
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 7, 1990                   TAG: 9004090250
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FLAG-BURNING

SOMEHOW we'd thought that drugs, murder, rape and robbery were the nation's prime crime concerns. The FBI doesn't even keep statistics on flag-burnings. But there's consuming interest in the topic around Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to give priority to hearing an appeal of a lower-court ruling on the new federal law against desecrating the flag.

Why the rush? Aside from the fact that purse-snatchings still far outnumber flag-tramplings, it can be anticipated how the high court will decide. Last June in a case from Texas, the tribunal struck down anti-desecration laws as an infringement on First Amendment rights of free expression.

The new federal statute, which became law Oct. 28, was drafted in an effort to avoid free-speech issues and focus on damage to any U.S. flag itself. But on Feb. 21, a U.S. district judge ruled it unconstitutional on the same grounds cited by the Supreme Court. Less than two weeks later, a District of Columbia federal judge followed suit.

When the law was under consideration, the chairmen of Congress' judiciary committees, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Texas, maintained that it did not implicate a flag-burner's political motives. It did, as the lower courts could plainly see. And political motives put a provision in this law that an appeal from a district-court decision would go directly to the Supreme Court for expedited review. The Justice Department lost no time in appealing.

A ruling could come from the high court, then, in May or early June. Just in time to provide some fodder for the fall congressional elections. Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas has said he'll introduce the flag-burning constitutional amendment as soon as the Supreme Court has decided. President Bush, so successful at wrapping himself in the flag during the 1988 race, will surely rally to the cause. And politicians will beat each other over the head with this non-issue while they neglect pressing public business.

To hundreds of millions of Americans, the U.S. flag is a hallowed symbol. What it stands for is more than conventional patriotism, however. Judge Barbara J. Rothstein, who ruled in the Seattle case in February, said: "In order for the flag to endure as a symbol of freedom in this nation, we must protect with equal vigor the right to destroy it and the right to wave it." Infringing on free speech (and thus the Constitution) is a greater desecration than torching a piece of cloth.

by CNB