Half Staff – why is the US flag at half staff? | Hacker News Reader

Half Staff – why is the US flag at half staff?

halfstaff.co

9 pointsjacobwg12 comments

You might want to find a better flag graphic.

The people who want to know if it should be flying at half mast are more likely to care that the US flag being accurately represented.

Yeah, I kinda agree - I'm not very skilled at graphic design so I used a premade icon for launch, but I may try my hand at rebuilding the SVG in Illustrator.

So, this is what I came up with, but I reverted it because it just doesn't have the same impact: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ma2rf6lo39jb47m/Screenshot%202016-...

I'm probably going to have to find a designer. :)

Try searching "american flag" on openclipart.org. You might find something you like.

I agree with the others -- the one you have isn't really appropriate for such a solemn subject.

Does it use location information to determine what the status is for a particular state ? IIRC, there is a also a state level status that could override the national level ?

For example: http://portal.ct.gov/flag-status/

It doesn't currently use location for state info no - since this is a combination scraper / text processor, it's implemented for WhiteHouse.gov, but adding the states would involve 50 different scrapers. It's an idea I had, but didn't make it into the first version.

As far as I know, states can lower their flag independently from the US flag, but according to flag code cannot fly their flags higher than the US flag, so if the US flag goes down both do. Some states will explicitly lower both, essentially voicing support for whatever reason the US flag was lowered, and sometimes they lower theirs simply citing the flag code. The flag code isn't law though, so it's not technically "illegal" to break.

Can a state override a president proclamation for flying the flag?

I think not in that the proclamation states that the flag should be lowered "at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions" and "at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations".

So, for those locations it seems mandatory. But the flag code that states things like that state flags should be flown lower that the federal flag is codified tradition and not law, so technically states do not have to follow, as far as I understand.

Seems like this maybe should have been submitted as a "Show HN."

Do upgrade your flag. Make that a high priority.

Nice. Does this pull live data from somewhere?

Yep, directly from the Presidential Proclamations on WhiteHouse.gov. If you're curious, the source is on GitHub at https://github.com/jacobwgillespie/halfstaff.

This is really cool. Great idea.

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