"Amending our Constitution should be a rare and extreme measure, which we should only resort to when all legislative options have been exhausted," she insisted.

Congress has previously passed flag legislation, but the Supreme Court has always ruled that flag burning was constitutionally-protected free speech.

Sixty-five sitting senators back the ban, reports the New York Post - leaving the measure just two critical votes shy of the 67 needed for passage of an amendment. If it passes the Senate, the amendment also must be approved by at least 38 states over the next seven years.

By opposing protecting the American flag with a constitutional amendment, Clinton is catering to the more radical wing of her party, whose support she'll need to win the 2008 presidential nomination.

However, by bucking the popular measure, the former first lady risks resurrecting charges about her own radical past during the 1970s, when she protested the Vietnam war and defended the Black Panthers.

In the just-released book, "The Truth About Hillary," for instance, author Ed Klein reports that Clinton was a driving force behind the radical leftwing "The Yale Review of Law and Social Action" at grad school.

Hillary "co-edited articles that focused on the violence-prone Black Panthers and the ongoing trial of several Panthers for the torture-murder of their colleague, Alex Rackley," Klein says.

Accompanying a companion article - "a cartoon depicting the police as oinking, hairy, snot-nosed pigs."

Despite her radical history, Clinton bristled at the notion that the kind of dissent she practiced would be viewed as anti-America.

"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic," she shrieked at a 2003 Connecticut fundraiser. "We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration."

Editor's note:
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