Amendment Outlawing Flag Desecration Killed

The Senate, in a dramatic showdown today with President Bush, decisively rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw desecration of the American flag.

The amendment, which would have been the 27th, was once considered almost certain of passage. But grass-roots passions cooled, senators feared tinkering with the 200-year-old Bill of Rights and Republican co-sponsors defected.

The vote was 51 to 48 in favor of the amendment, 15 short of the two-thirds majority voting that was required for passage. A vote breakdown showed 33 Republicans and 18 Democrats voting for the amendment, and 37 Democrats and 11 Republicans against.

“In my view, the flag should be at half-mast after this vote,” said Senate GOP leader Bob Dole of Kansas.

The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the Senate vote, saying: “Senators demonstrated today that they understand that the right of dissent is a fundamental principle of our society. A majority, no matter how large or impassioned, cannot censor others or dictate how they express their political views.”

Congress, in response to a Supreme Court decision invalidating a Texas law that banned flag burning, has already passed a bill making it a federal crime to physically desecrate the flag.

Bush, who had sounded the call for a constitutional amendment, said that he will allow that bill to become law without his signature and that the statute is certain to be tested in the courts.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Alixe Glen said Bush was “disappointed” by today’s vote and emphasized that Administration lawyers had said from the start that the statutory approach chosen by Congress will not withstand a court test.

Senate Democratic leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, a former federal judge who led the fight against the amendment, said the nation has never tampered with the Bill of Rights in 200 years “despite the worst that fate has hurled at us.”

Mitchell said, “Principles which have stood the test of time should not be lightly discarded. Liberties that have seen us through civil wars and world wars should not be tampered with.”

But Dole, a wounded combat veteran of World War II, stood behind cartons of petitions for the amendment and charged that the Senate was giving Americans the “cold shoulder” by “too many lawyers who still think they’re on the high school debate team.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that there never was more than a “scant majority” for the amendment and added: “We saved the flag, and we preserved the Constitution.”