Ten Commandments on Display Has No Legal Standing

sierratimes.com ^

[jwalsh07]

That no religion shall be established by law;

What law was established? Legislatures make laws in our system of government. At least, they used to.

that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship;

The Ten Commandments were given to the law giver, Moses, a Hebrew for the Hebrew people. The many sects, societies and denominations of Christianity have incorporated tham as well. Which one of those were given a preference in what law passed by the Alabama Congress?

that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship;

What Alabama citizen has been compelled by law to attend a place of worship?

nor to pay any tithes, taxes, or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship,

What Alabama citizen has been compelled to pay any tithe, tax or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship?

or for maintaining any minister or ministry;

Ditto?

that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state;

Anybody taking any tests in Alabama?

and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles

Any individual suffer any violation of these rights?

You 're argument is one of collectivism. A collection of folks "feel" they have a right not to be exposed to religion in a public place. Kind of a marxian thought, no?

[onemoreday]

.....
....
I have also been reading some of the posts here in relationship to the prison-murder of the pedophile priest.

Many Christians expressed a sense of joy upon hearing this news.......(though many expressed dismay and also a sense of disappointment in the attitude of those expressing the "joy")

We also know Slavery in the United States was condonned on the grounds that it was acceptible in the Jewish biblical culture (as expressed in the Bible)

Now, putting these ideas together, I ask you, (based on your attitudes expressed so far)....

......COULD NOT some obvious "illegality" be "justified" based on the expression of these same Christian principles?.......i.e.........What if the Christians who felt the priest should have been executed removed him from prison and lynched him?......

My point, in general, is.....

isn't there something to be feared when a sense of "righteous" anger , or "righteous" superiority is unleashed in the name of GOD?.......

the issue of whether this monument is "up" or "down" seems less relevant than the feelings behind the issue, which it seems people are not fully expressing.

[Pahuanui]

What law was established? Legislatures make laws in our system of government. At least, they used to.

His decisions, in case you missed it, come with the power of the law, i.e., the state, and is thus binding under state law. He put the monument up. He was ordered to remove it, and refused to. This isn't rocket science.

You 're argument is one of collectivism.

No, my argument is calling a publicity-hungry, duplicitous buffoon a publicity-hungry, duplicitous buffoon, which is exactly what the judge is.

A collection of folks "feel" they have a right not to be exposed to religion in a public place. Kind of a marxian thought, no?

No. Glad I could clear that up.

[petitfour]

It appears your problem is with Roy Moore and not with a piece of rock. Would you feel uncomfortable being tried by a bunch of citizens of Alabama?

If I put up a rock in the Alabama Supreme Court building with the Ten Commandments and some quotes from MLK, Jr., and some quotes from Blackstone, and a few from the founding fathers on it, BUT I didn't say anything about my faith when I put it up, would that be an establishment of religion??????????

[jwalsh07]

His decisions, in case you missed it, come with the power of the law, i.e., the state, and is thus binding under state law. He put the monument up. He was ordered to remove it, and refused to. This isn't rocket science.

Well here's your problem in a nutshell. You slept through governemnt class in high school or were unlucky enough to attend a public school after the left hasd taken them over.

There are three branches of government. The legislative branch makes laws. The executive executes the laws and in the old days prior to the ascension of frogs as the dominant force in America, the judiciary decides arguments about the meaning of laws, how they are applied, and whether they break the rules of the Constitution.

So now that you've been given the short form, you have no excuses for misstating the powers of the judiciary, be it Judge Moore or any other judge in this COnstitutional Republic.

Now, once again perhaps you can list the name of one, just one, Alabam citizen who has had his rights, priveleges or immuniteis violated by the display of the Ten Commandments.

Failing that, you should just lay back and enjoy the slow boil.

[sinkspur]

If I put up a rock in the Alabama Supreme Court building with the Ten Commandments and some quotes from MLK, Jr., and some quotes from Blackstone, and a few from the founding fathers on it, BUT I didn't say anything about my faith when I put it up, would that be an establishment of religion?

I dunno. But Moore was asked to do something like that, and refused. He also, through his own words to the Federal Judge, made it clear that this was a religious monument.

