June 27, 2006, Wedge gets stuck
We are losing troops and spending billions of dollars in Iraq, each and every week. The Taliban may be regrouping in Afghanistan. OBL and the AQ leadership remains at large. The federal budget deficit, and our trade gap, are at record levels with little relief in sight. Scientists are making troubling new findings about global warming. Tens of millions of Americans feel their jobs are threatened by illegal immigration, and there has been no minimum wage increase for over a decade. With all this going on, of course, it's obvious what the most important issue of the day is, warranting a full senate debate and vote: flag burning.
The latest brilliantly choreographed Karl Rove designed wedge issue, a proposed constitutional amendment to permit Congress to outlaw "desecration" of the American flag, came perilously close to passing with the required 2/3 of the Upper House, but the senate nonetheless rejected the measure 66-34.
For those keeping score, Joe Lieberman voted the correct way (NO) on this asinine infringement of free expression and dissent (not that this will necessarily help him win his primary, though it might.)
No one wants to see the flag disrespected. But look: the flag is a piece of cloth... we are a secular republic, and we are not to have "sanctified" icons... Indeed, I understood Judeo-Christian doctrine to mean that we weren't even supposed to worship graven images... It's amazing, but not surprising, that the same people who can't recite the freaking ten commandments... don't understand the First Amendment either.
Well, we needn't think about this piece of crap amendment (supported, btw, by virtually all Senate Republicans save Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and ex-Republican Jeffords of Vermont, and opposed by a bunch of Democrats, though not majority leader Reid, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus, and some others)... until next time... when it'll be used as a wedge issue going into the 2008 presidential race!
Comments
The utter inanity of this legislation and other such jingoistic foolishness is always shown in greater relief when I see the flag "desecrated" in the most noxious commercial ways. How sacred is this symbol when companies like used car dealerships routinely "flag" their advertisements to drum up sales to run-of-the-mill patriots? I wonder if Mr. Frist would have a problem with this: http://www.abcunderwear.com/flagcollection.html
Posted by A Fellow from East Tennessee at June 28, 2006 11:38 AM