A new Contract On America

Anne and I celebrated the Fourth like most other people, by gorging ourselves and watching fireworks. One activity we didn't participate in, but we could have, was burning a flag. As most of you are probably aware, the Senate narrowly (and I do mean narrowly) defeated a flag burning amendment last week. It's really disappointing to me that with so many of our soldiers in the midst of two seemingly endless occupations overseas, the Republican-led congress focused their energies on trying to ram an unnecessary (to say nothing of freedom-abridging) amendment through the congress instead of trying to find a way to get them home. Seems that if the soldiers are going to protect our freedoms, maybe they should be in DC instead of Baghdad. It really bums me out that at the time of year where I'm supposed to be most proud of my country, what it stands for, and it's amazing potential, all I can think is that it's being run by a bunch of clowns who care more about getting re-elected than about our troops, poor people without health care, or any of the myriad of other social ills that are going unfixed, and that the whole nation is going in the absolute wrong direction. The flag burning amendment is just another example of election year nonsense focusing on issues that are clearly only meant to pander to the Republicans' mouth-breathing base. I read an article in the Chronicle the other day saying that this was part of the Republicans' "American Values Agenda." The last sentence of the article describes some of the other things they've been trying to pass: "The GOP's 'American Values Agenda' also includes a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which died in the Senate before it even reached a vote; a prohibition on human cloning; and possibly votes on several popular tax cuts." I think that last one tells you all you need to know about what the Republican leadership really values.