Flag burning.THE FLAG-BURNING ISSUE is a sign of our peculiar times. In an earlier day, the common-sense social sanction against flag-burning would have sufficed. Someone burning the flag would have defined himself as a crank and been invited out of town, or maybe tarred and feathered. One would have no more burned the flag than walked nude down Pennsylvania Avenue Pennsylvania Avenue is a street in Washington, D.C. joining the White House and the United States Capitol. Called "America's Main Street," it is the location of official parades and processions, as well as protest marches and civilian protests. to protest the lack of day care. But social sanctions have become enfeebled en·fee·ble tr.v. en·fee·bled, en·fee·bling, en·fee·bles To deprive of strength; make feeble. en·fee  ble·ment n. , partly because of the destructive 1960s; and any day now the
Supreme Court may declare that walking nude down Pennsylvania Avenue is
protected by the right to petition The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. the government for redress of grievances. Congress has been sculpting sculpting Cosmetic surgery The surgical reshaping of a tissue. See Deep tissue sculpting, Facial sculpting. legislation on flag burning. The Court will probably reject it as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. If the Court strikes down the flag-burning legislation, several options are open. A constitutional amendment strikes us as overkill overkill Vox populi An excess of anything . Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, however, gives Congress the power, by simple majority vote, to remove any matter from the jurisdiction of the Court. At some point, Congress is going to have to reassert the "deliberate sense of the people" against a Court acting on abstract "rights." This would be a good occasion to recover self-government. |
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