Senator Clinton, in Pander Mode - A Blast From The Past NYT

I could not resist

Hillary Clinton is co-sponsoring a bill to criminalize the burning of the American flag. Her supporters would characterize this as an attempt to find a middle way between those who believe that flag-burning is constitutionally protected free speech and those who want to ban it, even if it takes a constitutional amendment. Unfortunately, it looks to us more like a simple attempt to have it both ways.

Senator Clinton says she opposes a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag-burning. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that flag-burning was protected by the First Amendment. But her bill, which is sponsored by Senator Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, is clearly intended to put the issue back before the current, more conservative, Supreme Court in hopes of getting a turnaround.

It's hard to see this as anything but pandering -- there certainly isn't any urgent need to resolve the issue. Flag-burning hasn't been in fashion since college students used slide rules in math class and went to pay phones at the student union to call their friends. Even then, it was a rarity that certainly never put the nation's security in peril.

Of course evolution occurred along the way as with all her variable positions past, present and future.

Mrs. Clinton says her current position grew out of conversations with veterans groups in New York, and there's no question that many veterans -- and, indeed, most Americans -- feel deeply offended by the sight of protesters burning the flag.


What did this glorious act specify The Protect The Act Act 2005

Of course exceptionalism comes straight in there

(1) the flag of the United States is a unique symbol of national unity and represents the values of liberty, justice, and equality that make this Nation an example of freedom unmatched throughout the world;

Gosh that brings a tear to my eye, I must stop laughing.

abuse of the flag of the United States causes more than pain and distress to the overwhelming majority of the American people and may amount to fighting words or a direct threat to the physical and emotional well-being of individuals at whom the threat is targeted; and

I saw a photo of an American wearing a Stars and Stripe mankini, that has to count as abuse!

Definition of flag of the United States.—In this section, the term ‘flag of the United States’ means any flag of the United States, or any part thereof, made of any substance, in any size, in a form that is commonly displayed as a flag and that would be taken to be a flag by the reasonable observer.

Burn that mankini! Please.

The punishment?

Flag burning.—Any person who shall intentionally threaten or intimidate any person or group of persons by burning, or causing to be burned, a flag of the United States shall be fined not more than $100,000, imprisoned for not more than 1 year, or both.

That makes one expensive charred mankini, yes he was allowed to take it off first.

It [The Act] went nowhere btw.

What did Trump propose?

"Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag -- if they do, there must be consequences -- perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!" Trump tweeted.

This is different how?

I am enjoying the pie throwing contests going on.

Could someone please tell me which planet this is so that I can avoid it next time around.

As The NYT concluded an I concur

But the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect expressions of political opinion that a majority of Americans find disturbing or unacceptable. As a lawyer, the senator presumably already knows that.

SCOTUS already had.

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Pricknick's picture

Perhaps the flag should be changed to having just one star to represent who controls the country.
The 1%.
Meanwhile, I continue to burn all the damn political mail we received this year. At least it helps heat the house.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

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Oldest Son Of A Sailor's picture

They've been raking Puerto Rico over the coals pretty good with a special set of laws specifically crafted just for Puerto Rico...

Screen Shot 2016-11-30 at 11.47.23 PM.png

They pretty much own the Island now...

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"Do you realize the responsibility I carry?
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."

~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,

I can remember was done by Cuban Americans protesting the sending back of the little boy to his father in Cuba.

Trump is bad; Clinton is bad.

I also have no doubts the constitutional scholars in the Obama mode, if elevated to the Supreme Court, would find any of this just fine and not in conflict with symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.

It's disgraceful conduct in my view, Clinton & Trump proposing stuff like this.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

They all evolve when convinient

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dervish's picture

Can't flags be abused in other ways, to avoid the stigma and penalties if one of these laws should pass?

They can be dyed, shredded, frozen, or sewn into mankinis. They could have shapes cut out of them, or things glued onto them, they could be dessicated and crushed into powder. They could be spindled and mutilated. The possibilities are endless.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

all manner of places where it's unneeded and unwanted.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

sojourns's picture

But it sure looks good that Trumpy is trying to save us from ourselves. Please tell me that is wasn't Trumpy wearing the mankini.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Wink

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loving posture for the past decades, any chance to suppress the showing of militancy and heading off wage-slave organizing, may well win 5 votes.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

sojourns's picture

SCOTUS rarely reverses and established position, which is why I say that, but you're right-- nothing can be judged with any expectation of stability.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

