Dana Milbank, writing in the WaPo:

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

Yup, that's right.  These conservatives want to -- for the first time in American history -- amend the Constitution to restrict the First Amendment, to put curbs on your rights of free expression and association, to tell you when, where, and how you can speak...and they are doing it to combat something that is such a mere blip, a nonentity, a nonexistent problem.

But Arlen Specter's on the case!

In pursuit of this urgent matter, floor leader Specter mustered all manner of argument: the military service of his brother, Morton; his brother-in-law's service in the Pacific; his father Harry's service in the Argonne; his mother's emigration from Ukraine; his own stateside service during the Korean War; a pickup-truck accident his father once had with his sister; bicycle rides he took as a 7-year-old in Kansas; the "treachery of Mussolini"; the light casualties sustained during the Persian Gulf War, and a trip he made to VA hospitals 15 years ago.

"I think it's important to focus on the basic fact that the text of the First Amendment, the text of the Constitution, the text of the Bill of Rights is not involved," Specter argued. The Judiciary Committee chairman did not explain how he could add 17 words to the Constitution without altering its text.

Read that last sentence again.  (My emphasis.)  You're going to change the Constitution, but not really change it?  (And how, exactly, is abrogating the First Amendment not a material change?)

And, I'll refer you to what I wrote last year about this issue:

You know what?  I bet that way more flags have been draped on the caskets of American troops killed in Iraq -- which would be 1,713, as of this writing -- than have been burned in protest in oh, the last twenty-five years.

So why is this such an urgent problem, for our elected representatives (they represent us, remember?  Not the other way around) to go against the demonstrated will of the people and take such an extreme step as amending the United States Constitution?

See, the First Amendment is crystal-clear, to my reading.  Let me emphasize:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

What part of "no law" don't they understand?

The important thing isn't the symbol here.  True, symbols are important.  But if you are so upset with the policies of this country that you feel the only way you can express that burning dissent is to burn such an honored symbol as the flag, you're expressing a powerful political point.  And that is protected speech.

I stand by all of what I wrote last year, except, of course for the sad reminder that 2,527 US troops have died in Iraq.

I'm glad the amendment died today, on the wingnuts' eighth attempt.  But it only lost by one vote, and I'm sure they'll try to restrict our freedoms once again.  Because my relatives didn't fight for the flag, no matter what Bill Frist claims -- they died for the ideals upon which this country was founded.

Which, Sen. Specter, includes the freedom to make a political protest by burning the flag.