![_Action Bronson at the ND [Show Preview]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2012/02/15694_406375297124_111529277124_4857169_7977866_n-thumb-250x250-693211.jpg)
Half-Masting the Flag
If you’ve been around the Capitol, the University, or a car dealer this week, you’ve probably noticed that Austin’s flags have been half-masted in tribute to Saul Bellow. Just kidding. The flags are at half staff in acknowledgment of someone much more papal than Bellow: His Holiness Pope John Paul II. After the Pope died on Saturday, President Bush ordered all flags to be flown at half staff until sunset tomorrow.
Austinist got to wondering about the protocol for lowering flags. Since Popes are heads of state, was an executive order necessary? On the other hand, some observers have hypothesized that this was a Republican attempt to leverage someone’s death for political gain (an uncharitable assumption, perhaps; but on the other hand, it wouldn’t be the first time that happened in the past two weeks.
According to Title 4, Section 7, subsection (m) of the U.S. Code, the flag is only flown at half-staff following the death of a foreign dignitary at the Presidential say-so.
We found an EXTREMELY ALARMING piece of trivia while we were looking this up. For years Austinist has been swaggering around the country believing that the Texas state flag is the only flag allowed to fly as high as the U.S. flag. We were miserably wrong. While the Texas flag is allowed to fly equally high as the U.S. flag, so is everyone else’s flag (Title 4, Section 7, subsection (f) of the U.S. Flag Code). Lame!
