Jim Sensenbrenner: “reclaiming my time, what it does do is, in order to prevent flag desecration, it requires the Supreme Court of the…”

“reclaiming my time, what it does do is, in order to prevent flag desecration, it requires the Supreme Court of the United States to admit it made a mistake and expressly overrule both the Johnson and Eichman decisions. The Supreme Court of the United States does not overrule previous decisions very often. It did it in Brown v. The Board of Education. But not very often in other major areas, particularly in the interpretation of constitutional law, does the Supreme Court of the United States do it. The way to hit this issue is head on. If you do not like this amendment, vote ``no,'' but do not adopt the Watts substitute amendment, which merely tosses the ball back to the Supreme Court, which twice has told us that flag desecration is constitutionally protected. The only way to reverse what the Supreme Court has done for sure is to defeat the Watts substitute amendment and pass the underlying bill introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham). Mr. Speaker, I ask for a ``no'' vote on the substitute, a ``yes'' vote on passage of the constitutional amendment.”