I proposed the same as a moral right -- I like your statute.
Cheers,
jk
Yeah why not pass an amendment that puts us in the same bank as China, N.Korea and Saddam lead Iraq right?
Idiot.
ummm, if you had read the post, you would have noticed I didn't support the amendment.
As for China, North Korea, and Saddam/Iraq, consider what Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker:
It doesn’t even prohibit flag burning, it just authorizes Congress to pass a law prohibiting it. As opponents point out, that would put the United States in the company of China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, pre-invasion Iraq, and other tyrannies. But it turns out that France, Germany, Italy, and India, all of which are reasonably free countries, also have laws against insulting their national ensigns. (Japan, Norway, and—cartoons notwithstanding—polite little Denmark forbid the burning of foreign flags but not their own.) The flag-desecration amendment would hardly mean the death of free expression in America.
Less noticed is that it is already lawful to prosecute conduct that tends to draw a crowd or effects a breach of the peace, under the "fire in a crowded theatre" line of cases.
Here is the acid test for flag burning. If the law is to be different for burning an American flag and for burning a pillowcase, how and why?
The practical problems are also immense. The sales of 51-star flags will skyrocket, or 6 pointed stars, or missing a stripe, etc. Can a cop testify that he counted the stars before the flame consumed them, while being surrounded by presumably angry unruly people of every viewpoint? Will he testify that he was counting stars rather than keeping himself safe in a hostile environment?
Glad it went down, though the legal work it would have sent to my practice could have been large, esp. near DC.
18 USC Sec. 700
1989 - Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 101-131, Sec. 2(a), amended subsec.
Prior to amendment, subsec. (a) read as follows:
''Whoever knowingly casts contempt upon any flag of the United States by publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon it shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.''
Subsec. (b). Pub. L. 101-131, Sec. 2(b), amended subsec. (b) generally. Prior to amendment, subsec. (b) read as follows: ''The term 'flag of the United States' as used in this section, shall include any flag, standard colors, ensign, or any picture or representation of either, or of any part or parts of either, made of any substance or represented on any substance, of any size evidently purporting to be either of said flag, standard, color, or ensign of the United States of America, or a picture or a representation of either, upon which shall be shown the colors, the stars and the stripes, in any number of either thereof, or of any part or parts of either, by which the average person seeing the same without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag, standards, colors, or ensign of the United States of America."
Hey Bruce, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Commenting by HaloScan.com
