MARINE BARRACKS WASHINGTON, D.C. – Staff Sgt. Mark Daniels, a trumpet player assigned to the “President’s Own” Band, has been stoned to death after refusing communion with Sousa, sources confirmed today.

Daniels, an eight-year veteran and accomplished bandsman, was executed following remarks he made to his conductor during rehearsal proposing playing a military march not composed by John Philip Sousa.

“Everybody just kind of froze,” related saxophonist Sgt. Adam Zuela regarding the incident. “Chief Peters’ face twisted up in horror and he asked Brother Daniels: ‘You mean something…just arranged by Sousa right?’ Brother Daniels shrugs and replied: ‘No, I was thinking ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ Then all hell brought loose.”

According to one observer, “Pandemonium reigned in the band room as the sacrilegious words broke loose from the lips of the impious blasphemer.”

Cries of “Stone him!” and “Purge the heretic!” echoed through the hall as Daniels was dragged before conductor Chief Warrant Officer Peters. A set of magisterial robes appeared improbably from the interior of the podium. Sgt. Doug McPherson, and immigrant from Northern Ireland, said the robes “encompassed the warrant officer in their voluminous folds like Judge George Jefferys presiding over the luckless survivors of the Monmouth Rebellion.”

“Do you swear on the Holy Liberty Bell March that your words were merely the vain jest of a simpleton?” roared Peters. Spittle from his lips sprinkled over Daniel’s stoic face. “Retract your words and you shall once against be offered communion in the warm embrace of Father Sousa before we burn your flesh until it is a charred feast for crows!”

Apparently resigned to his martyrdom, witnesses reported that Sgt. Daniels flung his head back defiantly and declared: “Suck my balls!”

With shrieks of outrage, Daniels’ fellow bandsmen flung him outside into the building courtyard and hurled rocks at him to the energetic beats of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Sources confirmed that Daniels later succumbed to internal injuries at Bethesda Naval Hospital.