The Court will shave a little here and a little there and finally get to the 180. Look how long it took to repeal the 4th Amendment; but, it was done.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

sojourns's picture

The gov't wants to expand it's ability to hack private machines as of this coming Thursday

to help stop it follow this link

http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.22p/Y6KzzVS1SbyEflfg7...

and make the call(s)

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Amanda Matthews's picture

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

WoodsDweller's picture

Protestors can obtain a government-issued red-white-and-blue bunting which cannot reasonably be mistaken for a flag which can be ceremonially heated to below ignition temperature in a designated free-speech zone. Any statement they wish to make can be written down, not spoken aloud, and delivered to a law enforcement official who will proceed to burn it without reading. Any deviation from this straightforward procedure is terrorism and will be met with deadly force.
Thus the protestors' First Amendment rights will be ensured and no one will be offended by dissent.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

Wink

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detroitmechworks's picture

And they still do... Whenever a Rethug is in office.

Trudeau-1989-Flag-Burning-Comic.gif

I believe he reran this a couple times during the reign of King George the Second.

Not a word when Hillary suggests it of course.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

as per your sig.

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riverlover's picture

all together! Although many clever flag designs have been snagged by other countries already...

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Big Al's picture

are getting out of this.

"In 1968, Congress passed the Federal Flag Desecration Law in response to a Central Park event in which peace activists burned American flags in protest against the Vietnam War."

We can go back to after the Civil war when states started passing flag desecration laws.

So ya, Clinton and the Dems are hypocrites, but this shows that nothing really has changed and Trump is just the same thing only different.

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solublefish's picture

against flag desecration were aimed to prevent commercial use of the flag in promotion, advertising and sales of products. Interesting no one complains about that now. Because 'the business of American is business', of course.

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Trump's badness without having to moderate it by talking about Hillary's badness and vice versa. They provide excuses for each other.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Shahryar's picture

and as long as the Dems won't face reality they deserve to be blasted, with Hillary as their symbol.

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First, she lost to clucking Trump, ffs.

And she had negative coattails, just as we foretold for years. With her at the top of the ticket, seven million Democrats stayed home. In terms of offices held, Democrats are now in a weaker position than they have been since before Hoover, maybe ever. They control no house of Congress and no branch of government. At the state level, they have, I believe only 15 of 50 gubernatorial offices and control only 13 of 50 state legislatures. I heard from the television machine that the news is just as bad on the local level, but I've not seen a tally. If that is not a repudiation of the Third Way, I am not sure what would be, short of tar and feathers.

Hillary was a founding member of the DLC. She and Joe Lieberman were the only founding members who were not Southern WASP males. She and Al From spread the DLC nastiness far and wide.

In 1998, with First Lady Hillary Clinton, From began a dialogue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders, and the DLC brand – known as The Third Way – became a model for resurgent liberal governments around the globe.[17]

In April 1999, he hosted an historic Third Way forum in Washington with President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prime Ministers Wim Kok of the Netherlands and Massimo D'Alema of Italy.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_From

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way

Her husband was the first DLC President, just as From promised him when From approached him about the DLC:

A little after four o’clock on the afternoon of April 6, 1989, I walked into the office of Governor Bill Clinton on the second floor of the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock.

“I’ve got a deal for you,” I told Clinton after a few minutes of political chitchat. “If you agree to become chairman of the DLC, we’ll pay for your travel around the country, we’ll work together on an agenda, and I think you’ll be president one day and we’ll both be important.” With that proposition, Clinton agreed to become chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, and our partnership was born. With Clinton as its leader, the New Democrat movement that sprung from the DLC over the next decade would change the course of the Democratic Party in the United States and of progressive center-left parties around the world.

....Though Clinton came from a conservative state and knew how to communicate with the moderate and conservative voters Democrats needed to win back, he was also well-regarded among liberals—and so would help the DLC broaden its appeal in all but the most extreme-left parts of the party. Appealing to a broader spectrum of the Democratic Party was important for the DLC, and for me personally. Though the political shorthand had always referred to the DLC as moderate or conservative Democrats, our ideas were really about modernizing liberalism and defining a new progressive center for our party, not simply pushing it further to the right. Coming from the center-left of the party, I was tired of having the DLC labeled as conservative. I decided to call our think tank the Progressive Policy Institute because I thought it would be harder for reporters to label it as the “conservative Progressive Policy Institute.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/recruiting-bill-clin...

