Alabama SC justices cave, order Ten Commandments removed

AP on Fox News ^ | 8-21-03 | AP on Fox News website

[inquest]

As has been explained to you, Justice Moore passed no law. Nor did he give preference to a particular group or mode of worship.

[=Intervention=]

Agreed. They are the "useful idiot" brigade of the secularist ahistorical left.

[OXENinFLA]

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

How does having a monument give preference to Law?

[montag813]

There is a right way to fight these battles and that is by working with and through the system.

Absolutely, King George III was right. The "Intolerable Acts" were the "rule of law". The Founding Fathers were in contempt of Court and should have been jailed. America should be returned to British sovreignty at once.

[sinkspur]

They are joining forces with the Sodomists, Marxists and Athiests to subvert the Constitution,

I'm a heterosexual Catholic, and have no association with any of these people.

all to satisfy a personal vendetta against Justice Moore.

I have no vendetta against Moore. But it's clear that he's doing this for political reasons, just as he put the ten commandments in his courtroom and used that controversy to run for Supreme Court Justice.

It is disgraceful and disgusting and many of us will never forget it.

You were speaking of vendettas......

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"most of the hostility towards the ACLU is justified by their jihad to turn the Bill of Rights on its head and subvert the Constitution"

Can you tell me which of the following cases illustrate the ACLU's subversion of the constitution?


1938 Lovell v. Griffin The Court held, in this case involving Jehovah's Witnesses, that a local ordinance in Georgia prohibiting the distribution of "literature of any kind" without a City Manager's permit, violated the First Amendment.

1939 Hague v. CIO An important First Amendment case in which the Court recognized a broad freedom to assemble in public forums, such as "streets and parks," by invalidating the repressive actions of Jersey City's anti-union Mayor, "Boss" Hague.

1941 Edwards v. California In this major victory for poor people's right to travel from one state to another, the Court struck down an "anti-Okie" law that made it a crime to transport indigents into California.

1943 West Virginia v. Barnette A groundbreaking decision, made more resonant by its issuance in wartime. The Court championed religious liberty with its holding that a state could not force Jehovah's Witness children to salute the American flag.

1946 Hannegan v. Esquire A major blow against censorship. The Court severely limited the Postmaster General's power to withhold mailing privileges for allegedly "offensive" material.

1949 Terminiello v. Chicago Protection for offensive speech expanded with the Court's exoneration of an ex-priest convicted of disorderly conduct for giving a racist, anti-semitic speech that "invited dispute." Justice William O. Douglas, for the Court, noted that "the function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute."

1952 Rochin v. California Reversing the conviction of a man whose stomach had been forcibly pumped for drugs by a doctor at the behest of police, the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause outlaws "conduct that shocks the conscience."

1952 Burstyn v. Wilson Artistic freedom triumphed when the Court overruled its 1915 holding that movies "are a business, pure and simple," and decided that New York State's refusal to license "The Miracle" violated the First Amendment. The state censor had labeled the film "sacrilegious."

1958 Kent v. Dulles The Court ruled that the State Department had exceeded its authority in denying artist Rockwell Kent a passport because he refused to sign a "noncommunist affidavit." The right to travel, said the Court, is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

1962 Engel v. Vitale In an 8-1 decision, the Court struck down the New York State Regent's "nondenominational" school prayer, holding that "It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers."

1964 Escobedo v. Illinois Invoking the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Court threw out the confession of a man whose repeated requests to see his lawyer, throughout many hours of police interrogation, were ignored.

1965 U.S. v. Seeger In one of the first anti-Vietnam War decisions, the Court extended conscientious objector status to those who do not necessarily believe in a supreme being, but who oppose war based on sincere beliefs that are equivalent to religious faith.

1965 Lamont v. Postmaster General A unanimous Court found unconstitutional, under the First Amendment, a challenged Cold War law that required the Postermaster General to detain and destroy all unsealed mail from abroad deemed to be "communist political propaganda" -- unless the addressee requested delivery in writing.

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Among the 20th century's most influential decisions. It invalidated a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives on the ground that a right of "marital privacy," though not specifically guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, is protected by "several fundamental constitutional guarantees."

1966 Bond v. Floyd The Court ordered Georgia's legislature to seat the duly elected state senator, Julian Bond, a civil rights activist denied his seat for publicly supporting Vietnam War draft resisters. Criticizing U.S. foreign policy, said the Court, does not violate a legislator's oath to uphold the Constitution.1968 Epperson v. Arkansas The Court ruled that Arkansas had violated the First Amendment, which forbids official religion, with its ban on teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals."

1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio After the ACLU's 50-year struggle against laws punishing political advocacy, the Court finally adopted the ACLU's view of the First Amendment -- that the government could only penalize direct incitement to imminent lawless action -- and invalidated, in one fell swoop, the Smith Act and all state sedition laws restricting radical political groups.

