At least one presidential candidate isn't rushing to condemn the Confederate flag — and he's a Democrat

As Mother Jones reported yesterday, all the presidential candidates had commented on the controversy over the Confederate flag that broke out after the massacre of nine black civilians at a church in Charleston, South Carolina — except former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia (D), who has a long history of defending the rebel army and its banner.

Well, Webb has finally spoken, saying in a Facebook post that while the flag has "been wrongly used for racist purposes in recent decades," it would behoove us to "also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War." He said we have to respect "the complicated history of the Civil War," and notably did not call for any of the Confederate flags on government property to come down.

As The Week's Marc Ambinder recently pointed out, the racist nature of the flag hasn't been confined to recent decades: "There is no revolutionary cause associated with the flag, other than the right for Southern states to determine how best to subjugate black people and to perpetuate slavery."

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At any rate, while the debate over the Confederate flag rages on, we can be sure of one thing: Jim Webb didn't do his long-shot campaign against Hillary Clinton any favors this week.