Davin News Server

On Tue, 26 Aug 2025 18:21:05 -0700,  Rudy Canoza says...  

All irrelevant and non sequitur passages by idiot, that have NOTHING to do with BURNING an American flag, snipped.

> Flag burning is speech ("communicative conduct").

NONE of which you posted.

1) Attaching a peace sign to the flag - NOTHING to do with flag burning

2) refusing to salute the flag - NOTHING to do with flag burning

3) displaying a red flag - NOTHING to do with flag burning

4) wearing pants with small flag sewn into their seat - NOTHING to do with flag burning

50+ year old bullshit. As you faggots like to say... laws are made to be changed and laws are a "living" thing, like the 
Constitution.

And if THEY can change law to make any of what you posted, legal... Trump can too. 

=====

Question:
Is the supreme court the ONLY entity that can make such law as protecting flag burning? If not, who else?

Answer:
That is an excellent question that gets to the very heart of the U.S. legal system.

The U.S. Supreme Court is not a law-making body in the traditional sense. It does not create laws; rather, it interprets the U.S. 
Constitution and federal laws. In the case of flag burning, the Supreme Court did not 'make a law" protecting the act. Instead, it 
ruled that any law prohibiting flag burning was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment.

This ruling established a legal precedent that is binding on all lower courts.

HOW THIS COULD BE CHANGED:

The Supreme Court itself: The only other entity with the power to make a similar ruling is the Supreme Court itself. A future case 
could be brought before the Court, and it could, in theory, reverse the Texas v. Johnson decision.

A Constitutional Amendment: The most definitive way to change this would be through a constitutional amendment. If an amendment 
were passed that specifically gave Congress the power to regulate flag desecration, it would supersede the Supreme Court's 
interpretation. However, passing a constitutional amendment is a very difficult process, requiring a two-thirds vote in both the 
House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Question:
So, can anyone else at all, make a law banning flag burning, and if so, does it have to go through the Supreme Court before 
implementation?

That's a very clear question that gets to the specifics of how the legal system works.

Can anyone else make a law banning flag burning?

YES, THEY CAN. State legislatures and even some city governments can pass laws that ban or restrict flag burning. In fact, this is 
exactly what happened in the case of Texas v. Johnson-the law at the center of that case was a Texas state statute.

Does it have to go through the Supreme Court?

NO, a law does not have to go to the Supreme Court before it is implemented. When a state or federal law is passed, it takes effect 
as soon as it is signed into law (unless it specifies a different effective date).

The Supreme Court only gets involved when a law is challenged. The process works like this:

A person is charged with violating a state or federal law against flag burning.

That person's legal team would argue that the law is unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court's prior ruling in Texas v. 
Johnson.

A lower court would hear the case. Because the Supreme Court has already set a binding precedent on this exact issue, the lower 
court would be obligated to follow that precedent and rule the law unconstitutional.

The only way the case would get to the Supreme Court is if a lower court somehow disregarded the precedent or if there were a new 
legal argument that the Supreme Court decided was worth re-examining. Given how clear the precedent is, it is highly unlikely that 
a new case would ever make it that far.

=====

It doesn't matter what Trump did. WHAT he did is not unconstitutional. He didn't make law.

"U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order requiring the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute 
people for burning the American flag..."

Investigate and prosecute.

LOL.

Do you know what that means? The one investigated and/or prosecuted, will have to defend himself. He will be fined and if he wants 
to take it to the Supreme Court, it's gonna cost him... BIGLY.

So, it matters not that you THINK what Trump did was illegal. It's not... the defendant will have to prove that what he did was 
"legal". Taking thing to the SC is expensive. Like many lawsuits do, it will get expensive... better to pay the fine and move on.

LOL... poor TDS sufferer!

===============================================================================

"Trump Derangement Syndrome" Is a Real Mental Condition

All you need to know about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or TDS.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike 
of Donald Trump, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."

Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that broke TDS down into 
three distinct phases or stages:

"In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect's every tweet provokes a firestorm, 
as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world."

"The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting 
solely of hyperbole."

"As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality."

The Point here is simple: TDS is, in the eyes of its adherents, the knee-jerk opposition from liberals to anything and everything 
Trump does. If Trump announced he was donating every dollar he's ever made, TDS sufferers would suggest he was up to something 
nefarious, according to the logic of TDS. There's nothing - not. one. thing. - that Trump could do or say that would be received 
positively by TDSers.

The history of Trump Derangement Syndrome actually goes back to the early 2000s - a time when the idea of Trump as president was a 
punch line for late-night comics and nothing more.

Wikipedia traces its roots to "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - a term first coined by the late conservative columnist Charles 
Krauthammer back in 2003. The condition, as Krauthammer defined it, was "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in 
reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence of George W. Bush."

Added Krauthammer:

"Some clinicians consider this delusion - that Americans can only get their news from one part of the political spectrum - the 
gravest of all. They report that no matter how many times sufferers in padded cells are presented with flash cards with the symbols 
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times - they remain unresponsive, some 
in a terrifying near-catatonic torpor."

(If you don't realize the idea of TDS or BDS is - in no small part - meant in a tongue-in-cheek manner then, well, you may well 
have it.)

Trump allies believe that TDS is worse than ODS or BDS - by a lot. Wrote conservative pundit Bernie Goldberg on Real Clear Politics 
in early 2017:

"Before the election, the victims of TDS routinely compared Donald Trump to Hitler. Guess what. They're still doing it. Articles in 
respectable publications written by professors at elite universities are warning us to be on guard, that a Trump presidency could 
imperil democracy-as-we-know-it and may very well spell doom for American civilization.

