That Dakota Dunes flag bill whose title cropped up briefly on the LRC website last month has officially emerged as Senate Bill 81, Senator Jim Bolin’s effort to check the anti-American tyranny rampant in Dakota Dunes.
Dakota Dunes is a community improvement district, not a real town. It thus can make all sorts of rules enforcing Stepford conformity on its population of Iowa refugees. Dakota Dunes can also allow its homeowners association to trample property rights and the First Amendment:
The association’s bylaw on flags says they can be mounted on the house or on a single flag pole in the front or back yard.
If you do have a flagpole, you can only fly the U.S. flag from it.
Other flags can be flown but only from mounts on the house [Jetske Wauren, “Dakota Dunes Woman Fighting Homeowner’s Association Flag Rules,” KMEG, 2020.09.24].
Or so the Dakota Dunes Homeowners Association rules read last fall, when one Twyla Rosenbaum demanded her right to fly an Air Force flag on her flagpole below the Stars and Stripes. The homeowners association capitulated in October, amending its rules to allow residents to add one military service flag to their flagpoles.
But that local solution isn’t enough for Dakota Dunes’s Senator Bolin (R-16/Canton), who wants to make to sure this anti-sub-flag tyranny never rears its head again in any planned community in South Dakota. Senate Bill 81 would override any community improvement district covenants, restrictions, bylaws, rules, or requirements to allow any oppressed resident to fly one official United States flag (official, so not a flag with any tyrant showboat’s name or an American eagle or a gun slapped across the Stars and Stripes) plus one more official flag representing South Dakota, one of the five branches of the Armed Services (what? no Space Force? Come on, Jim, support the Guardians!), or a POW/MIA flag. It would allow the erection of one flagpole up to twenty feet tall and the flying of one official U.S. flag and one South Dakota, military, or POW/MIA flag thereupon. SB 81 caps flag size at 4.5’x6′.
Senate Local Government will get the first chance to override local government when Senate Bill 81 comes before it… at some date yet to be determined.
“Wrapped in the flag and carrying the bible!”
Come on, no freak flag, I’ve got pandemic hair too.
Don’t we have more serious issues to deal with?
How ‘bout a trump flag? Bet that would get approved in a heartbeat.
Self service 1 party governance. If it wasn’t our state government at work people could think this bill is a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live on stupid stuff to fill up a legislative calendar. Sadly, this personalized legislative actions is the outcome of a unrestrained 1 party rule. The other sad outcome is in Pierre once in awhile when not chasing a con man around in Georgia, Wisconsin or tim-buck-two. More sadly are the flip-floppers in Washington talking themselves into and out of wanting to do their constitutional duties.