because of the Chattanooga tragedy, and then snarked that he was 'happy that the White House had apparently noticed and done the same." Geez...

But I thought the very same thing you did. How is the racist hate crime shooting in Charleston NOT domestic terrorism???

Still, I'm wishing all the dead may rest in peace. But BOTH were terrorist acts.

Term used by a Gov't when a destructive event it usual supports or actively engages in is done by someone it doesn't like.

Terrorism is violent or the threat of violence used against a civilian population to achieve political ends.

Attacks on military targets are never terrorism.

I'm sorry, I'm not defending anybody, but I'm tired of the word "terrorism" being abused.

... so they need a new one-word-fits-all to describe anyone who does something they don't like.

-- Mal

the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group

The law has its own jargon. Sociology has it's own jargon. So does linguistics. And masonry. And auto mechanics. Everybody pretty much knows at least one. And in jargon, words can mean different things. In linguistics, "tree" is a variety of syntactic structure (typically trees are binary and are only right branching, for instance).

"Terrorism" is jargon if you're in law enforcement. It's the definitions they use.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/terrorism/terrorism-definition

Looks like they assumed it was international terrorism and a goal would surface. But failing to find an international connection, they'd likely relabel it "federal crime of terrorism." Unless they can't how the guy wanted to influence or intimidate the US government.

As for Roof, his explicit goal was to cause whites to rise up to kill blacks, to show the way. It's unclear how he intended to coerce the black population: The specifics are things have to impute to him. To lay low? Stop making demands? Accept being 2nd class citizens? That's the problem with "coerce": it's not a complete predicate (sorry, jargon there). It doesn't have a complete meaning by itself, it means something like "using force or intimidation, cause ______ to ________." If I coerce a specific population, it means I "use force or intimidation to cause that specific population to _____________." To what?

We can argue that lack of information doesn't matter if we have suspicions. But then go back to the Chattanooga shootings. We lack information that it was international terrorism and IS-connected. Should we just assume and take our presuppositions as fact? (Is that any way to run a legal system? Judge Lynch would be proud. Who needs facts when we have an accused Tory, an execution squad, and suspicions?)

Courts use the same jargon as law enforcement (or, rather, it's the other way around) most of the time. Common usage counts for little.