The Senate is once again holding hearings on a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. It's nice to know that in an age of 500 BILLION dollar deficits and terrorism around the world, this is what our elected leaders are wasting their time on. But of course, it's an election year and these kinds of issues help them display their shallow version of patriotism. So they'll posture and preen and gesture and whoop and it will be a grand show for the world to see. At what point do Americans grow up and drop this silly notion that patriotism is wrapped up in a colored piece of cloth? Probably never, I know. How about a constitutional amendment banning demagogues like Orrin Hatch from being elected the Grand Poobah of the Elks Lodge, much less Senator?
Absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah, well, get used to it from Hatch. He averages about a constitutional amendment per year, more or less. Flags, abortion, gay marriage, you name it. Gets a lot of press for a while, but hereabouts [Utah] his constitutional brayings seem to be having a diminishing impact. Crying Wolf effect I imagine.
But, to be fair, he comes by it naturally, being from Utah. The state legislature here just finished a session in which it passed out of committee to the floor, debated and voted on a non-binding resolution recommending the US get out of the UN. It passed a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriages even though gay marraiges are already illegal under Utah law. It passed another act banning "partial birth abortions" even though such late term abortions are already illegal under Utah law and so far no one has been able to show that so much as one partial birth abortion has ever been performed in a Utah hospital or clinic. It is, of course, an election year. And the legislative clock ran out on the last day of the session with bills dealing with budget short falls etc. still in the pipeline but unvoted on at the midnight deadline because of the time taken up on the posturing resolutions and bills. Ah, Democracy. Ain't it grand?
More on Orin Hatch and the U.S. Constitution.... from the Salt Lake Trib, Monday, 15 March:
By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- ..... In the 28 years Hatch has served in the U.S. Senate, he has sponsored or co-sponsored 67 resolutions to amend the Constitution, the fundamental blueprint of American democracy that has been changed only 27 times in its 215-year history.
From declaring abortion and race-based quotas unconstitutional to making voluntary school prayer and foreign-born presidents constitutional, most of the resolutions Hatch supported were introduced repeatedly over several years, sometimes the same year in near-identical form. In 1987 alone, the Utah Republican attached his name to four balanced-budget amendments, three anti-abortion amendments and two school prayer amendments.