zargof

The money for this audit is being crowd-sourced. The level of government debt is irrelevant to this discussion.

Besides, the US has plenty of money, it's just isn't allocated very well.

Giantaxe

The question it begs for me is why aren't audits done as a matter of course?

scrubbedexpat099

Did not think anybody thought the Paris agreement would be upheld, how could it be.

Peak oil looks now like 2040. Economic collapse might reduce things a bot, which Politician will vote for that.

Politics, just for show.

Leslie

Stripping citizenship and/or imprisonment for flag burning? Nice that the president elect publicly supports illegal activities.

He's the one that spent the last year telling us all what a cesspool the US is ... you'd think flag burning would be mandatory. Americans are all losers right? We never win anything anymore. The whole country has gone right down the shitter according to him.

The method of humiliating and degrading a nation in order to elect an authoritarian dictator is nothing new. It's what was done in Germany after WWI. It's also what intimate abusers do to their victims. Telling somebody that they're worthless, over and over and over, is a tried and true methodology. It's neither complicated nor original.

zargof

Whether or not it will be upheld isn't the point. It's at least a step in the right fcking direction. Trump will take us backwards, and as I said allows other nations to follow suit.

zargof

If only there was some sort of Constitution to protect people's freedom to be allowed to burn the flag.

Still it's not like it's an original idea...

Guess Who Else Supported Jail Time For Burning the Flag? | Mediaite

johnwoo

Trump Presidency, not looking good, should we be afraid?

Leslie

Not exactly the same thing and she's not the president.

He's only saying this now because the people that are burning flags happen to hate his guts and reject him as their president.

Giantaxe

Red meat for the gullible (of which a lot are Trump supporters) and typical Trump deflection from actual issues. Expect a lot of this over the next four years.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Most legislation never comes close to getting passed. A lot of it is submitted for PR reasons, and no real effort is made to get it passed.

I don't care for that sort of pandering, but co-sponsoring a bill that has zero momentum behind it just so that the folks back home can feel as if their concerns are being heard is common in American politics.

The legislative history shows that the bill was introduced, and then nothing else happened. During the same year, a more mild law was passed that barred homeowner associations from banning displays of the flag.

If anyone was serious about the flag burning bill, then it would have been attached as a rider to that law or to something else. Judging from the complete lack of effort, it's fair to guess that nobody really gave two s**ts about turning it into law.

dakota44

I seem to recall SCOTUS ruling some years ago that flag burning was protected under the 1st ammendment.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Yes, it did.

Looking back at this, this may have also been an effort to provide an alternative that could prevent the flag burning amendment that had been passed by the House from making it through the Senate.

A constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban flag burning passed the House yesterday, and congressional leaders said it has a strong chance to clear the Senate for the first time, sending it to the states for ratification.

The House has passed the measure four times before, but it has always fallen short of the two-thirds vote needed in the Senate. But changes in the Senate's makeup shifted several votes to the bill's supporters, and a lobbyist who leads the opposition said the absence of one or two senators could mean that the measure would pass...

...Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that she would "support federal legislation that would outlaw flag desecration, much like laws that currently prohibit the burning of crosses, but I don't believe a constitutional amendment is the answer."

House Passes Constitutional Amendment to Ban Flag Burning

More context is required for this one. Fox News won't be a good source for that context, of course.

zargof

Texas vs. Johnson.

You should listen to Trump's spokesclown and what he says about it though.

Donald Trump: Burn the flag, go to jail - CNNPolitics.com


Oh and in other news Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary. Glad to see Trump is fighting for the little people like he promised.

dakota44

The whole...revoke citizenship..idea is ludicrous on its face. There are very limited options for 'possibly' revoking a natural born Americans citizenship. Some of which are never exercised.

"Note that these are things you can do that may force you to lose your citizenship. The law also says that these acts must be voluntary and with the intent of losing U.S. citizenship. The ways to lose citizenship are detailed in 8 USC 1481:"

Becoming naturalized in another country
Swearing an oath of allegiance to another country
Serving in the armed forces of a nation at war with the U.S., or if you are an officer in that force
Working for the government of another nation if doing so requires that you become naturalized or that you swear an oath of allegiance
Formally renouncing citizenship at a U.S. consular office
Formally renouncing citizenship to the U.S. Attorney General
By being convicted of committing treason.

Naturalized citizens might have more issues. But certainly not for exercising their 1st ammendment rights. Just proves what a bully Trump is.

Leslie

Swamp Drainer in Chief.