The Glenn Beck Show, which airs every weekday from 9-11 AM on my home station, WTAM 1100, brings us a jolly piece of news that's sure to illicit groans (full story from CNN.com). For the fifth time since 1995, the House of Representatives passed a proposal for a flag-burning amendment. Fortunately, the Senate has never passed such a resolution. To be ratified, an amendment must pass by a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and pass 38 of the 50 state legislatures.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson (491 U.S. 397, 1989) that laws against flag burning violated the First Amendment. Justice Brennan, writing the opinion of the court, equated flag-burning with other flag-related expressive conduct: "attaching a peace sign to the flag, refusing to salute the flag, and displaying a red flag, we have held, all may find shelter under the First Amendment." The issue in Texas v. Johnson was whether or not setting the flag alight could cause an immediate breach of the peace, as the Texas court conceded that flag-burning had value as expressive speech. The Supreme Court did not see that at all: "No reasonable onlooker would have regarded Johnson's generalized expression of dissatisfaction with the policies of the Federal Government as a direct personal insult or an invitation to exchange fisticuffs," writes Brennan. Johnson was convicted of "desecration of a venerated object," a Texas state law. In reasoning that the law was constitutional, the state of Texas argued that the government had a compelling interest in preserving the sanctity of the flag as a symbol; however, the Supreme Court has "never before have held that the Government may ensure that a symbol be used to express only one view of that symbol or its referents."

For more information, see United States v. O'Brien (391 U.S. 367, 1968).