Sacred
By now I guess you’ve read that having absolutely nothing left to do, like overseeing the federal government or budgeting, the House has decided that it is necessary to start the long process to amend the Constitution of the United States to protect the flag. If not Susie Madrak has the article.
It doesn’t make any difference that no one in the US bothers to burn the flag anymore. Even flags that are supposed to be burned because they are really ratty looking tend to be stuffed in the bottom of the trash bag to be dumped in a land fill rather than contributing to air pollution and global warming by being burned.
Giving that Congress has never even bothered to pass a law specifying the dimensions of the US flag, [the military has a flag regulation specifying the various ratios, but there is no counterpart for non-military flags] it’s odd that they are showing so much interest.
I think it’s disrespectful for all of these people to be wearing flag patches, for General Myers to wear a flag shirt, for Bush I to have a flag on the back of his boating jacket, for Bush II to sign small flags, but I didn’t feel obliged to tell them that these are violations of the US flag code. Somehow I don’t think these violations are going to be punished under this new amendment, which means the purpose is to punish political expression.
If they want to pass an amendment to protect something that really fits the common definition of sacred, and which is burned a good deal more often than flags in the US, they could be pushing a bill to make it illegal to burn crosses.
[Update: Thanks to August J. Pollak for the flag signing.]