If it were purely secular, surrounded by other secular displays, and the judge said it was secular, then it would be hard to argue it was religious.

[Pahuanui]

Well here's your problem in a nutshell. You slept through governemnt class in high school or were unlucky enough to attend a public school after the left hasd taken them over.

While it is indeed comforting to see that you have been mercifully left unmolested by the ravages of intelligence, it pains me to see you embarass yourself with fumbling attempts at legal reasoning. To whit:

So now that you've been given the short form, you have no excuses for misstating the powers of the judiciary, be it Judge Moore or any other judge in this COnstitutional Republic.

Since you are ignorant of the details, I'll make it plain to you: he had a religious monument erected on public property. He was instructed by a higher court to remove it, and denied this request with on legal grounds. His denial carries with it the force of the state. No one here, other than you and perhaps the voices in your head, is claiming that he created a law in the manner that the legislature does.

Now, once again perhaps you can list the name of one, just one, Alabam citizen who has had his rights, priveleges or immuniteis violated by the display of the Ten Commandments.

Why would I? None of the legal decisions having to do with this case are based on or reference the violation of any individual Alabama citizen's rights.

Failing that, you should just lay back and enjoy the slow boil.

You've been too long outside your hospitial oxygen tent. Your lower brain functions are even less efficient than normal.

[VRWC For Truth]

Bump for a good read.

[sinkspur]

isn't there something to be feared when a sense of "righteous" anger , or "righteous" superiority is unleashed in the name of GOD?.......

I suspect there'd be a different attitude if Roy Moore was a Black Muslim, plastering Muslim iconography all over the Alabama Judicial Building.

That Geoghan thread opened my eyes. Rejoicing over the death of even a heinous criminal in graphic terms is decidedly un-Christlike.

But, I got smeared for agreeing with Pope John Paul II who had the audacity to actually PRAY for the 9/11 hijackers.

[Torie]

That is all very interesting. The monument might have been OK if Moore kept his mouth shut. I suppose a court could say that although Moore thought it was religious, he was wrong, and thus the monument is OK. Actually, I don't think the federal court cared much about what Moore said. The monument was going period because it was viewed as ineluctibly religious, and while old stuff might be grandfathered as a practical matter, new stuff isn't.

Using oral statements to decide one way or the other strikes me as going down the wrong road in any event, because in another case, the statements could be self serving, and such statements are ephemeral anyway. What is also clear, is that the law is a mess in this area. And the sad thing is that I don't know how to make it much better.

[exnavy]

Sorry, your wrong.

[exnavy]

The ten commandments are the basis for all our laws, and our constitution, and it is God that gives you all the rights contained in the bill of rights, not gubment.

Those comandments should be posted in every courtroom, law office, and gubmint building in the land, prominently and perminently.

[exnavy]

Gods word tells us to pray even for our enemies. We christians don't "hate" other religons. What we hate is sin. Worshiping a false God is sin. Most of us love and pray for all, I mean ALL the unsaved. Anyone who has not proclaimed Jesus Christ a personel savior, has no chance of eternal life.

[Pahuanui]

The ten commandments are the basis for all our laws, and our constitution, and it is God that gives you all the rights contained in the bill of rights, not gubment.

No, they're quite clearly not. Several of them conspicuously and blatantly violate the bill of rights, and are incompatible with a free people.

Now, what were you trying to say?

[AndyMeyers]

One of the problems most everyone today has is the sentiment expressed in this thread - that the US Supreme Court is the ONLY and FINAL authority on interpreting what is "constitutional" and what is "unconstitutional".

The US Constitution established three, distinct, co-equal branches of government - the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. There is (or was supposed to be) a "check and balance" between them. If one branch has the authority to overrule either or both other branches "co-equal" and "checks and balance" goes out the window.

The Constitution gives to each branch of government the power to "interpret" the Constitution as it applies to each.

The Supreme Court, particularly beginning with and since the Warren Court, has gradually usurped the Legislature’s and Executive’s authorities. Unfortunately, since the Executive and Legislative branches are elected by the people and the Judiciary is not, the first two branches tend to allow the Judiciary to "fade the heat", so to speak, and rule on controversial issues, lest the President, Senators or Congresspersons be removed from office in the next election. Case in point, the Campaign Finance Reform Act. Congress passed it and Bush signed it in expectation that the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional.

