The Scourge Is Almost Eradicated

As Dana Milbank points out, our long national nightmare is almost over:

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 naive among us may have trouble appreciating how four flag-burning episodes would constitute a constitutional crisis. But the men and women of the Senate, ever alert to emerging threats, are on the case.

Thank Jeebus the fine men and women of the US Senate are stamping out (literally) this affront to American values that happens almost as much as Ben Stiller puts out a new movie.

Passing an Amendment to the Constitution abridging speech that almost never happens at a time when so much else is going on in the country and the world would be... well, it'd be par for the course for this politically motivated Rubber Stamp Republican Congress.

I would like to see an amendment banning the use of the rest of the Constitution as toilet paper, but then we'd have to change Presidents.

This is within a vote of passing. Who is asking for this?

UPDATE: Rude Pundit:

The Rude Pundit walks to a store, maybe even an old time Five and Dime, and plunks down his cash and purchases an American flag. Once he owns it, it's his property. No one has assigned him his Bush-prescribed flag. Chances are it wasn't even made in the United States. Now that it's his, this non-living thing, is he not free to burn it, use it to wash his car, wipe his ball sweat after sex, or hang it from his pick-up until it's just tatters in the wind?

C'mon, nutzoid freeper types. Do you want the government telling you what you can do with your property?

Yes, yes, and... yes.

UPDATE II: The bill lost. Flag burning will still be the periodic scourge to this great nation! And protected speech. As Pat Leahy said, you don't have a free speech clause for popular speech; you have it for unpopular speech. Freedom isn't easy. At least in this case, it still reigns.