From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 12:15:55 +0800
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: Re: Flag burning vote TOMORROW and government-imposed ratings
In-Reply-To: <199706121208.IAA16778@homeport.org>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970612083739.0074149c@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>> 	Would a Flag Burning Amendment give the court clear guidance
>> that other offensive speech, not amended against, is now more ok?

At 06:23 AM 6/12/97 -0700, Declan wrote:
>Just woke up, but I would argue "no."  This would be the first
>constitutional weakening of the First Amendment ever. 
>Hardly a move that strengthens free speech protections. 

Normally when the government wants to weaken the First Amendment,
it does it through the courts, or makes laws nationalizing the spectrum :-)  
This isn't the first time CONgress has tried a flag-burning amendment; 
they tried it under George Bush* as well, and failed to get it through.
Does this look any different, under a Republican Congress?

[As somebody said, if you wrapped yourself in the flag as much as Bush did,
you'd worry about flag-burning too....  Clinton doesn't do it as much,
but he's no more a friend of civil liberties, and if the polls said
51% of the voters want him to sign it, he probably would.]

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
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