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This reminds me of a story told about a conversation between Leander Perez, "boss" of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, and Earl Long, then governor, about integration of the public schools in Plaquemines Parish.

Leander did't like it, and wanted to resist it, but Long quipped, "well, Leander, what are we going to do now that the feds have got themselves the ay-tomic bomb?"

Alabama already tried seceding from the Union once, and it didn't work. And Alabama already tried resisting federal court orders to integrate their schools, and let black folks register to vote, and that didn't work, either.

As a practical matter, the governor of Alabama, the Alabama attorney general, and eight of the justices of the Alabama Supreme Court intend to obey Judge Thompson, and, indeed, already have.

So I don't think we're going to have the grand confrontation you're hoping for. But even if you did, is this issue worth killing people for and worth dying for? Said issue being this particular copy of the Ten Commandments.

My guess is that everybody is putting up a big fuss hoping to get one more justice on the US Supreme Court to grant cert, BWDIK?

Congress, the Court, and the Constitution congressional testimony instructing Congress to force the federal Courts into compliance with the Constitution.

Removing federal jurisdiction:

Removing federal judges:

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:428

AMENDMENT ONE Americans disapprove of federal court orderto remove 10 Commandments (77%!!)

260 RERESENTATIVES VOTED AGAINST THE UNLAWFUL COURT ORDER Federalism

WASHINGTON – A leading scholar of the First Amendment says if he were Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, he would "rather go to jail" than allow the Ten Commandments to be removed from his court building.

In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, Dr. David Lowenthal, emeritus professor of political Science at Boston College, said the Founding Fathers would be appalled at the federal court order for the removal of the Ten Commandments monument.

"I would not want to go to jail," he said, "but if I had to, I wouldn’t give up on the principle" that Justice Moore is defending "that cuts across all lines that [concern] first of all, states’ rights, and ... the proper interpretation of the First Amendment."

To compare Moore’s refusal to bow to the atheist/left-wing/ACLU axis with George Wallace’s standing in the schoolhouse door to preserve segregation in 1962 is ludicrous, declares Lowenthal, author of the new book "Present Dangers: Rediscovering the First Amendment."

Furthermore, this "present danger," as he calls it, predates the uproar that began 40 yeas ago when the courts started chasing religion out of classrooms. For 70 years, he argues, the courts have willfully misinterpreted the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in an attempt to banish religion from public life. Such court decisions betray "a gross misunderstanding" of the Constitution, Lowenthal says.

No 'Separation' Is Mandated

Contrary to federal court decisions, Lowenthal says, the First Amendment to the Constitution does not require "a perfect separation of church and state, that there be no vestige of religion in the state or in public life or in government." Furthermore, "even the [U.S.] Supreme Court has edged away from that view in recent decades."

Note that the phrase "separation of church and state" parroted by anti-religious extremists appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, a fact that many Americans miseducated by government schools do not know.

It is not only the First Amendment that is distorted beyond its meaning by the courts, but the Fourteenth Amendment as well. And that raises the question in this scholar’s mind as to whether the Supreme Court of the United States has jurisdiction over the Alabama Supreme Court in matters of this kind. Lowenthal agrees with Moore that it does not.

Ratified after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment says that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or due process of law, the noted authority notes.

"The word ‘liberty’ there has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to include" a meaning far beyond what was intended.

"You see, originally that was intended to simply make sure that blacks and whites were treated equally under the law, particularly in the Southern states after the Civil War," Lowenthal explained to NewsMax. "It was not meant for the Supreme Court to be the judge of what constitutes human liberty. That was left to the states just so long as they treated people equally." Thus, the court "has enormously expanded its authority over the states."

As for the decision by Moore’s colleagues on the Alabama Supreme Court to oppose him: "It seems to me that any state worth its salt would not submit to this kind of thing."

Lowenthal said: "Obviously Justice Roy Moore believes that it’s wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t be doing this. He would bow down to the federal judiciary. But he doesn’t think that he has to. I don’t think so either."