[windowpane]

That's a possibility, but in most if not all cars, the headlight switch has constant power so you can turn your lights on without the key in the ignition I haven't tested that in my car but it has been true for every car I've owned/driven. The only difference with this car, for me, is that my M is supposed to have a safety 'battery rundown' protection where if I leave something on too long w/o a key in the ignition or w/o the car running the bcm is supposed to shutoff power to it.

In your situation where if the headlight sw is failing the power is only intermittent so if your concorde has the same run down feature it wouldn't kick in since its not a constant drain.

Since you have yours on Automatic there may be someting wrong with your ignition switch as you mentioned making it think the lights should be on but only if its dark since they are on Auto. You can try to test this by seeing if they continue to flicker with the switch set to off, it would be worth it to try if the switch is good you shouldn't have any flickering even if the ignition switch is bad.