University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, July 19, 1989
Nation/World
7
Flag burning law a heated debate
Politicians argue about Bush's bill
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Senators and legal scholars argued yesterday over whether a constitutional amendment was political "patronizing" or the best way to overcome a Supreme Court decision allowing flag burning.
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan, introduced the constitutional amendment supported by President Bush and belittled the idea, championed by Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Bibbons. The decision the decision was a simple statute satisfying the court's concerns about free speech rights.
"There is no guarantee that the Biden bill will 'constitutionalize' the federal flag desecration statute We will have to wait perhaps three to five years for the courts to put their stamp of approval or rejection on the
statute. That's simply too long for the American people to wait," Dole said
But Sen. Bob Kerry, D-Neb., a Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor winner, said lawmakers were jumping too quickly to push flag-protection legislation in order to gain political capital.
"Today, I declare that I don't support any of the constitutional amendments which are being offered by my colleagues," he said. "These amendments create problems rather than solving them."
Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe delivered a similar message to the House subcommittee
on constitutional law.
"There are many patriotic Americans who believe that the toughest but best way to show respect for the flag, to show why we are so different from those in Beijing who massacre protesters, is to protect everyone of those who would desecrate this symbol of our freedom," he said.
Tribe said that could be accomplished through a statute like Biden's, which would make it a federal crime, punishable by a fine of up $1,000 and a year's imprisonment, both, to knowingly deface the flag.
The statute would remove all references in the existing federal flag burning statute to "ideas communicated" in the process of flag desecration and would punish only the physical act itself.
The Supreme Court held in its 5-4 ruling in the Texas case that desecrating the flag was protected under U.S. law, and demanded guarantee of free speech.
Walter Dellinger of Duke University urged Congress not to touch the Constitution because of the Texas burning case of Gregory Johnson.
Johnsona "will have succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of his fidel imagination" if Congress reacts so strongly, Delleringer said. "He will have succeeded in making the greatest nation on earth, if we give him power, look just a little silly, a little less brave and a little less free."
But Republicans on the subcommittee expressed increasing impatience with those resisting a constitutional amendment.
European trip a success for Bush
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush, home yesterday after a 10-day trip to Europe, said he sensed the dawning of an age in which freedom and democracy will flourish behind the Iron Curtain.
Visibly tired by his whirlwind trips — four countries in 10 days — Bush said he had found "an enormous amount of excitement" in Poland and
Bush said his trip behind the Iron Curtain left him sensation see" a new world within our reach, a world where the yearning for freedom overcomes discord and confrontation, where freedom and democracy flourish for others as they have for this great country of ours."
Bush extolled the achievements of the weekend economic summit in
Paris at which he helped to chart a campaign to preserve the global environment.
While flying back from Europe, Bush said the high point of his trip may have been the presentation of a plaque to him by hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth. The plaque contained fragrant flowers and wire fence that had stood between the communist nation and neutral Austria.
He said the high point also may have been standing with Lech Walesa, the leader of the Irish trade union movement in the warmer阴秋 to slain workers in Gdansk.
Bush, confident about the future of the push toward democracy and free-market economies in Hungary and elsewhere, said it might much hope and optimism for those
movements to be quelched by Mos cow.
In both countries, reform movements were crushed, in Hungary in 1956 and in Poland in 1970. But Bush said he did not think fear of the Soviet Union or communism could reverse the trends under way now.
"The they're not dwelling on that." Bush said of past Soviet moves. "The concern is still there but it's powered by the moving goings on there."
Bush met with Dutch parliamentarians at the U.S. Embassy in the Hague before heading home. The meeting dealt with the environment, arms control, East-West relations and western assistance to the Third World.
Bush was the first U.S.president to pay an official visit to the Netherlands, which established ties with the United States in 1782.
Referring to the quickening reform in Poland and Hungary, he told some 250 workers at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest that they were excited time in post-war history."
Bush also said he was troubled by a new book that suggests Vice President Dan Quayle lacks the competence required by his job.
The trip added to the image of Bush as a globetrotter, but he said he did not have "image-enhancement in mind" by traveling abroad. He said he had been concentrating on foreign affairs since the early 1970s.
"It's amazing," he said. "The respect for the United States around the world, I think it's still very, very strong."
Local Briefs
BUDGET BATTLE CONTINUES: The Bush administration yesterday lowered its forecast for the economy and warned Congress to abide by its budget blueprint or risk overstepping the $110 billion legal limit for the fiscal 1990 federal deficit.
But an uproar developed on Capitol Hill over an administration plan to save $2.9 billion in fiscal 1990, which began Oct. 1, simply by giving the state a day's pay. Oct. 1 to Sept. 29, the next-to-last day of fiscal 1989.
Congressional budget writers complained that the Pentagon's shift was encouraging House and Senate committees to claim deficit reduction by bumping paydays of other agencies from 1990 into 1989.
Administration officials estimated that short-term interest rates would average 8 percent this year and drop to 6.7 percent next year. The rate of increase will grow by 2.7 percent this year and 2.6 percent next year and that inflation would rise by 4.9 percent in 1989 and 4.1 percent in 1990.
But the administration forecast that if Congress enacts all the savings included in the budget lawmakers passed in May, the deficit would be $99.2 billion. That's even lower than the $99.4 billion deficit forecast earlier this year.
The glomerium economic assumptions were more than compensated for by a $15 billion increase in 1990 tax collections over what was expected in February, and $4.3 billion less in defense spending than February's estimate, largely due to the payday shift.
ETHNIC STRIFE CONTINUES:
Thousands of armed men have roamed Abkhazia, an ethnically troubled Black Sea region, in the days killing dead in people and injuring 239 officials reported.
A national Interior Ministry official said that some of the 3,000 ministry soldiers patrolling the region in Soviet Georgia formed a human barrier between Georgians and Abkhazians, who earlier fought two battles along the Galide River.
A government official in Sukhani said snipers fired at the local Communist Party and Interior Ministry buildings, and other armed men cut road and rail transport and some communications in the area 870 miles south of Moscow.
NICARAGUA CLEEBRATES ANNIVERSARY: The Sandinista party newspaper reported yesterday that the United States was making a transition as Nicaragua celebrated the 10th anniversary of its revolution.
An opposition newspaper reported the joy of victory had turned to "tears of pain."
Posters and billboards summoned "Everyone To The Plaza on the 19th" to commemorate the day in 1979 when the Sandinistas rolled into the city after dictator Anastasio Somoza fled to Miami.
The government expects 300,000 people at today's rally at the Plaza of the Revolution; that would be members of Nicaragua's 3 million people.
JARUZELSKI FOR PRESIDENT:
Communist leader Gen. Wojciech
Jaruzelski announced yesterday
a new post of president of Poland.
The president will be picked today by the National Assembly, Poland's two-chambered legislature.
there seemed to be little likelihood the Solidarity-led opposition would vote for the general who imposed martial law to crack down on the independent trade union in 1981.
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