The drumphers are listening with their drumph ears again. Elitist nazis think we are talking about the constitution when in fact we are just pissed. It's allowed now to be pissed.
How can one tell if the primary purpose is to incite violence? What objective standard is there to determine that? This is one of those laws. If the kkk were burning a flag, jailtime. If a bunch of blacks in Ferguson were doing it, no. Because we can trust the media and justices like ginsburg, kagan and sotomayor to determine who was inciting violence. We know they'll all be objective and impartial.
Note... I am very pro free speech even if I find it repulsive so I would not write a law banning flag burning. But... Hillarys law is no different that what Trump's staff and congress would have to write. From following the case law we know if you are going to try and curtail free speech it has to be for public safety reasons.
Flag burning is an attention getting mechanism. So the government should at least give the flag burner some attention. Government attention is called a list for surveillance. The big question being, what were the intentions, and do those intentions present a threat to public safety. Surveillance might answer that question. We should question anything you would not do while crossing the border, seeking asylum, seeking green card, or seeking citizenship. And especially when that expression is used by foreign religio-dictator groups who chant "DEATH TO AMERICA", while whistling for other dogs to join the pack, attracted by the flames of the flag. So, for example, Muslims seeking citizenship should not burn the constitution at their hearing.
IMV, "apple vs fruit salad". Disrespecting the flag is very much different from intentionally inflicting great harm.
Nobody is going to do anything, we are just pissed and it's nice to have a president that is also pissed.
There are already laws to prohibit threats to public safety. Why does one need to add an addendum about burning flags unless one wants to draw attention and make burning the flag the illegal act under pretense? That's like saying you can burn a flag unless you burn a flag while shooting a gun at people. Since a law exists to prevent you from shooting people, why does the flag need to be involved unless your intent is to draw attention to the flag?
This from the Washington Post, is almost unbelievable. ******** The Fix Donald Trump’s basic position on flag-burning isn’t really all that controversial By Aaron Blake November 29 at 3:27 PM Follow Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! 6:55 AM - 29 Nov 2016 51,30151,301 Retweets 142,606142,606 likes As our Philip Bump notes, it's not the first time Trump has pitted himself against things that have been defined by the Supreme Court as First Amendment rights — nor will it likely be the last. And as Bump also notes, Trump's decision to stand against flag-burning is likely to pit defenders of the practice “against the patriotism of people who find flag-burning unacceptable.” But the size of that latter group might be bigger than the coverage of this topic suggests. And Trump's position probably won't strike most Americans as being all that controversial. In fact, making flag-burning illegal appears to have had overwhelming public support as recently as a decade ago. It's controversial to attach such harsh penalties to it, and the fact it would require a constitutional amendment makes it a steeper climb, yes. But Trump's basic position is one that appears to have base-level appeal to a huge cross-section of Americans — no matter what the Supreme Court ruled about flag-burning in 1989. Polling on this issue is not at all recent and varies widely. But if we walk through it poll by poll, you get a sense for how broad the underlying support is for what Trump is advocating. First, the most recent quality poll, from the 2011 State of the First Amendment survey, showed 56 percent opposed a constitutional amendment (which would be required) to outlaw flag-burning. Five years prior, though, in 2006, Gallup and CNN polling both showed 56 percent favored such a constitutional amendment. 73 percent thought flag-burning should be illegal. These are all very different results, with little reason to believe there was some massive shift in public opinion in the intervening months and years. So what's up? Well, it appears that people broadly do think — or at least did think a decade ago — that flag-burning should be illegal. But if you layer on top of that the fact that it would require a constitutional amendment to make it so, support falls. And if you layer on top of that the idea that this is a free-speech issue — as the first pollster did — it falls so drastically that people suddenly agree with the Supreme Court's ruling and oppose an amendment. Here's the straight-up Fox News poll question that drew 73 percent support for making flag-burning illegal: “Do you think burning the American flag should be legal or illegal?” And here's the State of the First Amendment question, which reduced support for outlawing flag-burning by 35 points: “Some people feel that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to make it illegal to burn or desecrate the American flag as a form of political dissent. Others say that the U.S. Constitution should not be amended to specifically prohibit flag burning or desecration. Do you think the U.S. Constitution should or should not be amended to prohibit burning or desecrating the American flag?” And that poll isn't the only one to suggest a fuller description of free-speech concerns depresses support for an amendment. The same Gallup poll from 2006 happened to use the same wording as the State of the First Amendment poll in a separate question, and support for the amendment dropped from 56 percent to 45 percent. unpacked all kinds of constitutional issues when he brought up the idea of making flag-burning illegal. And, revoking the citizenship of offenders triggers a whole other constitutional debate — all of which is completely valid to debate. But his basic position on whether flag-burning should be illegal is really no more controversial than believing Roe v. Wade or Citizens United should be overturned — or that any other Supreme Court decision was wrongly decided and should be reversed or amended. Scott Clement contributed to this post.
So wait a second...you're whole point was that because Trump said this, he is going to be a disaster, but Hillary literally tried to legislate this into law, but that because SHE did it, the country would not be headed for a disaster by your logic? You make no sense so I'm done arguing because we already won. No point arguing with losers.
Apparently it was against both federal law and numerous state laws to burn flags and that's how the Supreme Court finally got involved in the challenges. It seems there were two cases, one in '89 and one in '90, with the '89 decision seemingly the most important. Texas vs Johnson. The decisions determined that US flags can be burned, but one cannot do it to incite violence, nor can you burn someone else's flag or the gov'ts flag. Another thing I found interesting was that it came down to a five-four decision on the Supreme Court. So there were federal and state laws against flag burning and only a Supreme court decision with a one vote difference is why flag burning is allowed. We take it as obvious that one should be able to burn the flag, but these two things seem like the question is a little more complicated than that.