Posted on 01/27/2004 4:58:50 PM PST by jgrubbs
Uniformed cops. Plainclothes cops. Security details. Hotel security. Coded name tags.
Judge Roy Moore was in town Saturday night, and his host, the state Constitution Party, couldn't take any chances.
Moore, the "Ten Commandments judge'' ousted as Alabama Supreme Court chief justice over a 2.5-ton Decalogue monument, has been threatened on his speaking tour, organizers of the conference that Moore keynoted confirmed.
But despite the logistics, some 500 people, a standing-room-only crowd, filled a ballroom at the Lancaster Host Resort Saturday afternoon to hear Moore and former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes speak at the "Biblical Foundations of American Law'' conference sponsored by the Constitution Party.
The conference, part of the party's campaign to rein in what it sees as excesses by federal judges, was expected to draw a total of nearly 1,000, including a banquet at which both Moore and Keyes were to speak.
Threats, and the loss of his job, and the loss of his retirement savings, have left Moore unrepentant, and sent him on a mission to alert Americans to what he considers a threat to religious liberties.
"Our president does not take the oath on the Quran,'' he said.
Injustice in the court? The Ten Commandments monument was removed from the Alabama judicial building at 10 a.m. on Aug. 27.
A hush fell on the room as those details were projected on a video screen.
Moore didn't have to do much convincing of his audience many of whom were in Plain dress, and many of whom came with babies in arms in contending that he was removed as chief justice not for ignoring the rule of law but for publicly acknowledging God.
At the court committee hearing that resulted in his ouster, Moore said, Alabama's attorney general asked Moore if, should he resume his duties, "would I continue to acknowledge God.'' "I said, "I must,' '' Moore recounted, and the crowd leapt to its feet in applause.
Moore might be out of a job, but at the Host, he was hailed as a hero.
In 2001, the new chief justice of the state's highest court installed a Ten Commandments monument in the judicial building rotunda. He said Saturday that the Vermont granite, weighing some 5,280 pounds, was financed by private donations and cost around $30,000.
Federal courts ordered him to remove it, saying the monument was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Moore refused. An Alabama judicial committee kicked him out of office for failing to obey the federal orders.
Moore is appealing, but in the meantime he's speaking around the country, often with Keyes on the same bill, arguing that judges are overstepping their constitutional bounds not only in his case but in too many others.
At the conference, he liberally quoted Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court rulings in support of his position that the judiciary is abridging Americans' rights by imposing its own opinions in place of constitutional ones.
"Judges are not following the law,'' Moore said. "... They're straining at gnats and swallowing a camel'' a reference to a saying of Jesus in the Bible's book of Matthew.
The First Amendment protects not only the freedom of religion but the freedom to practice it, he said.
"It's all about God a particular God, not any god, but the God of the Holy Scriptures,'' Moore said.
Moore repeated his contention that he did not violate the rule of law by refusing to remove the monument.
"You see, I didn't disobey an order that was lawful,'' he said. "I didn't obey an order that was unlawful.
"... When you obey an unlawful order, you can be prosecuted.''
Run, Roy, run
At a panel discussion, an audience member asked if Moore plans to run for any other office.
"Not right now,'' Moore said, since he's still appealing his dismissal. "I have to wait till all these things are done to decide my future.'' Constitution Party national chairman Jim Clymer of Lancaster read an audience question asking whether Keyes plans to join the Constitution Party.
The Republican Keyes demurred, saying he still wants to fight to keep the GOP connected with its conservative base.
If that fails, he said, "a lot of people are going to be looking for a new home. ... I'm grateful there are folks preparing an ark, just in case.'' Before the conference, some of Keyes' fellow conservative Republicans were expressing concern about attending, since some county GOP committee members were forced to resign last year for supporting Clymer for county commissioner.
But the banquet crowd included some prominent Republican names, including state Rep. Tom Creighton, Pennsylvania Family Institute President Michael Geer, former state legislator Tom Armstrong, Lancaster County ACTION President Bob Kettering and other ACTION board members.
State Constitution Party chairman Jeff Rhine was thrilled with the turnout on a cold, snowy Saturday participants came from Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, New York and Philadelphia and the exposure that two high-profile speakers will give the party.
"We've done events like this before,'' he said, "but this tops them all.'' Conservative activist Peggie Miller of Lancaster Township said she came to support Moore and Keyes.
"I believe in what they say,'' she said. "... There are some things worth standing up and being counted for.'' Which was what Keyes was saying.
"I'm inspired by the courage of somebody like Roy Moore, " Keyes said, "because he reminds us as individuals of what we are supposed to be.''
How about the "nuts" that founded this great nation?
John Adams observed, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams wrote on August 28, 1813:
"Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society—"
In his personal diary, on February 22, 1756, John Adams wrote:
"Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love and reverence toward Almighty God — What a Utopia, what a Paradise would this region be."
On July 26, 1796 he wrote in his diary:
"The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times the religion of wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and humanity.
In June, 1785 Madison, known as the "Father of the Constitution", said:
"Before any man can be considered a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe."
Why would he write this...
"The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times the religion of wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and humanity."
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