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Remember that link in the last post about America being a police state? A single vote prevented a form of that from happening. It just amazes me that somehow these Senators believe that restricting free speech is patriotic. Apparently they conveniently forget the first amendment, that little bit about "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech..." I've written on here about this subject before after first becoming interested in after doing a paper on Texas v Johnson, and while I personally have no interest in setting fire to an American flag, I believe very strongly that it should be a protected form of speech. A symbol should never be above human rights and our American rights to distasteful and unpopular speech. Instead we try to become more like Cuba and (former) Iraq. Many veterans feel the same way.
Senator John H. Chafee (R-RI) in a 1999 statement for the Senate Judiciary Committee said, "In its more than 200 years, the Constitution has been amended only 27 times -- one time was acknowledged a mistake, and repealed. The amendments have reaffirmed and expanded individual freedoms. This proposed Amendment would not expand the list of freedoms. This Amendment for the first time would limit individual freedom."
Of course what the Senate and House are really after is to get the hardcore Conservative base to come out to the polls since they have nothing else to go on for the Fall elections. Because obviously the two most pressing problems in America are not the Iraq war, health care, poverty, or global warming, but gay people in love and the handful of people who burned a flag last year. Sigh.
And speaking of global warming, I saw Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth the other night and must say it was really good. My favorite fact: Out of 928 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, exactly ZERO denied that it was man-made. However in stories in the mass media, 53% made the claim that global warming is unproven. Yet again reporters, pundits and politicians pretend to know more than scientists. And the media is biased to the left? Yeah..... Just because some people believe that invisible little pink men in tights grab onto to objects and bring them down to the earth instead of gravity doesn't mean that it has to be mentioned in every news report to be "balanced". Sometimes truths are truths, which is what the movie tries to point out.
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