here's to the united states senate: making me want to burn a flag or ten just because they don't want me to.

wsws analysis (all emphasis mine):

"The US Senate fell short by the narrowest of margins Wednesday in a vote on whether to adopt the first-ever constitutional amendment to restrict free speech. An amendment backed by the Bush administration to give Congress the power to 'ban desecration of the American flag' received 66 votes with 34 against, just missing the two-thirds margin required.

The campaign against flag-burning has long been a political hobby-horse for right-wing and chauvinist elements, going back to the Vietnam War period when antiwar protesters frequently burned flags at demonstrations against US aggression and war crimes in Southeast Asia. Numerous state laws against flag-burning were enacted in that period, but convictions under these laws were appealed on civil liberties grounds. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in 1989 that burning the flag and similar symbolic anti-patriotic acts are protected as free speech under the First Amendment.

[...]

The right-wing domination of official politics in the United States in recent decades has included a push for the first constitutional amendments that would restrict rather than expand democratic rights: banning abortion, for instance, or gay marriage, or flag-burning. In each case the religious or political prejudices of a section of the ultra-right would be embedded in the document that establishes the long-term framework of American political life. Successful adoption of the flag-burning amendment would undoubtedly encourage efforts on behalf of the other amendments.

There are also potentially important legal implications. The amendment, by using the term 'desecration,' confers a quasi-religious status on the American flag. What a Christian fundamentalist or fanatical chauvinist regards as desecration could go well beyond burning or destroying the flag. Given the top-heavy majorities in both houses for the amendment, a law implementing it would undoubtedly be passed quickly and with the widest possible scope. It is entirely possible that, for example, carrying an American flag upside-down at an antiwar demonstration could be characterized as 'desecration,' or the use of the flag in antiwar art and filmmaking. If one recalls the outrage among right-wing pundits over the immigrant rights demonstrations in the spring, it is not farfetched to suppose that even the ordinary display of the flag by non-citizens at such a protest could be criminalized as 'desecration.'

[...]

It is hard to say which was more revolting in the Senate debate—the patriotic hogwash coming from the Republicans, who overwhelmingly supported the amendment, or the legalistic hairsplitting by the Democrats, whether they supported or opposed it. There were only a handful of speakers in the debate who addressed the fundamental issue of free speech. The vast majority either howled in the chorus of flag-wavers, or argued for the prohibition of flag-burning by legislation rather than constitutional amendment.

Nearly every senator in the debate denounced flag-burning as odious, obscene, hateful or otherwise beyond the pale. Most of these gentlemen and ladies were not so exercised about US torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, or the countless atrocities against innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Children dismembered by 500-pound bombs are 'collateral damage,' but a piece of colored cotton set on fire is an outrage."