[olvet]

I have always wondered what the motivation for 692 was. My state, (NJ) follows the protocol as I do. Was it to raise awareness of the war on teror? 9-11? I know the American Legion supports it too. I have come across people who argue against it. Their reasons run from one extreme to the other. It would be nice to be able to have the answer.

[Peter Ansoff]

Hello, olvet - welcome to the forum!

This change to the flag code was made a couple of years ago, and was discussed here in the forum in this thread:

who can order the flag half mast

Its basic purpose was to give state Governors the authority to half-staff the flag to mark the death of service members from that state. An interesting twist is that it also directs federal activities in the state to follow suit. Technically, this would mean (I think!) that the Governor of Virginia could direct the flags at the Pentagon to be flown at half-staff, and the Mayor of the District of Columbia could do the same for the flags on the White House and the Capitol.

Just as a side note, HR 692 was the House version of the bill, which is not necessarily the final form of the law as passed by Congress and signed by the President (Public Law 110-41, in this case). This issue has come up here in relation to the rules for flying the POW-MIA flag. The House (I believe) version of the legislation provided for a set of protocol rules, but they were deleted in the final law. Several veterans' web sites quote the HR version as if it were law, which it is not.

Several members posted the language of HR 692 here, and the Spam filter snagged them for some reason. The language is available here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.692:

If anyone needs it for reference. The final form of the law has been incorporated into the US Code database at Cornell: LII: U.S. Code: Home

Peter Ansoff