A protester burns a United States flag in Washington, January 20, 2005. A measure that would change the U.S. Constitution to let Congress ban burning the American flag was sent to the Senate floor on Thursday, setting up an election-year debate. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)Guess it is time for the next election-year-social-wedge-issue to come up. This is off Yahoo News:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A measure that would change the U.S. Constitution to let Congress ban burning the American flag was sent to the Senate floor on Thursday, setting up an election-year debate.
The amendment has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives by the needed two-thirds margin. The bill's sponsor, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (news, bio, voting record), said he believes it will pass the Senate.
The flag debate comes shortly after the Senate defeated a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages. Democrats say Republicans are scheduling votes on a string of similar issues to win support from conservatives who might otherwise not vote in the November congressional elections.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag burning was protected under constitutional free-speech guarantees, invalidating laws in 48 states and outraging veterans' groups and others who say that an important national symbol should be protected from defacement.
It is really nice to hear that our Congress is taking up this important issue of burning flags for debate. Meanwhile, nothing is being done about health care, immigration, job training, the environment, corruption, the growing inequality between the rich and poor, the jobless recovery, and so many other issues this country is currently facing. Well, Congress did debate on the war in Iraq, but even that debate was confined to your basic election-year politicking and name-calling between the two parties.
So let the election-year politicking and name calling begin for the flag burning social wedge issue....
2 comments:
Well they paraded out Miss America who made the brilliant statement "Did you know it's against the law to burn a dollar bill, but not the US Flag?".
Umhuh Miss America, I did.
Were you aware that a dollar bill is a note belonging to the US Treasury, and a flag is the property of an individual owner?
The Republicans are not advocates of an ownership society, the are quite the reverse.
Hillary is an opportunist at worst, or a clever politician smoking out the antirights Repulicrats at best.
Not my call to make, but the RIGHT to the flag is the clearest sign that we are freer in America than any other nation in the world, when that right goes, so does the claim of being the freest of the free.
Interesting comments 1138.
I didn't know that it was illegal to burn a dollar bill--what is the punishment if I perform such an illegal act?
This whole flag-burning debate is a complete waste of time. But since it is an election year, the Republicans have to trot out their tired, old social wedge issues to divert our attention away from the real Republican agenda of giving away the U.S. Treasury to their Big Business and rich elite constituents. What is worst, the Democrats always seem to fall into this trap of debating the Republicans on these social wedge issues--Hillary is the perfect example of an opportunits trying to court the moderate Republican and centrist voters on this. And while we have our Congress debating these issues of flag burning, and of last week's gay marriage, our country continues to sink under greater amounts of debt, the Iraq war, and a crumbling infrastructure.
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