The Scotsman Who Put God In The United States' Mandatory Loyaty Oath Just Died

Longtime Readers of this blog will already be familiar with the fact that the phrase "under God" is a late addition to the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, it turns out that the guy whose idea it was to insert it just died. The Rev. George M. Docherty apparently heard his seven-year old son recite the Pledge and was annoyed that things here weren't more like they were back home in the UK:

"I didn't know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and he recited it, 'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,'" he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. "I came from Scotland, where we said 'God save our gracious queen,' 'God save our gracious king.' Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn't in it at all."

So he gave a sermon and guess who happened to be in the audience but President Eisenhower. And the next day a Congressman introduced a bill to amend the Pledge of Allegiance and the rest, as they say, has been a lawsuit waiting to happen.