Flag Burning Amendment

Let's see now.... The budget deficit is out of control. Bird flu is threatening a horrific pandemic. The Iraq war is growing in horrors every day. The ice caps are melting. The poor are getting poorer, and so are the middle class. Massive numbers of Americans have no healthcare.

And the Republicans are working up Constitutional Amendments to keep them from turning gay or "desecrating" the flag.

Let's start with the homophobia. Given the parade of self-righteous God Gay-fearing GOP heterogogues who've turned out to be gay, and the strange and malicious Skinner-phillic methods wingnuts employ in attempts to control the gayness within -- and you really must see this watch-me-hug-a-man-and-not-get-an-erection demonstration of "curing" homosexuality through the use of same-sex hugging -- methinks that, when it comes to right-wing leaders, the phobia of homo is less a fear of other gays and more a fear of the homosexual feelings within themselves.

"Curing" each other of gayness is a flourishing cottage industry in Christianist circles.

But since they've so far been mostly unable to simply arrest those they hate, now they want to amend the Constitution to make sure that homosexuals are denied the civil right to marry in a civil ceremony.

My message to these sanctimonious types who fear gay marriage would take away the sanctity of their marriages: If your marriage is so fragile that it is threatened because of the mere legality of your being able to divorce your spouse and enter into a gay marriage, then I'd say you have some serious issues in your personal life and should not turn to the Federal Government in some desperate attempt to make your gay feelings unconstitutional.

The burning question in the Beltway-Christianist power circles is whether Bush's apparent low interest in the amendment proposition will help or hurt the hate amendment's chances.

On the flag desecration front, on the other hand, the GOP is finally standing up, ready to do something about all those flag desecrators we see every day.

I see flag desecration every time I drive, when I see supposed patriots who have pasted Old Glory onto the ass side of their cars, where our American colors get belched on by automobile exhaust and diesel grit and road grime.

Of course, they'd say they're only exercising their first amendment rights. Silly people! Don't you know President Bush has already outlawed the first amendment? (Freedom to protest is something America advocates only for China and Russia.)

At least these Republicans have their priorities, um, straight and have, er, come out to reveal that their #1 priority is not addressing the serious business of this nation but rather cultivating fear and hate in their base in desperate attempts to get elected, again, by dividing and conquering.

No, she hasn't gone and backed the Flag Desecration Amendment. No, Hillary Clinton wants to have her cake and eat it, too, so she's backing a federal law to ban flag desecration.

Because, you know, there's like a huge rash of flag burning happening in America, right? You see it every day, don't you? Your neighbor does it! Your school teacher does it! The fireman down the block does it! Kids studying French in middle school do it! John Kerry does it every day over his morning coffee before going to the office!

Her support of [Utah Senator Bob] Bennett's bill follows her position in Congress last summer, when a constitutional ban on flag-burning was debated. Clinton said then she didn't support a constitutional ban, but did support federal legislation making it a crime to desecrate the flag.

In her public statements, she has compared the act of flag-burning to burning a cross, which can be considered a violation of federal civil rights law.

Oh -- but not a constitutional ban! I guess that's supposed to appease freedom-lovers. I can hear it now: "I voted for the flag desecration law before I voted against the amendment." You laugh. But I predict you'll see something like that when she runs for president.

The Bennett-sponsored measure outlaws a protester intimidating any person by burning the flag, lighting someone else's flag, or desecrating the flag on federal property.

I suspect this law could backfire on the wingnuts. After all, what's more desecrating than:

• Putting a flag sticker on your car bumper. (Tailpipe exhaust and road grime are not sacred.)
• Flying a flag in the rain or snow. (That's against the rules.)
• Flying the flag at night in the dark. (Also against the rules. Come on, jerky boys! Don't you remember what you learned in scouting?)
• Sweating in an American flag t-shirt. (Pit stains could count as desecration, I think.)
• Wearing a flag on your underwear. (Skid marks are definitely desecration in my book.)

Oh, and you bikers? Better remove that flag from your jackets or The Man is gonna getcha! Football teams? Don't play any games on Federal property. Grass stains don't go with red, white and blue.

Also facing charges would be our armed forces, who properly dispose of a worn flag by burning it.

Then of course there's the United States Constitution, which will be cut at its most fundamental self-evident right -- freedom of speech -- in order to provide cheap pseudo-patriotic photo-ops for "public servants."

But political opportunists won't let practicalities or principles get in the way of a good pose and cheap rhetoric.

So Sen. Kerry has finally offered up his letter on the Downing Street Memo (full text below):

John Kerry’s office has released a copy of his letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee requesting an investigation of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures (and the Downing Street Memo) to LightUpTheDarkness.org.

June 22, 2005
The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman
The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV, Vice Chairman
United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
SH-211
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller:

We write concerning your committee's vital examination of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures. In particular, we urge you to accelerate to completion the work of the so-called "Phase II" effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence they received.

Last year your committee completed the first phase of a two-phased effort to review the pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Phase I-begun in the summer of 2003 and completed in the summer of 2004-examined the performance of the American intelligence community in the collection and analysis of intelligence prior to the war, including an examination of the quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorist groups. At the conclusion of Phase I, your committee issued an unclassified report that made an important contribution to the American public's understanding of the issues involved.

In February 2004-well over a year ago-the committee agreed to expand the scope of inquiry to include a second phase which would examine the use of intelligence by policy makers, the comparison of pre-war assessments and post-war findings, the activities of the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

The committee's efforts have taken on renewed urgency given recent revelations in the United Kingdom regarding the apparent minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security advisors. These minutes-known as the "Downing Street Memo"-raise troubling questions about the use of intelligence by American policy makers-questions that your committee is uniquely situated to address.

The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."

The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.

These issues need to be addressed with urgency. This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea. In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.

We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

Co-signers: Sens. Tim Johnson, Jon Corzine, Jack Reed, Frank Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer, Edward Kennedy, Thomas Harkin, Jeff Bingaman, Richard Durbin

...and now perhaps we see why it took a couple weeks to finally be released: 34 Democrats refused to sign:

And yet -- where are the rest of the Senate Democrats? There are 44 Democrats in the Senate, and Kerry circulated a draft of his letter to the whole lot of them two weeks ago. In the end, he was able to persuade just nine of his colleagues to sign on: Jon Corzine, Tim Johnson, Frank Lautenberg, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Jack Reed, Jeff Bingaman and Dick Durbin.

Where are you, Harry Reid? Any reason you didn't sign, Sen. Clinton? And while we wouldn't expect to see a signature from someone like Joe Lieberman on this letter, why don't we see your name there, Sen. Obama?

They refused to sign. Why? I'd like to know, Senator Salazar. Any weasel words this time, Senator Biden? How about you, Senator Feinstein?

Standing up for anything that actually addresses reality seems to be beyond their ability. No, these who feel unable to say, "Yes, I have questions, too," don't seem too hesitant to endorse the unnecessary-yet-dangerous Flag Burning Amendment. Is this a matter of kow-towing to the all-powerful Republican spin machine? Or do they truly believe that top-level documents from our staunchest ally in the War on Iraq are meaningless?

Maybe they just figure we won't notice. It seems likely that Clinton is burnishing her hawk credentials, but what about those others? What are they afraid of?

Again, I find myself sighing and saying to myself, Maybe next year we'll get some Democrats who stand for something instead of sit bend over for everything.