SEQUIM – It was time to say the Pledge of Allegiance, but the group was hamstrung. Nobody could find a flag.

“We scrambled around until we found a little flag pin,” said Clint Jones, recalling a Clallam County Charter Review Commission meeting of a few months ago.

Pledging allegiance to the pin seemed silly, to say the least.

So Jones, a 79-year-old retired opera singer, seized the opportunity to advance a new version of the Pledge.

This one skips the flag’s symbolism and goes straight to the U.S. Constitution.

At a Democratic Party meeting earlier this month, Jones and 40 standing members recited:

“We, the people, pledge allegiance to the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America and the Republic, which protect and guarantee our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and the freedom of choice to all, regardless of race, religion or economic status and equality of gender.”

On Monday – Constitution Day, which commemorates the signing of the national document on Sept. 17, 1787 – a display advertisement purchased by Jones was published in the Peninsula Daily News.

In the $500 ad, he included his version of the Pledge and noted that it had been recited at the Democrats’ September meeting and at a Green Party meeting where impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney was discussed.

On Saturday, the county Democratic Central Committee unanimously passed a resolution supporting the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

Jones, for his part, said impeachment doesn’t necessarily mean removal of the leaders.

To him it means “restoring the Constitution,” and exercising the rights it guarantees.