So what is the Senate going to do with it's time? It's eliminated its two favorite non-problems already this year, gay marriage, and now the failed flag-burning amendment. Can people think of some new distractions for them to use to deflect attention from their years of failure and doing nothing?

The best has been reading Dana Milbank's coverage of this in the last two days. His first article was about the different estimates of actual flag burning occurring.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.
...
Fortunately, the Senate will have plenty of time to discuss that matter. The chamber has scheduled up to four days of debate on the flag-burning amendment this week. If that formula -- one day of Senate debate for each incident of flag burning this year -- were to be applied to other matters, the Senate would need to schedule 12 days of debate to contemplate the number of years before Medicare goes broke, 335 days of debate for each service member killed in Iraq this year and 11 million days of debate on the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country.

Unfortunately, the Senate has only 49 days left on its legislative calendar for the year.

Ha! It also sounds like the burnings are more instances of vandalism than protest, so all those liars claiming that they see flags being burned all the time can suck it.

Dana follows up today with the all important question posed to the politicians supporting the ban, "Is a ban important?"

"I don't think anybody would say it's the most important," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

"No, no, not even close," said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who, like Lott and 57 other senators, nevertheless signed on as a co-sponsor of the amendment.

"Ha, ha, ha," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), another co-sponsor, replied, before disappearing through an unmarked doorway.

Only Orrin Hatch actually thought it was an important issue.

It's like they're admitting they just use the issue to yank the chain of those poor suckers who actually do think this is a problem in this country. Liberals needs some good issues like this, you know, meaningless crap we can use to rile up our base every session without any real chance of success or progress. Instead all our issues actually are important, like the minimum wage and reproductive freedom.