Wrath of Dagon

How is that relevant? Is baiting only prohibited on national holidays? Also we've established Cinqo de Mayo is not a national holiday, though it may be a nationalist holiday for some people. And you'd be sued for violating their first amendment rights. Also there was no disturbance, and even if there were, it's the people who are causing the disturbance that need to be punished.

I'd like to see if Hurlshot would send someone wearing a gay rights shirt home because they're baiting rednecks.

The crux of the matter is that wearing your own country's flag in your own country is now considered baiting. Are blacks also baiting KKK by being black, or should they all be like Michael Jackson?

Why should you be decent to people who find your flag offensive? That's the kind of self flagellation that's become so popular in the West, and will probably be its doom.

No it's not, there's a fundamental difference between a national flag and yellow polka-dots (unless the national flag happens to be yellow polka-dots of course).

Apparently there was an ROTC student who got suspended for removing a Mexican flag which was flying above the American flag, which is a violation of protocol. I heard that on the radio but couldn't find the story to link to. Why'd the kid remove it instead of put them in their proper order? There is no proper order. You cannot fly one national flag above the other, it's an insult. You either have to have 2 flagpoles, or 1 flag. Here's an interesting article I just saw which has some thoughts about immigration and the situation in the US: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100511/cm_csm/300687

Our politicians are quite scared of the hispanic vote actually.

Apparently there was an ROTC student who got suspended for removing a Mexican flag which was flying above the American flag, which is a violation of protocol. I heard that on the radio but couldn't find the story to link to.

Ebert is deliberately comparing something that really would be provocative to something that shouldn't be provocative to any American citizen. None of the celebrations he mentioned would be offended by someone wearing an American flag. Here's another editorial: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/...at-morgan-hill/

Roger Ebert, I think he's become an internet troll in his old age.

They are a purer, better species than we are.

You hire staff when your existing staff can't deal with the work load, not before. Anyway, we're talking about government debt, the government is usually an obstruction to growth, not the cause.

Shouldn't have taxed our tea.

No, to grow you have to produce more than you consume. Consuming more than you produce is a recipe for disaster.

Nothing wrong with celebrating your heritage, so long as you recognize you're an American citizen first. Unfortunately that no longer always holds, as the editorials pointed out.

Actually it can be, if you lie on the US entry application. These people are enemy combatants, not regular criminals. We need to have the option of interrogating them instead of reading them Miranda rights and letting them remain silent. That was the Bush administration position, apparently until a 2006 law which states that even terrorism suspects (edit: if US citizens) have to be given full constitutional rights unless they're affiliated with Al Qaeda. That's a stupid way to tie our own hands in a war.

Nah, in the US we've been trained to like being spat upon.

They did remove the bandannas. It's the T-shirts they refused to do, and were sent home. That's a blatantly hyperbolic misrepresentation of what happened in the school in the original news story. Seriously, this isn't about flags. It's about some idiot kids who decided to piss other people off, and got told not to. Yes, piss off other people by carrying their own flag on their own soil. Just like Mexicans are constantly pissing me off by carrying their own flags in their own country. You just don't get it, do you?

Not only not flying it, but not letting anyone else carry it either. That is the issue. If both flags were there there would be no issue. If you are on a coutry's soil, you have to respect that country's flag. You don't put up your own flag on foreign soil without also putting up their flag, that's simply respect. This is much worse though, these are American citizens offended by the American flag on American soil in an American public school paid for by American taxpayers. You get the point?

That's total nonsense. The only polite thing to do would be to put up both Mexican and American flags, so that the locals don't feel left out or like you're insulting their country. And these aren't Mexicans, these are supposed to be American citizens!

Veteran's Day is not "hate Mexico day", so why couldn't they wear a Mexican flag? I see lots of people wearing Mexican flag shirts, no one notices or objects.

You mean live peacefully, you can always leave peacefully.

What would the Mexicans say if I went to their country and told them not to wear the Mexican flag because it's the 4th of July?

All legislation is ultimately interpreted by the courts. Personally I feel at the point where we cannot expect the courts to administer fairness and common sense using grey area legislation is the point where we surrender ourselves to draconian black and white law enforcement. As - if you will excuse my being pointedly rude - you have to put up with in the United States; and which is complicit in a culture of aggressive punitive policing. This isn't just my view, but it gets mentioned quite regularly in the House of Lords. The worry here is that someone in power will claim hate speech for something that is legitimate dissent. Already people get called all kinds of names for objecting to the prevailing PC or criticisizing those in power. It's a pretty short step to having dissent outlawed completely, and we're not that many activist judges away from that happening, so it's a legitimate fear. You could probably draw up very narrow legislation where the threat of violence would have to be very explicit, but I think most people would just rather not move in that direction at all.