(Most of the following is taken from Congressional testimony - "Congress, the Court, and the Constitution"):

The judicial power to invalidate the actions of other branches was widely understood at the founding to be ''departmental'' or ''coordinate''—a power of ''functional review'' enabling the judiciary to pronounce authoritatively on the constitutionality of laws touching on the integrity of the courts' own functions, for instance where a case concerns jurisdictional issues, standards of evidence, or the provision of simple due process.

This limited version of judicial review was all that was either exercised or claimed for the Court by John Marshall in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which many claim established the federal judiciary as the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.. Actually, the legislative and executive branches have a like authority to have the ''last word'' on those constitutional questions bearing on the exercise of their own powers, arising from the provisions of the Constitution addressed to themselves. Thus, that same John Marshall, for instance, held that the reach of Congress's power over commerce among the states was to be controlled authoritatively not by the judiciary, but by the people through democratic processes: such are ''the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments."

The terms of the First Amendment address themselves to the Congress and not to the judiciary, and in no way would an infringement of one of the rights therein have an adverse effect on the proper functioning of judicial processes. Moreover, if the First Amendment had been expected to be the subject of routine judicial enforcement, we would expect the subject to have come up frequently in the First Congress that debated and drafted the Bill of Rights. In "From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution", (1997) Robert Goldwin, there is no mention that the subject of judicial enforcement of the Bill arose at all. The point of the Bill of Rights was not to trigger judicial review, but to weave a love of liberty into the American political culture. According to Goldwin:

[T]o the extent that these principles of free government [in the Bill of Rights] have become a part of our ''national sentiment,'' they do, indeed, often enable us, the majority, to restrain ourselves, the majority, from oppressive actions. That is the import of the first five words of the Bill of Rights: ''Congress shall make no law'' that attempts to accomplish certain prohibited things. It means that even if a majority in Congress, representing a majority of us, the people, wants to make a law that the Constitution forbids it to make, we, all of us, superior to any majority, say it must not be done, because the Constitution is the will of all of us, not just a majority of us.

Whatever uncertainty there might be about whether the First Amendment is gathered into the scope of judicial review, there is NO UNCERTAINTY whatever about the proposition that, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment was intended to restrain ONLY the national government and not the states or their subdivisions. And, among scholars who do not hold a prior commitment to judicial activism, a second proposition is virtually settled as well: that the Fourteenth Amendment changed nothing about that fact.

On the Supreme Court the debate has gone all the other way, so that Justices Scalia and Thomas no less than their more liberal brethren act unquestioningly on the basis of twentieth-century precedents that declared that much of the Bill of Rights is selectively "absorbed" or "incorporated" into the terms of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But these precedents are worse than doubtful: they represent a plain usurpation of power by the Court, and they ought not to be respected, on or off the Court, by anyone who regards the Constitution as superior to "constitutional law."

To the extent Justice Moore holds that the federal judiciary has no authority in the matter he is right. Whether or not he may or may not be violating the Alabama Constitution or laws is another question, but one that is not at issue regarding the federal judge's opinion.

[petitfour]

Hey. You forgot to answer my other question. Would you feel uncomfortable being tried by a bunch of citizens of Alabama?

[sinkspur]

Would you feel uncomfortable being tried by a bunch of citizens of Alabama?

Absolutely not.

[Maelstrom]

"If the Churches don't display them, why should the government display them? "

The point of this exercise is obviously beyond your grasp.

Why should you be allowed to breathe?

Their display means nothing...their removal is what holds inherent meaning.

[Maelstrom]

"Moore abhors all religions but the Christian one."

I don't give a damn what Moore says. I've already told you the underlying meanings concerning the monument in clear and unambiguous form.

"Would you have a problem with a Muslim Supreme Court Justice (there is one, in one of the Western states) erecting a monument to the Koran in a public building? "

Irrelevant to the debate.

but

NO...with the caveat if the portions of the Koran advocating the murder, conversion, or taxation of those who aren't Muslim were included, or other exhortations for adherents to punish others in the monument.

I would have a problem with the ACLU attempting to remove it.