Flag Amendment Faces Uphill Fight : Congress: House foes of the anti-desecration measure say they are one vote short of blocking the bill. Both sides push their causes with media events.

Despite election-year pressures, opponents of a constitutional amendment against desecrating the American flag said Thursday that they have lined up all but one of the votes needed to kill the proposed measure in the House.

“We’re in good shape,” said Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), a leader of the opposition to an amendment, as lawmakers on both sides of the issue seized on Flag Day to unfurl waves of red, white and blue rhetoric.

Proponents, led by President Bush, renewed their campaign this week after the Supreme Court struck down a flag-protection statute passed eight months ago. The law had been designed to counter an earlier court ruling that flag burning is a constitutionally protected form of free speech.

Leadership sources said that 144 House members had given “hard” indications that they would vote against the proposed amendment when it comes to the floor, probably next Thursday.

With a two-thirds majority required for approval of a constitutional amendment, opponents need only 145 votes to block it, assuming all 433 current members show up for the roll call.

Even if the House passes the measure, opponents expressed optimism that they could kill it in the Senate, where it is expected to be considered the week after next.

Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), surveying colleagues on behalf of opponents to the measure, counted 54 senators for the flag amendment and 24 against it late Thursday, with 22 undecided. That would leave opponents 10 votes short of the amount needed to block approval.

“But I am quite confident the amendment will be defeated, based on all my conversations with the undecideds,” Cranston said. “There is a feeling it is not the great emotional issue that some believe it to be.”

That apparently was not the feeling of proponents, however, as they contended that they had the momentum to prevail.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), warning that his proposed amendment can be used as an issue in this year’s elections, pressed for an immediate Senate vote in the patriotic atmosphere of Flag Day.

Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) rebuffed the demand, but a spirited debate broke out across Capitol Hill in a flurry of speeches and press conferences.

At a “media event” on the Capitol lawn, Dole announced that his measure had 35 Republican and 13 Democratic co-sponsors, including Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.). Many appeared with leaders of veterans’ groups amid 10 flapping American flags and a placard bearing the words of the proposed amendment:

“The Congress and the States shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the Flag of the United States.”

Responding to opponents’ charges that the flag measure represents a dangerous threat to the First Amendment’s protection of free expression, Dole said: “We’re all here to do the right thing. We’re not here to demagogue for anything or for anyone.”

“Yes, we believe in free speech and the First Amendment,” Wilson said before a phalanx of TV cameras, “but conduct that desecrates the flag should not be dignified as political dissent.”

Although Democratic leaders are organizing opposition to the amendment, GOP Sen. John C. Danforth of Missouri captured widespread attention Thursday with a blistering attack that included criticism of both Bush and Dole.

Noting that the President had said that flag burning “endangers the fabric of our country,” Danforth commented: “While it is reprehensible and repulsive and obnoxious and disgusting, in no way does it endanger the fabric of our country. Why is it that we do not have revolutions in the United States . . . ? What prevents the fabric from tearing is elasticity . . . . Anybody is free to express himself, and the answer to any self-styled revolutionary is, ‘Say your piece . . . run for office if you want to. Then let the people vote.’ That is the answer to revolutionaries.”

Danforth dismissed Dole’s threat, directed at Democrats running for reelection, that opponents of the flag amendment would suffer from being targeted in negative TV ads.

“I believe that the American people are going to say: ‘We are not really threatened by these (flag-burning) crackpots. . . . And we want our Bill of Rights. We want our First Amendment,’ ” the senator said.

A Southern Democrat, Sen. Terry Sanford of North Carolina, said that, as a paratrooper in World War II, he “jumped into combat with the flag on my left shoulder” to help preserve freedoms in the Bill of Rights. “You ask me now to damage that document in the name of political expediency so that somebody won’t run a 30-second ad against me? Nothing doing.”

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) joined a parade of passionate proponents of the amendment. “If anyone wants to jump up and down and set their britches on fire to express themselves, they have that right,” Gramm said. “But we simply ask that they not burn the symbol of the very nation on Earth that allows them to have all this freedom.”

NEXT STEP

The House Judiciary Committee will vote Tuesday on a constitutional amendment against flag burning. On Thursday, the full House is expected to consider the measure, while the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on a similar proposal. The full Senate likely will act the week after next. If a measure is passed by two-thirds majorities in both chambers, 38 states still must ratify it.

SOUTHLAND TRIBUTES--Observances of Flag Day in Southern California covered a broad range of activities. B1