I'm as patriotic as the next guy, probably more of a flag waver than most. A Republican myself, I've done my tour in uniform (for which I was decorated), as has my brother, my father, his father, my uncle and all of my great uncles. Our family lost its first soul for this country in the Battle of Blue Lick in Kentucky, the last battle of the American Revolution. (It was his widow and son who crossed into Indiana in 1800 or so, settled in Flat Rock, Indiana, cleared a farm which in later family hands became a station on the Underground Railroad, and became Republican abolitionists.) Until they were stolen from a basement den, the family retained in its possession a gun used by our North Judson ancestor who was in the Union Army.

With all of that in mind, I state my conviction that the conservative Republicans who attempt to ban flag burning Constitutionally demonstrate a woeful disrespect for the Constitution and its freedoms. What's more, they drum this issue up out of nowhere, and rather than desecrate the flag, desecrate instead our Constitution, disgracing themselves and the Republican Party.

If we're truly on the topic of desecration, how about Constitutionally banning the Confederate flag, which soils bumpers and rear windows, and insults not only African Americans, but every Hoosier who gave his life a hundred and fifty years ago fighting for liberty against the base evil of a rebellious regime built on slavery? Somehow, I suspect that the very red neck clowns who sport those confederate flags also support the flag burning amendment, insensate to the desecration they themselves commit.