I'm screwed. I never voted for Hutchison or Cornyn. I may have voted for Boxer once, though. I wonder if she'll take the call.

And we are off.....
 

Your reading comprehension would improve if you picked up something besides that Regnery crap.

Drop Ty's name.

2 million hail marys and 3 million our fathers
 

For these purposes, I don't give a shit about Helms or Byrd individually. Your statement was that "They [Southern Republicans] weren't doing the lynching, that the Byrds of the world were."

You think so, huh?

And we are off.....
 

Is that a vinyard? I don't recognize the name but if it makes good wine I may have read the label.

2 million hail marys and 3 million our fathers
 

Honestly, backtracking on the rhetoric, I think racists come in all political stripes. Neither party has the market cornered on ignorance, but if you going to argue that Helms is indicative that the Republican Party is the party of racists I counter with Kleagle Byrd every time (and remember, the Republicans have better funny phottoshoppers than the Dems.)

eta: and Byrd's "apology" is for shit and I can't figure out why anyone would try to defend it. If you are identifying him as the Conscience of your party, you may want to examine its soul.

2 million hail marys and 3 million our fathers
 

This is true, of course. But it's also true that the Republican Party won over the South for a reason. E.g., it was no coincidence that Reagan delivered his first major address in his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

flag-burning
 

Here's a pretty succinct post about the problem with the amendment:

• What's particularly frustrating by the flag burning amendment is that according to the US Flag Code, the appropriate way to dispose of a flag, as all patriotic Americans know, is to burn it.
  
  Any anti-flag burning legislation would have to be based entirely around intent - was your intent to protest the actions of your government? If so, go to jail. Was your intent to follow the US Flag code? Good for you.

Atrios

flag-burning
 

Succinct, yet stupid. Did you go to law school? Once there is a constitutional amendment the Code becomes unconstitutional.

flag-burning
 

I'm pretty sure it will be easy to discern the difference between someone ceremonially burning a flag in accordance with 4 U.S.C. § 8(k) (" . . . destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.") and someone burning a flag as an act of political protest.

Not to say the act is valid as a first amendment matter, or even wise. But inconsistency with the flag code is not its greatest problem, let alone what at all.

flag-burning
 

Did you fall on your head a lot as a child? The text of the proposed amendment is:

• `The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.'

Burning is not necessarily desecration.

eta, in response to Burger:

I thought Atrios was pretty clear. He's not complaining about a potential conflict between the Constitution and the U.S. Code. He's pointing out that the purpose of the amendment is not to punish certain actions (e.g., burning), but to punish certain ideas (e.g., burning a flag in protest against the government, as opposed to burning it pursuant to the code).

circling. Fully.
 

This is truly a slippery slope. If this succeeds I can see it now, the next one will be the Koran Desecration Amendment:

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the Koran"

I'll be in deep doo doo. I'm not cut out for prison....unless, I restrict my Koran pissing to Santa Barbera County. Sneddon will never be able to make a winning case with the freaks I surround myself with.

flag-burning
 

Succint, yet stupid. What were your reading comprehension scores again? The Flag Code deals with the proper means of destroying a flag. The Amendment deals with "desecration" of the flag.

In other words, it outlaws not the act itself, but the act and an intent which is not sacred. So, in addition to laying to waste a 200 plus year old tradition of freedom of speech, the proposed Amendment does so in the language of religion.

Were it not so fucking chilling, the irony would be delicious.

eta that it appears that there is a general consensus that your interpretation may have missed the boat. Nice view in that glass house, stupid?

flag-burning
 

I think when you posted, you failed to realize that the poster to whom you replied was not being serious or literal about the substantive content of his or her post, and by treating the post seriously, you have made yourself to appear the fool.

flag-burning
 

Hey! Lo-berry said Shifter was the stupidest. Stand down Wonk!