"RICHMOND, Feb. 14-A drive to make the Pledge of Allegiance mandatory in Virginia schools blew up today when its sponsor com plained it had been watered down by a committee of 'spineless pinkos' and abruptly withdrew the measure even though passage by state lawmakers seemed assured.

Warren E. Barry, the Republican senator from Fairfax County lashed out at members of the House Education Committee after storming out of a meeting in which the panel amended his bill to let school districts decide what penalties to impose on students who violated the pledge law.
'We libertarians and liberals went to work on this bill, and they picked it apart so it doesn't have any meaning,' Barry said after he surprised the lawmakers by announcing he would withdraw the bill. 'Why put something through that doesn't have meaning?'

The former U.S. Marine then called members of the committee 'spineless pinkos,' a reference to communist sympathizers.

The education committee, which supports a mandatory pledge, decided to take no final action on the bill in case Barry changed his mind.

'I have no intention of coming back,' Barry said,

On a day when the General Assembly created the budget conference committee that will set up a showdown with Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) over car-tax relief, it was the showdown over the pledge that caught the attention of many lawmakers.

'It would have passed,' Del. J. Paul Councill Jr. (D-Southampton), the panel's co-chairman, said of the bill. Ile committee balked at Barry's demand that schools suspend students who violate the policy, saying it went too far.

'I'm in favor of fostering the pledge,' said Del. William W. "Ted" Bennett Jr. (D-Halifax). 'But I'm afraid this bill starts to go over the cliff.'

The House panel, noting that automatic suspension is used only for far more serious infractions, agreed to leave it up to school districts to decide what would constitute an appropriate penalty.

Barry said that leaving enforcement of a mandatory pledge up to local school officials would take the teeth out of the law.

'The school board would immediately have parents at their doorstep asking them to water it down,' he said. Opponents of the bill have sent him a 'pretty thick folder' of hate mail-the bulk of it from Northern Virginia, Barry said.

Senate Bill 1331, which passed the Senate overwhelmingly last month, would write into state law a policy now left to school districts across Virginia. Teachers or principals would lead students in a flag salute every day" (Lisa Rein, The Washington Post, February 15, 2001).