Flag Hags

This picture does not offend me.

It doesn’t offend me any more than pictures of people protesting the war, or protesting soldiers’ funerals with “God Hates Fags” signs. The latter may offend my political sensibilities, sense of propriety, and capacity for logic, but none of those trumps my belief in free speech.

This is one of many things I do not share in common with many members of our Senate, who are, as we speak, one vote shy of passing an amendment to the Constitution which would ban the desecration of the American flag.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

…The chamber has scheduled up to four days of debate on the flag-burning amendment this week. If that formula -- one day of Senate debate for each incident of flag burning this year -- were to be applied to other matters, the Senate would need to schedule 12 days of debate to contemplate the number of years before Medicare goes broke, 335 days of debate for each service member killed in Iraq this year and 11 million days of debate on the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country.

The flag hags are still looking for the last vote they need. It won’t be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid; he’s already announced his intention to vote for the amendment.