Within 24 hours of the November 4, 2014 midterms--maybe election night itself, the Third Way think tank doubled down, promising to reach across the aisle to Republicans even more--as if not being enough like Republicans had caused the losses. If anyone is saying anything like this time, I've missed it. (I tried to find the letter or press release, but google is unkind after time has passed and I can't remember any unique-ish word from the letter.)

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Bob In Portland's picture

But before I can do much more, who funded it? Who had the brilliant idea of having Bill speak at the 1988 National Convention.

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corporations. You can find that info online.

Who had Bubba speak? That specific info may or may not be online. However I bet you find online how the DNC's keynote speaker is normally chosen. Typically, they do choose someone perceived as a rising star in terms of the Presidency. Nowadays, I think the presumptive nominee has something to day about that. I think Kerry had something to do with choosing Obama in 2004.

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progressive blogs, hypocrisy is at the top of the menu.

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riverlover's picture

Forgiveness can come later. But keep the lists.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

In retrospect, as Hillary and her supporters tried to re-invent her over the years, I don't think her suburban born republicanism ideals ever left her. In fact, it was her foundation belief system. Eventually she migrated to her own kind of Rockefeller republicanism, sometimes going left to it, and many more times to the right of it. She learned how to speak a kind of liberal talk around subjects where she veered left from her republican roots and made her blend and camouflage her among liberal democrats. In her comments about public and private positions that came out of Wilkileaks I think reveals she at some level understood her duplicity.

Her legacy? The political carnage of the democratic party.

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SparkyGump's picture

Wall Street speeches.

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The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.

Amanda Matthews's picture

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

riverlover's picture

I am not sure that firs with the times.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Her pics are so photoshopped by both her friends and foes, I really have no way of knowing if, in real life, she looks 38 or 83. She even looks different as night and day from one TV appearance to the other. I'm not sure how she manages that, but somehow, she did. If you can't even be honest about that.....

And Honest Abe thought Matthew Brady was slick when Brady told Lincoln to pull his collar up!


Collar down


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in the runup to "Super Tuesday."
Then discarded as soon as its usefulness was at an end. Rather like a condom, or any of her policy positions.

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You keep using that word...

It's the Clinton M.O.

A huge difference between a statute and a Constitutional amendment? Making a statute law is a heck of a lot easier than getting a Constitutional amendment ratified. http://caucus99percent.com/content/lets-amend-constitution

And you know, if that statute passed, NO legislator was going to write a bill to repeal the statue ever. Look what they did to Obama just for not wearing a flag pin every damn day. We worry more about the flag than we do the lives, limbs and sanity of our troops. Mind you, even when we pledge allegiance, it's to the flag first and the nation second. How messed up is that? Our national anthem is based not on the nation's purple mountain majesty or amber waves of grain but on some guy worrying, the morning after a battle, whether the flag survived the fight, not how many of his countrymen survived. We are really sick, IMO, about the flag and about war. Yet, even Scalia had held that burning the flag is protected speech.

Anyway, passing an unconstitutional statute to avoid a potential constitutional amendment is bull, much like all the Clinton rationalizations for doing bad stuff. And, btw, if I get thrown in jail for burning a flag, does it really matter to me and to the chilling effect my imprisonment will have on the speech of others, if they locked me up under Hillary's statute or a Constitutional amendment?

I don't wish the Clintons a bit of harm, but at times, their deceit just makes me nauseous.

And what does it say about Hillary's vaunted, but non-existent, skills that she could not even get this statute passed? I think Republicans introduced a new flag-burning bill every session, so it must have been her own party that she could not get to work with her on this, much as with Billarycare. In her years in the Senate, she did not write one substantive bill that became law, not one, not even one of her two-flag burning bills.

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or she got a lot of money for nothing.

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self-promotion, corruption.

Ponzi and Madoff got lots of money, too Until they didn't. But, until their houses of cards collapsed, they did very well by hurting a lot of people. Madoff's victims are still hurting if they are still alive, especially those who were too old to work. Same with the victims of the 2008 economic collapse, which Bubba helped engineer with repeal of Glass Steagall and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which he managed to ram through as he was going out the White House door. In both cases, he lobbied hard so he could claim a veto-proof majority, another Clinton standby.

Ponzi fleeced mostly his fellow Italian Americans--"affinity fraud." Clinton just fleeced his fellow Americans, especially the Democrats who voted for him and who still think Third Way is fine. Also "affinity fraud." Of course, Third Way made him and certain others rich, but I am, of course, referring to the 90% he fleeced, not the few he helped enrich.

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