Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights

[im10ashus]

Wow! Is it an election year already?

It must be because Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate have initiated the debate over amending the Constitution to ban flag desecration that always marks the opening of the political season.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who sometimes lapses into sanity, was having a bad day Monday when he led the committee to a 10-7 vote to add this line to the Constitution: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

The division was almost along party lines. Nine Republicans and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, a frequent disappointment when it comes to Constitutional matters, voted for the amendment. Seven Democrats opposed it, including Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, and Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the ranking Democrat on the Constitution subcommittee.

When the full Senate took up the issue today, the amendment failed by one vote. It needed 67 votes to pass. It got 66.

cont'd...