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-Keith Pelczarski
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Happy Flag Day!
As regular readers know, I love the United States of America and the freedom for which it stands. As a patriot, I hung out flag from our porch to celebrate Flag Day, which got me thinking about the latest shenanigans in congress.
You may remember my consternation over the whole "Under God!" pledge of allegiance business last year. More recently, there was the whole "Freedom Fries" nonsense, proving that both jingoism and stupidity are alive and well on capitol hill. Now some of the chuckleheads have once again proposed a constitutional amendment designed to combat the horrible flag-burning epidemic: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."
Perhaps the odd-looking and humorously named Nick Huggler puts it best when he says, "Flag burning: uncool, but shouldn't be banned." Would we throw these boy scouts in jail?
The sad thing about this whole affair is that it has nothing to do with true patriotism and everything to do with politics. It's a way to pressure other lawmakers into making a potentially unpopular decision with constituents.
Speaking of flag-burning, the last few years have produced some interesting developments in Iran, the worldwide leader in U.S. flag burning. Most recently, there have been anti-government protests in Tehran. The protesters, rather than chanting "Death to America!" are instead chanting "Death to Khomeni!" Needless to say, this was not well received by the militant thugs who serve as enforcers for the clerics who rule Iran, who beat and captured protesters.
In a new twist, Iranian police arrested some of these vigilantes for their brutality against the students. This was the clerics' attempt to keep things from spiralling out of control, and put a happy face on their regime to the rest of the world, since they've got to be a little freaked now that they're flanked by U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Thus the recent saber rattling about developing nuke-u-lar capabilities.) Of course, the official party line is that there are only a handful of protesters and that the U.S. is to blame for everything. Maybe they've got Baghdad Bob working for them now.
Hey, speaking of Baghdad, where in the world is Saddam Hussein?
:: Keith 23:54 [link] :: ::
