By Holbrook Mohr and Adrian Sainz
Associated Press
A Mississippi judge jailed a lawyer for several hours for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, ordering the attorney to “purge himself” of contempt by standing and repeating the oath like the rest of the courtroom.
After Oxford attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours in the county jail Wednesday, Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn let him go free. Lampley, 49, was released so that he could represent another client, the judge said in a later order.
Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal he respected the judge but wasn’t going to back down.
“I don’t have to say it because I’m an American,” Lampley told the newspaper. “I’m just not going to back off on this.”
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Wicasta’s Comments: When people are forced by threat of law to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it has lost all meaning. Contrary to what some judges believe, the United States is not (yet) a police state. This smacks strongly of the tactics of the Soviet empire. It’s against everything we are as Americans that we be compelled to kneel before the Federal Government.
