In another hardly surprising revelation, a feature in today’s New York Times presents video and photographs of police officers from NYPD under cover at protests, such as antiwar demonstrations and Critical Mass cycling rallies. (Unlike San Francisco’s SFPD which doesn’t even bother going under cover for its surveillance of peaceful protests – see accompanying image).

As the Bush Administration defends the illegal tap dance on the constitution that authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, the notion that America’s First Amendment protects dissent is fast becoming nothing more than a myth.

Although following a public outcry, the Administration was forced to drop Operation TIPS – an insidious program designed to allow anonymous tipsters to report “suspicious” activities to the “authorities,” it appears the real reason was probably logistical.

If too many of the suspicious activities appear to be those of undercover officers, too many resources would be spent on real culprits rather than the surveillance of Americans exercising their constitutional rights.

In an astounding act of pandering, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has joined the likes of California Senator Dianne Feinstein by co-sponsoring a bill that would ban flag burning, although unlike Feinstein she is opposed to a constitutional ban on the act. The bill, introduced by the Republican Senator, Bob Bennett of Utah, would prohibit:

• Destroying a flag with the intent of causing violence;

• Threatening someone by burning a flag;

• Damaging a flag that is federally owned or that belongs to someone else on federal land.

While not quite as deranged and insidious as the constitutional amendment proposed by Feinstein, the notion of a woman whose husband desecrated the Office of the United States Presidency by receiving a blowjob in the Oval Office from a young intern, and ejaculating on her dress, is simply absurd. If one is to follow the Clinton example of protecting symbols, one can safely assume that burning the flag is forbidden, but using it as a cloth to wipe off adulterous semen is perfectly okay.