Flag at Half Staff Too Often?

It seems like we get an awful lot of orders from Governor Rounds to fly the flag at half staff. Today's grief: remembering the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Search KELO, and you'll find a dozen half-staff orders in South Dakota in the past year. That's in addition to the five official days of remembrance when everyone should fly the flag at half staff. Once every three weeks is either an awful lot of time to spend grieving... or not enough, considering American soldiers die defending their country each week (though more killed themselves than were killed by Afghani bad guys last year).

I would like someone with a longer memory to help us out: did we fly flags at half staff this frequently in the 1980s? Or during Vietnam? Or World War II?

I do not seek to denigrate the memory of any fellow citizen killed by bad dudes. But on days like today and September 11, when we remember the slaughter of innocents on our own soil, I wonder if the proper response to psychopaths like McVeigh and Atta would be to add an extra foot to the flagpole and fly the flag a little higher, just to say, "See? We're still here. Your plot didn't work."