From CNN:

FLOCK: Governor, you look tremendously well. You got a shave. You're looking wonderful. ... Did you actually get some sleep?

SCHWEIKER: I just said to the troopers on the way up here I think I fell asleep.

Editors Note: He was perpetually appeared dressed and groomed for television coverage.

FLOCK: How are you feeling about what you accomplished out here?

SCHWEIKER: Oh, I feel it's going to take a little bit, but the thrill of our success and bringing up those nine guys far outweighs the shortcomings that relate to physical energy of myself.

Editors Note: All of that talking to the press really tuckered the poor fella out!

"I'm very happy to report that about 10:16, we did break through. We broke through at 239.6 (feet underground), and it certainly is an encouraging development, and the operation now is ongoing."

-- Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker

Thanks to Governor Schweiker for all of his medical expertise... er... engineering... I mean back breaking labor... Ummmm... For handling all of those pesky press conferences!

Meanwhile, in Mark Schweiker's head, "Mmmm! Look at ALL of those microphones! Ah! National press coverage! This sure beats thinking about the disintegrating state infrastructures."

Killer, Rapist to Be Thrown Off Cliff in Sack
July 18, 2002 10:41 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - "An Iranian man, convicted for raping and killing his 16-year-old nephew, will be executed by being thrown off a cliff in a sack, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

If the unnamed man survives the fall down a rocky precipice, he will be hanged, legal experts said. He has 20 days to appeal the court sentence.

The killer was arrested last year in the northwestern city of Mashhad after "seducing" and killing his nephew, who worked as an assistant at the man's carpenter's workshop, the Norouz daily newspaper said.

Under Iran's Islamic law, applied since the 1979 revolution, pederasty, homosexuality and adultery are among a long list of crimes punishable by death."

Being stuffed and thrown over a cliff in a sack? Hanging? - Barbaric.
As we all know, civilized countries only gas, poison and electrocute.

These scoundrels know little and care less about the “nation’s heritage.” The House of Representatives began its “tradition” of saying the pledge each morning only in 1988, as the result of a dirty tricks campaign by the Republican Party and George Bush Sr. against Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. The Massachusetts governor had vetoed a law requiring the Pledge of Allegiance in all public schools, correctly calling it a violation of the First Amendment. The Republicans sought on that basis to brand him as “un-American.” For its part, the Senate began the practice only two years ago.

The origins of the 31-word oath lie in the relatively recent history of America, a history that does not bear much probing as far as the pledge’s modern-day defenders are concerned.

Its author was Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister who was pressured into giving up his Boston pulpit because of the church’s opposition to his Christian-socialist sermons. He was a first cousin of Edward Bellamy, author of the well-known socialist-utopian novel, “Looking Backward.”

He wrote the pledge in 1892 for the magazine The Youth’s Companion. It included no reference to God, which would only be tacked on 62 years later.

He chose the words, he later wrote, with his mind on “salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution ... with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people...”

In short, the democratic ideals of the American Revolution, the Civil War and the abolition of slavery animated the original pledge. Bellamy acknowledged, however, that he had wanted to include the words “liberty, justice and equality for all,” but left out equality because he knew that it would be opposed by fellow members of the National Education Association, who stood against equal rights for blacks and women.

Even so, the pledge as written rankled the reactionaries of that period, and it was not long before they set about changing it. What had begun as an idealistic tribute to the universal democratic principles of the country’s founding, was soon transformed into a vow of obedience to a rising imperialist power that was to exert its military might around the globe.

The drive to make recitation of the pledge compulsory began only in the early 1920s, amid the wave of reaction that followed the Russian Revolution and gave rise to the anticommunist Palmer Raids and a nationwide anti-immigrant witch-hunt. Spearheading the campaign for the pledge were the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan, both notorious for their role in the wave of lynchings that swept the country during the same period.

This campaign also involved a critical change to the text drafted by Bellamy, substituting for the original, “my flag,” the words, “the flag of the United States of America.” Bellamy protested this nationalistic revision, aimed against foreigners and “reds.” He had intended the oath not as one of American jingoism, he said, but an international pledge of peace, adaptable to all nations. His opinion, however, was drowned out by the patriotic ranting of the American Legion and the KKK.

After the US entry into World War II, the manner in which the pledge was delivered underwent an alteration as well. Until then, students were instructed to recite it with their right arms rigidly extended, shoulder high. The resemblance to Nazi youth swearing fealty to Hitler was too close for comfort. Americans were instructed to place their hands over their hearts instead.

The second major change in the text, introducing the words now defended so vociferously by both major parties, was carried out in another period of deep reaction, at the height of the McCarthyite witch-hunt of the 1950s. Congress, responding to a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic men’s organization, added “under God.” The clear aim was to mobilize religion in the campaign against “godless communism” abroad, and to further the persecution of socialists, communists and atheists at home.

Bellamy had died decades earlier, but his granddaughter said that he would have opposed the introduction of religion. In the end, the mutilation of his original text recalls nothing so much as Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” in which the principle that “all animals are created equal,” was twisted into “some animals are more equal than others.”

It is hardly an accident that a challenge to the introduction of “God” into the pledge evokes such a visceral reaction from ruling circles today. The “heritage” of McCarthyism, police-state repression and anti-immigrant crackdowns is being revived with a vengeance, and with the backing of both political parties.

In the wake of September 11, there has been a concerted campaign to promote cheap patriotism and inject ever-larger doses of religion into national life as a means of diverting the American people from any critical examination of the roots of the present crisis.

Doubtless the correct decision of the Ninth Circuit will be overturned by the black-robed reactionaries on the US Supreme Court, if it is not struck down first by the full appeals court. Nonetheless, the event has had the singular value of providing a self-exposure of a Congress, presidency and media that are permeated with stupidity and cowardice and united in virulent opposition to the most elementary democratic principles.