"On election night, as it became obvious that their worst nightmare was about to come true, some libs fainted. Some vomited. Many 
more threatened to leave the country, but I'm pretty sure none actually did. As Donald Trump might say in a tweet: so sad!"

The truth is that TDS is just the preferred nomenclature of Trump defenders who view those who oppose him and his policies as 
nothing more than the blind hatred of those who preach tolerance and free speech. Viewed more broadly, the rise of presidential 
derangement syndromes is a function of increased polarization - not to mention our national self-sorting - at work in the country 
today.

We no longer live around, work around or pal around with people who think any differently than us. We watch cable news that affirms 
what we already think. We read ideological "news" sites that tell us how good our side is and how bad the other one is. And on and 
on and on.

Is it any wonder then that we are increasingly willing to lump those who disagree with us into the "deranged" category? To say that 
those who don't share our views are mentally deficient in some way?

What does it say about a President - and about a country - when the standard response to those with whom you disagree is that they 
must be crazy? Nothing good, for sure. 

=====

Many clinicians, political commentators, and members of the public have speculated upon the mental health of President Donald 
Trump. Indeed, over 70,000 people self-identifying as "mental health professionals" have signed a petition declaring that "Trump is 
mentally ill and must be removed." In sociological terms, the "medical gaze" has been hitherto focused on President Trump, and to a 
lesser extent his ardent supporters.

However, in recent months, many have been questioning the direction of this "medical gaze." In fact, more and more people are 
suggesting that this "medical gaze" should be reversed and refocused on President Trump's most embittered and partisan opponents. 
Some have even suggested that these opponents are experiencing a specific mental condition-a condition which has been labelled 
"Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS).
What does DSM-5 say about "Trump Derangement Syndrome"?

Mental illnesses are officially classified in a dense and dry book published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) known as 
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). This book contains 947 pages and lists hundreds 
of mental disorders; TDS is nowhere to be seen. Similarly, a review of scholarly databases such as MEDLINE and Google Scholar 
reveal no academic papers on this alleged syndrome. Officially at least, TDS is not a real, diagnosable, or treatable mental 
disorder.

That said, medical anthropologists and critical sociologists have convincingly argued that DSM-5 is a flawed document. Indeed, 
social scientists have long recognized that there are numerous "folk categories" of mental disorders that are considered real 
conditions by the general public, even though they are not recognized as such in the DSM. These include categories such as 
"burnout" or "nervous breakdown."

As such, lack of official recognition does not mean that TDS is not a real mental condition.


Lay Understandings of "Trump Derangement Syndrome"

There is no shared lay understanding of TDS, mainly because it is a folk category rather than a professional category. As such, 
there is currently much armchair speculation about the nature and existence of TDS, without consensus.

The name itself explicitly suggests a "syndrome," which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "a characteristic combination of 
opinions, emotions, or behavior." Several commentators have run with this, putting forth suggestions about opinions, emotions and 
behaviors characterizing TDS.

Shared amongst these is a notion that the everyday activities of President Trump trigger some people into distorted opinions, 
extreme emotions and hysterical behaviors. Well-known writer Bernard Goldberg gives supposed behavioral examples of TDS among 
Trump's political opponents, including fainting, vomiting, students retreating to "safe spaces" and others demanding "therapy 
dogs." Political commentator Justin Raimondo focuses on opinions, language and cognition, writing in the LA Times that "sufferers 
speak a distinctive language consisting of hyperbole [leading to] a constant state of hysteria... the afflicted lose touch with 
reality."

Such forms of highly emotional reaction could be something akin to the fainting and screaming characterizing American Beatlemania 
in the 1960s. Unlike the Beatles, however, the extreme emotional reaction alleged to characterize TDS is not based on adoration and 
admiration, but on fear and loathing.

Contrariwise, many others ridicule the notion that TDS is anything but a malicious slur term used to discredit and delegitimize 
criticism of President Trump. For example, CNN's Chris Cillizza may speak for many when he stated: "The truth is that TDS is just 
the preferred nomenclature of Trump defenders who view those who oppose him and his policies as nothing more than blind hatred." 
Likewise, Adam Gopnik writes that "our problem is not TDS; our problem is Deranged Trump Self-Delusion."

In other words, there are polarized opinions about the nature, reality and existence of TDS.


Conclusion

The wider public may be unaware that psychiatrists and social scientists spend considerable time and energy behind closed doors 
pondering over the existence and reality of mental conditions. This has led the APA to revise the DSM five times since 1952, 
considerably expanding the list of official mental disorders with each revision. As far as I am aware, few psychiatrists are 
currently arguing that DSM-6 should contain TDS as a mental disorder.

That said, in its official definition of mental disorder, the DSM-5 states that "a mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by 
clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior... mental disorders are usually 
associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities."

Many have argued that some people have been seriously disturbed and distressed by the policies, speech, behavior, and tweets of 
President Trump, so much so that it has affected their cognitive, affective, and behavioral functioning. Such people may need 
mental health support. As such, further research is necessary to investigate the extreme reactions toward President Trump, in the 
same way that researchers investigate other extreme social phenomena, such as Beatlemania or the like. This will shed light on the 
reality of this emerging folk category that has been labelled by many as "Trump Derangement Syndrome."