark-about-hanging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/04\/missouri-lawmaker-not-punished-over-remark-about-hanging\/","title":{"rendered":"Missouri lawmaker not punished over remark about hanging"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Coat<\/a>
Coat of arms or logo (Photo By Tom Lemmens – Own work, based on File<\/a>:Seal of Missouri.svg and 1, Public Domain)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.\u2014 A Missouri lawmaker who called for the vandal of a Confederate monument to be hanged left a Thursday ethics hearing unpunished after his Republican colleagues voted down their only option to continue pursuing discipline against him.<\/p>\n

By simply disagreeing with the House Ethics Committee’s recommendation that he be reprimanded and stripped of his committee assignments, Rep. Warren Love derailed that effort. His fellow Republicans on the committee then voted down an opportunity to revive that possible punishment by continuing the ethics review.<\/p>\n

House Democratic Leader Gail McCann Beatty, who filed one of the complaints against Love, now is calling for action by Republican House Speaker Todd Richardson, who could still discipline him. Richardson did not immediately respond to Associated Press requests for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n

Love is under fire for an August Facebook post expressing hope that whoever vandalized the monument in Springfield, Missouri, would be \u201chung from a tall tree with a long rope.\u201d He has said he was using old cowboy jargon for saying he hopes the vandal is prosecuted, but Democrats have said his words evoke images of lynchings of black people.<\/p>\n

During the ethics hearing, Love apologized again but said he doesn’t deserve to be punished.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not admitting I did anything wrong,\u201d Love said. \u201cI am admitting that I made a statement that was taken out of context and offended certain people that took it to mean something that it did not mean, and I’m sorry for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suburban St. Louis Republican Rep. Marsha Haefner told Love during Thursday’s hearing that she finds it \u201calmost impossible\u201d he didn’t connect the dots with a lynching, and noted his comment came amid a nationwide controversy over Confederate monuments and white nationalist rallies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think you’re smarter than thinking it has no meaning in regards to race,\u201d she said. \u201cWhere I come from, this is not cowboy talk. It’s not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haefner voted to reprimand Love, but later voted against continuing the review.<\/p>\n

If Love continues to go unpunished, reaction to his Facebook post will stand in contrast to treatment of a suburban St. Louis Democrat who also faced backlash for a social media comment.<\/p>\n

Numerous top Republican and Democratic officials in Missouri called on Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal to resign after she wrote \u201cI hope Trump is assassinated!\u201d on her personal Facebook page in August and later deleted it. She has said the remark was made in frustration over Trump’s response to a white nationalist rally in Virginia that descended into violence.<\/p>\n

Senators in response formally reprimanded her in September, and the Senate Democratic leader took away her committee memberships.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems there is one standard for black, Democratic women and another for white Republican men, \u201c McCann Beatty told the ethics panel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.\u2014 A Missouri lawmaker who called for the vandal of a Confederate monument to be hanged left a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":143887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157],"tags":[31945,41782,41781],"class_list":["post-143885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","tag-house-ethics-committee","tag-missouri-lawmaker","tag-missouri-lawmaker-not-punished-over-remark-about-hanging","mauthors-summer-ballentine","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}