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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Trump suggested criminalizing flag burning and there was outrage at the suggestion.

But in 2006, Hillary Clinton sponsored a bill to do the same with little reaction. One of the co-sponsors was Barbara Boxer.
[i]
That bill (S.1911, The Flag Protection Act of 2005) was co-sponsored by Clinton, and proposed in part:

Any person who shall intentionally threaten or intimidate any person or group of persons by burning, or causing to be burned, a flag of the United States shall be fined not more than $100,000, imprisoned for not more than 1 year, or both.[/i]

Whatever one feels about the merits of criminalizing flag burning there is a hypocrisy in the outrage when Trump suggests it even while it was, for the most part, ignored when Clinton actually proposed a bill to do the same in 2006 - an effort that failed.

[/quote]

Reprehensible.  But the 2005 act proposed this only with the primary purpose of intimidation or inciting immediate violence or for the act of terrorism, all of which are criminal activity.  The law never proposed banning it as pure speech, since this would be clearly unconstitutional.[/quote]

I have an american flag flying outside my house. I have a hard time believing that the government will check themselves and correctly apply these standards. What's the standard for establishing whether a flag burning incident was for purpose of intimidation or inciting immediate violence? I mean when people burn flags, they are sometimes doing so in a context of a protest or some other mass event with people feeling quite emotional. What if a flag was burned, and then some minutes later, violence ensued. How do you tie the violence to the flag burning? Seems rather nebulous and very exploitable to a prosecutor. [/quote]

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