Somehow, I don’t think you’re going to complain about this, any more than I do, or that you’ll be embarrassed about crying in public.

Tell that to the pharmacists who refuse to issue birth control or the morning-after pill to women on basis of their religious convictions — or, a recent issue in my own country, county-level government workers who refuse to sign wedding licenses for homosexuals despite gay marriage being legal.

More seriously, I understand the concept of “Speak no ill of the dead” and respecting the office rather than the man, but Helms was a racist and a stain on his country; not merely a bigot but a calculating bigot who appealed to and incited his countrymen’s racism in order to secure his re-election.

“Standing up for your principles” isn’t neccessarily an admirable trait if those principles are toxic.

Yes, I’m sure Mr. Eason did all this over mere disagreement. He probably won’t shake hands with people who wear flag lapel pins, either, the prejudiced bigot.

(Benefit of the doubt and trying to avoid hateful behavior, indeed.)

Would you excoriate somebody choosing to HONOR a U.S. Senator because they only knew of his good deeds “through second and third-hand accounts”?

If someone were to “honor” a person they had never met and knew about only through second and third hand accounts as enthusiastically and vigorously as this Eason fellow dishonored Helms, yeah. I don’t know if I’d ‘excoriate’ them but I’d certainly think they looked a little silly.

Same principle applies, with the weighting a little towards honoring someone, on general principle. Benefit of the doubt and trying to avoid hateful behavior and all that.

Hating someone you don’t know because they disagree with you is called prejudice and bigotry, no matter which direction your facing on the political fence. Ironic isn’t it?

He obviously wasn’t your Senator for thirty years.

Honestly–and I’m a State employee in North Carolina, for whatever it’s worth–it’s not a battle I would have chosen because, hey, he was one of my native state’s elected officials for three decades and the Governor can decree half-staff flags for any turd he wants to. I would have rolled my eyes and gone along with the executive order because, generally speaking, that’s the job description.

And it’s probably worth mentioning that State employees in North Carolina are at-will hires. The Governor doesn’t need a reason to fire you, tho’ bucking a direct order from Raleigh certainly gives him one.

Governor gave a lawful order, employee willfully failed to execute it, ’nuff said.

But as far as spite and contempt goes? The late unlamentable Helms deserves every droplet. He was a bigot, an ignorant prick, a national embarrassment, and–oh, yes–he was a lousy Senator. His biggest margin in an election was around 55% of the vote–for the roughly half of us who were stuck with him after the bigots were turned out by gimmicks like the infamous “white hands” ad (from ’96), the only good thing we can say about Governor Easley’s directive is that it did remind us the prick was dead.

I’m probably not being fair. There were good things about Helms. To the best of my knowledge, he did not hire a hooker, take her to a motel, drug her, and smother her with a pillow while violating her unconscious, dying body. He never, as far as I can recall being informed, anesthetized a puppy and slowly ate it raw. He was not, at least I don’t think, a vector for typhus.

I said elsewhere online that I wasn’t going to say anything more about Helms, and I guess this irritated comment makes me a liar. I’ll shut up now, and I’m finished with the subject. Thank you, John, for bringing a news item I’d missed to my attention.

Burning is the proper way to dispose of a flag – why are some people’s nickers in a twist about it?

I don’t really see the difference, other than that refusing to fly the flag didn’t actually cause tangible harm or difficulty to anyone else *or* directly relate to the job he was hired to do, unlike refusing to issue someone a marriage license or to perform the wedding.

My point is simply that to refuse to lower the flag to mark the passing of a former US Senator is a pointedly spiteful and contemptuous act. Pretty vicious for someone you only knew through second and third-hand accounts.

Sorry, I was with you until the second sentence there. Would you excoriate for somebody choosing to HONOR a U.S. Senator because they only knew of his good deeds “through second and third-hand accounts”?

I assume all the folks who would ‘lose’ the e-mail would be hunky-dory with a state official who refused to do so for a liberal, honorable Senator: “Oh, was I supposed to lower the flag to half staff for that kike-hugging faggot? I guess I just happened to miss that email before I went to lunch.”

You might as well leave out “indivisible” as well. What with the Two Americas and all…