CBS Los Angeles reports that by a vote of 72-1 the California Assembly has passed and sent to the Senate a bill that would bar California state government departments “from selling or displaying items with an image of the Confederate flag.” The article, somewhat sloppily, does not say which Confederate flag (there were several), but more on that in a moment.

Assemblyman Isadore Hall, D-Compton, the bill’s sponsor, “introduced the bill after his mother saw replica Confederate money being sold at the state Capitol gift shop. He called the image a symbol of racism meant to intimidate. ‘Its symbolism in history is directly linked to the enslavement, torture and murder of millions of Americans,’ Hall said of the Confederate flag. ‘The state of California should not be in the business of promoting hate toward others.’” The lone dissent came from Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-San Bernadino, a leading Republican candidate for governor. “We shouldn’t be here picking the kind of speech we like,” Donnelly said. “I am not standing here defending the symbol. I am standing here defending the principle that the First Amendment principles should apply in all state buildings, of all places.”

Now let’s take a look at what was, and was not, banned. Assembly Bill 2444 “would prohibit the State of California from selling or displaying the Battle Flag of the Confederacy or a similar image, or tangible personal property inscribed with those images, unless the image appears in a book that serves an educational or historical purpose.” For those of you not up on your Confederate history, this is the Battle Flag:

Since only the “Battle Flag of the Confederacy” was banned, it is still presumably legal for California state government offices to sell the “Stars and Bars,” the official flag of the Confederacy from March 1861 to May 1863:

And then there is the “Bonnie Blue Flag” that flew over the Confederate batteries that fired on Fort Sumter:

Although the official flag of the Confederacy for two years does not appear to be banned from sale by the pending bill, any chart of the fifty state flags that includes the Mississippi state flag presumably could not be sold:

In another drafting problem, note that AB2444 bans not only the Confederate Battle Flag but any “similar image.” So, query: is the Alabama state flag a “similar image” banned by the bill? Here it is:

The history of the adoption of the Alabama state flag in 1895 reveals the clear intent to model it after the Confederate Battle Flag.

Prior to publishing the 1915 Alabama Official and Statistical Register, Dr. Thomas Owen, director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History interviewed individuals who had been around at the time that the bill was introduced. He concluded that the flag was intended to “preserve in permanent form some of the more distinctive features of the Confederate battle flag, particularly the St. Andrew’s cross.”

An official opinion by the Attorney General of Alabama in 1987 confirmed that “the legislature modeled the state flag after the battle flag.” So, is this flag “similar” enough to the Battle Flag to be banned? Perhaps someone should ask Assemblyman Isadore Hall, D-Compton.

If AB2444 is passed by the California Senate and signed by the Governor, will California state government offices and gift shops be allowed to sell the first official flag of the Confederacy, which flew over the first capitol in Montgomery, but prohibited from selling posters that show the flags of all 50 states?

Sometimes morally preening political correctness is harder than it looks.