When Just Waving It Isn't Enough

This week our hallowed upper house of Congress, the Senate, found time to put aside our country's more pressing matters in order to debate and vote on a constitutional amendment banning desecration of our flag. This amendment, in one form or another, is passed regularly by our (collectively) younger and dumber members of the House, but the amendment has, up until now, always stumbled in the chambers of the Senate. Thankfully it failed again. I think this time Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, decorated World War II veteran, said it best:

"While I take offense at disrespect to the flag, I nonetheless believe it is my continued duty as a veteran, as an American citizen, and as a United States senator to defend the constitutional right of protesters to use the flag in nonviolent speech."

Three Republican senators voted against the amendment, including Senate Majority Whip Mitch O'Connell, who also apparently has the intellectual capacity to understand our first amendment:

"Our Founding Fathers wrote the first amendment because they believed that, even with all the excesses and offenses that freedom of speech would undoubtedly allow, truth and reason would triumph in the end"

The other Republican senators voting against the bill were Robert Bennet (Utah) and Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island).

The Christian Science Monitor explains why the vote was not as close as it seems. Essentially, the votes were managed among the Democrats to avoid, as best as possible, repercussions for those senators up for reelection in 2006.

I cannot understand why average Americans fail to grasp this issue, which easily boils down to a single sentence:

Only so long as we have the right to burn our flag, is our flag worthy of not being burned.

Think about it.

Curious about how your senators voted? Find the vote tally here. As you can tell by the roll call of the vote, the senators from my home state of New Hampshire, Republicans Judd Gregg and John Sununu, have apparently misplaced whatever clue they may have once possessed.