Flags

On a day when thousands gathered in Westminster's Little Saigon to celebrate Tet, the start of the lunar new year, a veterans group urged planners of a Vietnam War memorial to fly both the U.S. flag and that of the former Republic of Vietnam. "There are 358,000 reasons to fly both," said John Lynch, president of the Orange County chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, referring to the 58,000 U.S. and 300,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in the war.

A few years back, Bette Frazier was so appalled by City Hall's tattered, faded flags that she wrote a letter to the mayor asking him to create a job that would give someone the responsibility of mending them. Three months later, in a congratulatory letter dated March 1993, Mayor William D. Mahoney appointed Frazier the city's official flag commissioner. Her job, a volunteer position unique to La Habra, consists of scanning the city's streets in search of filthy, ripped and faded flags.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sent a letter to Vietnam seeking to defuse tensions over a state bill that promotes the flag of former South Vietnam, the U.S. said. The U.S. said Powell said in the letter that legislators had been contacted about potential problems with the bill, which would require that the South Vietnamese flag replace that of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam at state-funded schools, whenever such flags are displayed.

A state law allowing bonfires in campgrounds and on beaches was just the loophole American Legion officials in Ventura needed to continue with their ceremonial burning of Old Glory. On Thursday, the burning question over the legality of destroying tattered flags with fire at the post's Palm Street hall was put to rest. Richard Baldwin, air pollution control officer for Ventura County, said the post's occasional ceremonial flag burnings may continue under a state law that allows bonfires.

Costa Mesa police are investigating the apparent theft of a U.S. flag and two other banners from a pole in front of City Hall, a department spokesman said. About 7 a.m. Monday, a city maintenance worker noticed the bare 100-foot pole, said Lt. Ron Smith. Besides the U.S. flag, a California flag and a POW/MIA banner were also gone, Smith said. They were replaced in about an hour, he said.

Black state lawmakers Monday backed the governor's plan to take the Confederate battle flag off the Statehouse dome and move it to a monument nearby. The 35-member black caucus was divided as late as last week over whether to go along with the plan, which Gov. David Beasley offered in hopes of resolving the bitter dispute. "We recognize that not everybody is going to be satisfied in terms of this compromise, but it is a step forward," said state Rep.

Just after 8 a.m. one recent Tuesday, a garbage truck slowed down at the corner of Main and School streets to send a thunderous horn blast in the direction of two silver-haired women waving large American flags. Then a Chrysler stuffed with children passed by, offering a friendly beep to the women wearing blue jeans and red, white and blue sweaters.

You'd think they'd know all there is to know about flag etiquette at Los Angeles' Boy Scout headquarters. Scout leaders teach it, after all. Copies of the Boy Scout Handbook there offer instruction on the proper care of and respect for the Stars and Stripes on Page 473. And the booklet sold in the headquarters bookstore, "Your Flag--Everything You Want to Know About the Flag of the United States of America," is crammed with details.

The reelection-conscious state Senate jumped aboard a national bandwagon on Thursday and voted to ask President Bush and Congress to support a constitutional amendment prohibiting the desecration of the American Flag. Proponents of the measure, some of whose desks were decorated with miniature U.S. flags, insisted that as the country's national symbol the flag should be given extraordinary protection from what one called "terrorism."

The Senate on Thursday rejected a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag burning that President Bush had endorsed in the wake of a controversial Supreme Court ruling. The 51-48 vote in favor of the President's proposal fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to initiate a constitutional change and appeared likely to bury the issue for the time being. Congress already has approved a statutory ban on flag burning that was supported by lawmakers who oppose a constitutional change.