Yeah, I figured you were being a wiseguy, but the notion of "hate speech" gets me steamed. I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist and see hateful speech as a price you pay for living in a free country.

Speech that is incitement to violence (NOT incitement to hatred) shouldn't be tolerated because it leads to violence, though.

I do totally agree with you, Robert. A society where one's loftiest goal is to not offend anyone else would not be worth much.

Your comment is mostly off-topic, and to the extent it's not, it's wrong. You seem to be using your displeasure with the current administration to justify flag burning, when in fact it's justified as free speech, regardless of your feelings about the current administration.

Matt,

Your hypothetical about being on the flag-burning bandwagon makes the situation much worse. There should be no such thing as hate speech since criminalizing it -- on largely arbitrary grounds -- borders on thought crimes. I can sit around hating people as much as I want and it does them no harm. When I say hateful things, my right to free speech far outweighs anything they might feel because of it.

In fact, you're turning to how people feel about speech to determine its propriety. There are any number of pissypants people out there who are ready and waiting to be offended.

It the Veterans of Foreign Wars carries out a ceremony burning tattered and faded flags, rendering the proper honors, many of the same people who are outraged by â??flag burningâ?? get choked up with pride.

The VFW, while carrying out a duty codified in federal law, should be honored. Would that more people had that kind of respect. To compare that ceremony to a gaggle of protestors showing off their liberal cred is ridiculous and utterly lame.

Were I on the protect the flag bandwagon, I'd be proposing to have burning it classified as hate speech. To be sure, there are people as angered by the act as much as others when they hear a racial epithet.

I really just wish we could get to the point where we had a right to free speech, but no right not to be offended. That, my friends, would be utopia.

Don't tell me we cannot or should not make it a felony to burn the flag. They can still do it but they will have to pay the penalty.

It always boggles my mind when people who call themselves conservative are suffering from a severe case of ACLUitis.

If congress passes a law banning “desecration” it will be declaring that the flag is now sacred. Some lawyer will then challenge the law. The argument will be: “Congress has violated the first amendment by passing a law establishing the flag as s...

One of the major acts of desecration has been the cheapening of the flag by every nimrod politician and his brother using it as a piece of jewelry.

If the amendment would allow the government to be able to fine someone everytime they wear one of those intolerable flag lapel pins or put a magnetic flag ribbons on their car, that would be excellent.

So unlike the McCain limitations on political free speech, the people who don't like the flag burning are going through the proper political process to carve out a limitation. They have every right to make their case for why such an amendment is in the country's best interests. The opponents, such as your self, also get their day in the court of public opinion as to why the amendment shouldn't go through. The country won't end if the amendment is passed or not. But the mechanism on how we should handle contentious issues is being played out.

If W was really who is critics claimed he was, we would be seeing armies of red, white and blue shirts attacking those who protest the war, including by burning the flag. Instead, we see the wheels of government grinding slowly towards a resolution on this amendment.