AUSTIN — A couple of items in the "I can't believe this" category. I can't believe Congress is actually doing this flag-burning nonsense again. This has to be the most shameless political demagoguery since the last time they honored mother and apple pie.

The Supreme Court has ruled that burning a flag falls into the category of symbolic political speech. Of the few instances I've seen of it, all of them struck me as silly, attention-getting ploys by stupid show-offs — once by a demonstrator at the '84 Republican National Convention and a few times at neo-Nazi rallies.

The only case I've seen where burning a flag actually seemed like a genuine expression of political dissent is in the famous photographs of the black man in Harlem the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The man is obviously in a terrible state of rage and pain — with tears running down his face, he brings his own flag to the street and burns it there.

It was awful that he felt that way, but that was an awful day for this country. The man was clearly expressing his feelings at the time, and in this country, we do not put you in prison or send you to Siberia for expressing political sentiments. That's why it's called a free country. Former Rep. Craig Washington once said during a lonely soliloquy on the floor of the Texas Senate: "I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag."

The worst thing about Congress' attempt to distort the Constitution in the name of protecting the flag is that this sort of shameless exploitation of patriotic feelings for political purposes debases patriotism and gives it a bad name.

Another jaw-dropping moment came Wednesday night on PBS' "NewsHour" when Wendy Gramm — a former Reagan official who is now director of something called the Regulatory Analysis Program at George Mason University — came out with a novel reason for opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's improved air-quality standards. Follow this closely.

As you know, the EPA proposes to save 15,000 lives a year by cutting smog in the atmosphere, but at the same time, the administration is refusing to go along with international agreements to cut the carbon dioxide that is primarily responsible for depleting the ozone layer in the outer atmosphere, thus causing global warming.

Gramm, with a straight face, argued that cleaning up the lower atmosphere will allow in more ultraviolet light from the weakened upper atmosphere, resulting in around 25 more deaths annually from melanoma, which is skin cancer.

Got that? We should not clean up smog because we're still destroying the ozone layer. No wonder I never bothered to write fiction.

If you haven't got anything else to worry about: According to a new poll, we don't like our own children. A public policy research group called Public Agenda found that only 37 percent of adults polled believe that today's youngsters will eventually make the country a better place. It seems we consider our teen-agers, whom we have long disliked, to be "rude," "wild" and "irresponsible." But younger children are unpopular, as well. Half of us think little kids are "spoiled," and a third think they're "lazy." Here's a fine, judgmental howdy-do.

More than 60 percent of adults said there was a very serious problem in young people's failure to learn fundamental moral values. "Americans are convinced that today's adolescents face a crisis — not in their economic or physical well-being but in their values and morals." The study further concludes that adults in all economic classes, parents and non-parents, tend to view young people with feelings of alarm or fear.

At least we have enough sense to know whom to blame. Eighty percent of us think it is uncommon to find parents who are good role models for their children. Half of us blame the schools for not educating the kids or providing safe, orderly environments.

According to Public Agenda, our favored solutions are 1) improve the schools, 2) more after-school programs, 3) flexible schedules for parents, 4) nightly curfews and 5) more involvement by volunteer organizations like the Boy Scouts.

A friend recently sent me a remarkable set of documents from the last meeting of the American Correctional Chaplains Association that may help us here. Among the words of wisdom at the gathering were these from Carol Vance of Texas: "What causes crime is not drugs, alcohol, unemployment or low educational levels. It is caused by persons who grew up in chaotic home situations, abused as children, without any appropriate guidance or direction, deep in pain through the lives they lead, who are trying to escape their circumstances. The public, looking for answers, has missed this point. ... Lives can be changed. ... We have found that inmates who participate in mentoring programs have reduced their recidivism rate to 14 percent."

So, if we don't like our own children, how about doing something about it? Fast. Now. Not your kid? Not your problem? Now tell me again about this lack of proper role models; tell me again about how kids need to learn — from someone — about caring and compassion and regard for others.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.