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National Firefighters Day and
    the Pledge in Schools

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      There are several emails circulating which just happen to be both true and an excellent idea, but, and you knew this was coming.... They are a pointless waste of electrons.

      Online petitions and email efforts are notoriously ineffective because of the lack of verification of the names and 'signatures' on them. The Desk Itself could sign up as Jim Deep, Dr. Jason Leftover, and Solomon Grundy (not to mention Elvis) all with valid working email accounts for verification. Unfortunately, none of them represent an actual taxpaying citizen. So what would it prove? And an EMAIL petition... oh please, "...can you say SPAM boys and girls... there, I knew you could."

      The Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York http://ufalocal94.org/ website has no information about the electronic petition drive. Neither does the Firefighters International Union website: http://www.iaff.org/ . If anybody was going to be behind this effort in any official way, it would be them.

      Also, there is already a drive to make May Fourth an International Firefighters Day which has some steam behind it. www.iffd.net

      All that being said. The September Eleventh Day effort in the email is real, as far as it goes.

      Truth or Fiction the email rumor clearinghouse (www.truthorfiction.com) says the petition in the email and the effort it refers to are in fact real. However, they also question the value of an electronic petition and suggest the signers time would be better spent contacting their representatives in Congress on the matter.

      The famous snopes.com has a slightly different take on the email, but comes to the same conclusion.
      Snopes.com article

      Same with the US Department of Energy's Hoaxbusters. Use the site's search to find the info.
      http://Hoaxbusters.ciac.org

AND-       while there ARE several online petitions which are real efforts to keep the pledge (and the words Under God) in schools. Again an EMAIL petition to do this isn't worth the electrons it kills to send it.

      A working online petition is here: www.restorethepledge.com

      More on the HOAX here: urbanlegends.about.com

      And a look at email petitions by:truthminers.com


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