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Late Breaking News |
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| Date: July 8, 1998 3:31 pm Contact: American Civil Liberties Union www.aclu.org |
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Latest News Releases
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Veteran Urges Senate Judiciary Committee To Stop Its Attack on the Bill of Rights |
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| WASHINGTON - July 8 - In its fervor to amend the United States
Constitution, the Senate Judiciary Committee today convened yet another round of hearings
on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban use of the flag in political protest. Today's hearing comes less than 24 hours after the panel voted in favor of another constitutional amendment and two weeks after it passed the "Flag Desecration Amendment" on a largely party line vote. In a witness panel packed with celebrities, the relatively unknown army veteran Marvin Virgil Stenhammar made a powerful statement. Stenhammar, a former "Green Beret," is a veteran of Beirut, Panama and Desert Storm. He told the committee that he is one of many veterans who opposes the flag amendment because he fought for the ideals of freedom and liberty embodied by the American flag, not for the cloth of the flag itself. "This flag amendment will place a higher value on an inanimate object, a symbol, than on the rights of the people living under it," Stenhammar said. "Flags, no matter how honored, do not have rights," he told the committee. "People do. Please protect them." The American Civil Liberties Union said that it has been contacted by hundreds of veterans who want the Senate to know that the high-profile American Legion lobbying for the amendment does not speak for them. "We have been deeply moved by the letters we have received from our country's veterans," said Solange Bitol, a legislative counsel for the ACLU. "Time and again veterans have reminded me that our battle against this latest effort to restrict Americans' right to peacefully protest is one they already fought -- and risked their lives -- in hostile countries across the globe. "These brave soldiers took an oath to defend the Constitution, not the flag," Bitol said. "It is in the spirit of their pledge to defend the Constitution that veterans have urged their Senators to vote against this latest assault on the Bill of Rights, the cornerstone of our democracy." ### |
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