A man marches with white supremacists and Nazis, is pictured carrying a shield with a fascist symbol, and later drives his car at high speed into a crowd of anti-racist counter-protesters, killing one person and seriously injuring others. Is it a hate crime? Is it terrorism? Yes and yes, in a moral sense, but it took a lot of hemming and hawing for this particular Department of Justice to get to the point of saying either of those things in the legal sense. Finally:

On ABC News’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions said they would be looking at it in part as a domestic terrorist attack. “It does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute,” Mr. Sessions said. “We are pursuing it in the Department of Justice in every way that we can make a case. You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation towards the most serious charges that can be brought because this is unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack.”

When you do something in the name of white supremacy and yet manage to lose Jeff Sessions … sheesh. That’s extreme. Let’s hope that Sessions’ comments Monday morning represent a real shift from this genius take cited by CNN Sunday evening:

The suspect in Saturday's deadly vehicle incident in Charlottesville, James Fields Jr., may have intended to send a message -- and not just harm the immediate victims, according to a Justice Department official familiar with the investigation. The official says that while Fields' motive is not yet clear, federal investigators have gathered enough evidence to be suspicious that he wanted to send a message.

They’re suspicious that he wanted to send a message. You think? Yes, legal investigations have to proceed with caution and so on, but apply the “what if he had a Muslim name” and “what if he’d been pictured with an ISIS symbol” test to this one and ask yourself if more than 24 hours later the Justice Department would still be merely suspicious that he wanted to send a message.