FLASHBACK: Then-Sen. Joe Biden proposes legislation in 1995 making burning or desecrating the American flag a crime. "Tell everyone: They can't burn the flag.".
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Joe Biden said make it illegal.
Looking into the context of this, these clips are taken--and are for some reason presented out of order--from a speech he gave in 1995 on the Flag Desecration Amendment (a transcript of it, as part of the larger congressional record, can be seen
here). The Flag Desecration Amendment was a proposed amendment to the Constitution that said "The Congress and the States shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." This had passed the House of Representatives, but ended up failing in the Senate (they fell short of the 2/3 supermajority required). Biden's statements come in the context of discussion over the amendment--in fact, they come the day before the vote. Glancing over the transcript, it seems Biden said he agreed with the amendment in principle but had major problems with the wording. As a result, he proposed an alternate version of it, which is the "legislation" that the video indicates he proposed (the video does not clarify that this was a proposed constitutional amendment, not regular legislation).
If someone wants more specifics about his issues with the amendment or his alternate proposal, you can look at the link. In any event, it appears that Biden's suggestion was not taken up, which presumably was why he ended up voting against the amendment.
So note what Biden was talking about. He was talking about a
constitutional amendment. Not a law, and certainly not an executive order. Changing the Constitution via amendment is obviously a very different suggestion than changing the Constitution by just issuing an executive order.
Democrats are mocking Trump’s flag-burning executive order — but a resurfaced clip shows Hillary Clinton once called for the ban..
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Hillary hoped for a law
That clip is not even 10 seconds long. I feel one needs to see more to try to properly judge it--more would also allow us to see better context.
Based on the scant amount shown, it
looks to me like it was taken from this statement found
here:
"I hope we can pass a law that criminalizes flag burning and desecration that is constitutional and can survive Supreme Court scrutiny."
This statement was in the context of discussion on the
Flag Protection Act, which Hillary Clinton and Bob Bennett had submitted, though the Senate ended up not taking any votes on it.
The summary of it is:
"Flag Protection Act of 2005 - Amends the federal criminal code to revise provisions regarding desecration of the flag to prohibit: (1) destroying or damaging a U.S. flag with the primary purpose and intent to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace; (2) intentionally threatening or intimidating any person, or group of persons, by burning a U.S. flag; or (3) stealing or knowingly converting the use of a U.S. flag belonging to the United States, or belonging to another person on U.S. lands, and intentionally destroying or damaging that flag."
This one is much more comparable to Trump's executive order... sort of. The problem we have with the executive order is it's sort of confusing about what it does. The
text of it is actually quite reasonable--the above proposed law actually goes farther than Trump's executive order does.
Where things get more confusing is when we consider Trump's
rhetoric concerning it, which makes it sound like his executive order does a lot more than it does facially (or more than what the aforementioned proposed law would have done). So in evaluating it, are we supposed to be trying to evaluate it based on what it says or what Trump says about it? Is the Trump administration going to follow the actual text of the Executive Order, or is it going to go farther? It's not quite clear yet.
To quote Charles C.W. Cooke:
Typically, presidents who push the constitutional envelope like to insist that they are doing no such thing. Here, that instinct has been reversed. By its own terms, Trump’s order is not, in fact, a wholesale rejection of Supreme Court precedent. His rhetoric, however, is clearly intended to make the public believe otherwise.
That is not illegal. If, for whatever reason, the president wishes to pretend that he is violating the Constitution when he is not, he may do so. But it is pretty weird to behold — and, more important, it ought to make the public at least a little suspicious of how his nebulous rules might be used by figures within the administration who hope to make a name for themselves.
In any event, while Hilary's proposal seems at least possibly comparable, I don't think what Biden was talking about is comparable given we were talking an actual constitutional amendment versus... whatever it is Trump is doing.
