Flag-burn amendment a vote short
WASHINGTON – The Senate Tuesday rejected by a single vote an effort to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to ban desecration of the American flag. The vote followed a two-day debate marked by political calculations and sharp disputes over the limits of free speech.
The 66 to 34 vote fell just short of the two-thirds majority required to approve a constitutional amendment and submit it to the states for ratification. It marked the latest setback for congressional attempts to supersede Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990, which narrowly ruled that burning and other desecrations of the flag are protected as free speech under the First Amendment.
As expected, three Republicans – Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Robert Bennett of Utah, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island – voted against the amendment, and 14 Democrats voted for it. The House approved the measure 286-130 last year.
GOP congressional leaders have offered several measures in recent weeks important to their conservative political base, including an anti-gay marriage amendment and further cuts in the estate tax, culminating with Tuesday’s vote on flag burning.
Polls show that most Americans want flag desecration outlawed, and the amendment’s proponents said they were trying to stop unelected justices from thwarting the public’s will. They contend that burning a U.S. flag in public – even though it rarely happens these days – is a reprehensible insult to the nation’s founders and a dishonor to those Americans who died fighting tyranny.
The amendment’s opponents agreed that flag burning is repugnant, but argued that U.S. soldiers died to preserve freedoms that include controversial political statements. Flag burning “is obscene, painful and unpatriotic,” said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who lost an arm fighting in World War II, in a floor speech Tuesday. “But I believe Americans gave their lives in the many wars to make certain that all Americans have a right to express themselves – even those who harbor hateful thoughts.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., summarized the proponents’ views. The flag’s special symbolic status, she said, makes its desecration different from holding a sign denouncing the president. Burning an American flag in anger, she said, is “conduct, not speech” because the flag is “the symbol of our democracy, our shared values, our commitment to justice, our remembrance to those who have sacrificed to defend these principles.”
Behind the constitutional rhetoric were political considerations. Republicans are eager to energize conservative voters this fall, and the flag initiative – even if doomed to fail – is seen as a surefire way to inspire them, especially a week before Independence Day.
The vote marked the closest advocates have come to banning flag desecration in many years of trying. In 2000 the Senate fell four votes short, and supporters had hoped the GOP’s 55 to 45 majority would put them over the top this year. The GOP-controlled House has repeatedly approved the amendment by hefty margins, and advocates say they handily could have obtained the needed ratification by three-fourths of the states if the Senate had followed suit.
The debate divided senators along unusual lines. Opposing the amendment was McConnell, the Senate’s second-ranking GOP leader, and Bennett, a quiet, mainstream Republican. The Democratic supporters included Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a presidential hopeful.
The amendment’s chief sponsor, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, disputed claims that the measure was politically motivated and an unwise use of the Senate’s time in the face of war in Iraq, high gasoline prices and a growing federal deficit. “Fifty state legislatures have called on us to pass this amendment,” Hatch told his colleagues.
He and his allies had tried for days to pick up one more vote. But virtually all senators had stated their positions publicly, making efforts at negotiation or persuasion fruitless.
The Constitution was last amended – for the 27th time – in 1992, when the states belatedly ratified a 1789 bid by Congress to regulate lawmakers’ pay increases.