House would rather burn the U.S. Constitution

[struggle4progress]

June 24, 2005
BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

<snip> Now comes the U.S. House of Representatives, with its loathsome constitutional amendment banning flag burning, yet again, the most anti-American notion to dribble out the backside of Congress since Joe McCarthy.

Burning a flag in protest is speech. Hateful, ignorant, reprehensible speech, perhaps, but no more so than donning a Ku Klux Klan hood or a Nazi armband. The easiest way to grasp the fact is this: The Boy Scouts burn flags, because that is the respectful way to dispose of them. Under the new law, respectful burning would still be OK. But burning in protest would be illegal.

I didn't think we lived in a nation where protest was banned in the Constitution. But we might.<snip>

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steinberg/cst-nws-stein24.html