What the heck is this? Clark favors flag burning amendment? I thought he was supposed to be intelligent. Good grief.

Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.

Sounds like pandering to me. Blech.

Update: For good measure, John Scalzi has a nice piece on why a flag burning amendment is a colossally stupid idea.

No, the best way to fight this amendment is to undermine it from the word Go, to prove (without having to be incarcerated) how stupid and pointless this thing would be. So right here and now I promise: the day the 38th state legislature passes this amendment into law, I go into business for myself. Making what? Flags, of course.

What kind of flags? Well, I'll tell you. The flag I have in mind has 13 stripes, alternating red and white. In the top left hand corner, I figure I'd put a blue rectangle, and fill it with white, five- pointed stars, in alternating rows of five and six, numbering, oh, about 50 or so. But where that last star would go, maybe I'd put a circle instead, or a square, or a pentagon, seeing that's it's five sided and all. It'd be 99% the Flag of United States of America, and 1% filler.

It would look like that American flag, it would feel like an American flag, and if I ran it up a flagpole, someone would probably salute it like an American flag. [...]

What could I do with my new flag? Why, just about anything I wanted

[...] I could wear it, wax my car, swaddle small, incontinent children, potty-train my turtle, towel off after mud wrestling, turn it into a hammock, use it as bandages in a emergency situation or just shred it into fibers with a weed-whacker. Whatever I wanted. God forbid I would want to burn something in political protest, I could set it aflame outside the steps of the United States House of Representatives.

[...]If you want people to revere and honor the flag, you should let it stand for principles that are worth honoring and revering. Compulsory reverence is no reverence at all. Just remember, I'm standing by with my new flags. I bet you I'd sell a lot of them.