more on Flag Desecration Amendment Crisis

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: JGoldstein () urbantechgroup com
Date: May 23, 2005 4:47:25 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Flag Desecration Amendment Crisis



owner-ip () v2 listbox com wrote on 05/23/2005 03:38:22 PM:

>  From the ACLU
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> Flag Desecration Amendment Crisis
> Congressional supporters of the so-called flag “desecration”
> amendment are pushing forward this week. This proposed amendment to
> the Constitution would betray the promise of our democracy by
> restricting the First Amendment. In the past we have been able to
> check their attempts but now, for the first time ever, there may not
> be enough votes in the Senate to stop it.

<snip>

> Why should you care so much about this proposed amendment? It
> infringes on freedom of speech by placing restrictions on the First
> Amendment. It also sets the stage for the government to restrict
> other speech it might disagree with. What’s next? Amending the
> Constitution to prevent people from criticizing the President during
> times of war?
>

Where is the infringement of speech when the Congress and the States
use the Constitutionally provided amendment procedure to change the
Constitution?  If this is something that people feel passionately enough
about, then we amend the Constitution and that's that.  Its why we have
the amendment procedure, isn't it?

This is no more an infringement of the 1st amendment than the
prohibition amendments were an infringement of other areas of the
Constitution.  Perhaps they weren't a good idea, but they followed the
Constitutionally provided procedure and so they were added to the
document.

The ACLU's slippery slope argument is totally specious, dishonest
analogy.  Let's see someone in the Congress put forward a Constitutional
amendment to disallow criticism of the President and see how far it  
gets.
I'm guessing you couldn't even get a single sponsor for the bill.

--
Jonathan Goldstein
c: 215-266-5948

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