Paul Coverdell: “I am proud to join the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Hatch, and others in introducing a…”

“I am proud to join the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Hatch, and others in introducing a constitutional amendment to prohibit the desecration of the flag of the United States of America. In the 104th Congress we fell a mere four votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed for the Senate's approval of a similar amendment. I encourage my colleagues to join in this effort and hope we will be able to address this matter before the end of the year. In a 1989 Supreme Court case, Texas versus Johnson, the Court erroneously ruled, by the narrowest of margins, 5 to 4, that flag burning is a constitutionally protected expression of First Amendment free speech rights. Again in 1990, in U.S. versus Eichman, the Supreme Court protected flag desecration by declaring unconstitutional a federal statute designed to protect our flag. I remain dumbfounded by these decisions. Former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, generally regarded as a First Amendment absolutist once stated "It passes my belief that anything in the Federal Constitution bars a State from making the deliberate burning of the American flag an offense." It passes my belief as well. It is my belief that the American flag does not belong to one person; it belongs to the American people. When an individual desecrates a flag I believe he does not destroy private property but a national symbol, a public monument.”