Aba Leader Blasts Dole For Flag Amendment Push

The American Bar Association’s president criticized Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole on Friday for supporting a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the U.S. flag.

Dole’s “political ambitions have outstripped his decency as an individual,” ABA President George Bushnell Jr. said.

Bushnell called Dole a “bona fide hero” of World War II. But he said amending the Constitution to ban flag desecration would be an “obscene and outrageous action.”

“For him to … support this assault on the Constitution has got to mean that his political ambitions have outstripped his decency as an individual,” the ABA president said. Bushnell, of Detroit, stressed that in criticizing Dole he was speaking for himself and not the association.

A spokesman for Dole, Clarkson Hine, said the amendment is “supported by millions of patriotic Americans” and noted that 49 states have called on Congress to pass it.

“Sen. Dole is proud to be a longtime supporter of constitutional protection for the flag, whether the liberal president of the ABA likes it or not,” Hine said.

Bushnell contended the American public is being “manipulated and misled” by those who support such a constitutional amendment.

“When Americans know the facts, their views change,” Bushnell said at a news conference as his 375,000-lawyer group began its convention.

He said a recent public opinion poll taken for the ABA showed that 64 percent of the 635 registered voters surveyed said they favor an amendment to ban flag desecration. Thirty percent opposed it.

“But when asked in a follow-up question if they would favor or oppose such an amendment if they knew that it would be the first in our nation’s history to restrict freedom of speech and freedom of political protest, the results were dramatically different,” Bushnell said.

He said 52 percent then said they opposed the amendment, while 38 percent favored it.

Bushnell described politicians who support the proposed amendment as “sunshine patriots” who “seem willing to go blindly down the path of restricting speech that they themselves find repugnant and distasteful.”

He said that includes Democrats and independents as well as Republicans. “I don’t think it’s partisan, I just think it’s rotten,” he said.

“This is fundamentally a free speech issue; it’s not a flag issue,” he said. “History teaches us that first free speech goes and the very next thing is free press.”

The House overwhelmingly approved a proposed constitutional amendment in June to overcome Supreme Court rulings that said flag-burning can be a protected form of political expression.

The Senate has not yet acted on the proposed amendment. Passage by a two-thirds vote there would send the measure to the states for ratification. Approval by three-fourths of the states - 38 - would make it the Constitution’s 28th Amendment.

Bushnell, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, said he is offended by those who desecrate the flag.

“But I did not serve my country in order to protect that symbol of our great country,” he said. “I fought to protect the ideals it represents, including the right of free speech - especially wrongheaded, ill-considered and offensive political speech.”