House Panel Passes Flag Protection Bill

WASHINGTON--A House committee yesterday approved a flag protection bill that was pushed by Democrats but dismissed by Republicans as useless for overcoming the Supreme Court ruling permitting flag burning.

One Democratic leader said he and others in his party would "go to the wall" to block a constitutional amendment against flag desecration, which the Republicans and President Bush say is necessary.

The House Judiciary Committee, in a quarrelsome session, voted 28-6 for a statute that says, "Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, burns or tramples upon any flag of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both."

All but one of the 13 Republicans voting supported the bill--as a symbolic gesture for the flag, one said. But the Republican leadership blocked the Democrats' plan to bring the bill before the full House next week.

House Republican Leader Bob Michel of Illinois told reporters that White House Chief of Staff John Sununu urged the GOP leadership this week to peak out more on the flag because it was a "wedge issues"--one that breaks the Democrats apart.

Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said at a news conference after the vote that the bill would come up in September and he couldn't imagine why any lawmaker would favor amending the constitution if a regular statute would protect the flag.

House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) added, "The people who pose as the most vigilant supporters of flag protection...seem more interested in adding political graffiti to the Constitution than in protecting the physical integrity of the American flag."

The Democrats carried with them the U.S. flag that few over the Capitol the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, in Rome after that city was liberated, and over the U.S.S. Missouri when Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan's surrender.

In the war of the symbols, Bush had used the Iwo Jima memorial to the Marines when he endorsed the constitutional amendment.

"The purpose of this statute is to provide appropriate protection for the American flag without getting into the first retreat in American history [from] the Bill of Rights," said Rep. Don Edwards (D-Calif.), chair of the committee's constitutional rights subcommittee.

"That is something we will go to the wall for in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening," he said.

But Republicans said the only way to overcome the Supreme Court ruling was with a constitutional amendment.

"The bill is essentially useless," said Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Calif.), who said Republicans would vote for it in committee only as in symbolic support of the flag.

The measure passed in the committee after opponents from both the left and right attacked it.

"This statute is a mess, and it's obvious it's a mess from everything we've seen and heard this morning," said Rep. Chuck Douglas (R-N.H.), the only Republican to vote against the bill.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), one of five Democrats who voted against the statute and who also oppose a constitutional amendment, offered an amendment to ban cross burnings.

"Cross burnings for centuries have been more of a problem than flag burnings," said Conyers.

The Senate is to take up both a proposed statute and constitutional amendment on flag desecration in October.