1969 Tinker v. Des Moines A landmark lift for symbolic speech and students' rights. The Court invalidated the suspension of public school students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, writing that students did not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

1971 Cohen v. California Reversed the conviction of a man who allegedly disturbed the peace by wearing a jacket that bore the words, "Fuck the draft," while walking through a courthouse corridor. The Court rejected the notion that the state can prohibit speech just because it is "offensive."

1971 U.S. v. New York Times The Pentagon Papers, a landmark among prior restraint cases. The leaking of the Papers to the press for publication by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official, did not, said the Court, justify an injunction against publication on national security grounds.

1974 U.S. v. Nixon This test of Presidential power involved Nixon's effort to withhold crucial Watergate tapes from Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. In the only amicus brief filed, the ACLU argued: "There is no proposition more dangerous to the health of a constitutional democracy than the notion that an elected head of state is above the law and beyond the reach of judicial review." The Court agreed and ordered the tapes handed over.

1975 O'Connor v. Donaldson The Court's first ruling on the rights of mental patients supported a non-violent man who had been confined against his will in a state hospital for 15 years. Mental illness alone, said the Court, could not justify "simple custodial confinement" on an indefinite basis.

1978 Smith v. Collin The peculiar facts of this, one of the ACLU's most controversial First Amendment lawsuits ever, attracted enormous attention: American Nazis wanted to march through a Chicago suburb, Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The ACLU's challenge to the village's ban on the march was ultimately upheld.

1992 R.A.V. v. Wisconsin An important First Amendment victory. A unanimous Court struck down a local law banning the display, on public or private property, of any symbol "that arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."

1993 Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah A religious freedom victory for unusual, minority religions. The Court held that local ordinances adopted by the City of Hialeah, banning the ritual slaughter of animals as practiced by the Santeria religion, but permitting such secular activities as hunting and fishing, violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

1995 Lebron v. Amtrak Extended the First Amendment to corporations created by, and under the control of, the government in the case of an artist who argued successfully that Amtrak had been wrong to reject his billboard display because of its political message.

[andy58-in-nh]

A lot of hostility towards the ACLU on FR stems from ignorance.

No, actually, a lot of Freepers' hostility toward the ACLU stems from the fact that they are a powerful lobby for criminals, child molesters, perverts, illegal aliens, and terrorists.

[Keyes2000mt]

You know, if Moore wanted to be governor, he would have been governor in 2002.

[steve50]

when will they learn that his kingdom is not of this world?

They won't. A good witch burning needs the power of the state behind it to garner enough support to get really nasty. Without the deity on their side, it's just murder.

[lugsoul]

The "no law" argument has been shredded on numerous threads and is amply discussed by the 11th Circuit. As for Moore showing a preference, you obviously haven't read his own words. He flat our says that the God of the KJV is the God that has sovereignty over the state and every citizen in it.

[Skooz]

What if the construction workers refuse to tear it down? What if the crane operators refuse to use their cranes to take it down?

What if the wretched, old, robed dictators are forced to physically remove the plaque themselves, along with the silly "Rev" Barry Lynne? What if they had to actually provide the labor to carry out their imperial decree?

It would at least be a funny picture.

[Keyes2000mt]

It also stems from the fact that the ACLU are godless interlopers who jump into the affairs of other communities uninvited and stir up trouble when there is none.

[lugsoul]

Read Moore's own words, then get back to me.

[=Intervention=]

Straw man argument. You can do better. Posting only the times where the ACLU ended up strengthening the Constitution does not take into account the source of Freeper's point of dispute, namely, the cases in which they defended all sorts of anti-Constitutional positions. Duh.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"a lot of Freepers' hostility toward the ACLU stems from the fact that they are a powerful lobby for criminals, child molesters, perverts, illegal aliens, and terrorists."

Tell me in which of the cases listed in post #46 you disagree with the position taken by the ACLU.

[beachn4fun]

You know what pisses me off? Where in the constitution does it say that a court cannot display the ten commandments?

All I am aware of is this ....."Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" so I ask, "is Moore a Congressman?"

And on top of that shouldn't ACLU be fighting to uphold the religious freedom of conservative Christians?

[BamaG]

Could you post a link to some of his more egregious comments? Thanks

[swheats]

It would be cool if the building manager refused to comply or publicly resigned.

I second that, or at least the building manager never finds the "practicable" time to move it. Thank God Judge Moore has the stamina to fight.

[xzins]

Probably part of the prearranged dance. They had been left "out of the loop" so as not to be complicit.

Then when it rans its course, they were able to provide a face-saving solution.

However, it doesn't obviate the alternative interpretation of the 1st Amendment that was advocated by Moore and Keyes. (Probably the real reason they went through this exercise in the first place.) That is definitely something to chew on.

Congress shall make NO law regarding AN 'establishment' of books. of liquor. of real estate. of law. of religion.

The definite article "an" clearly indicates it's to be followed by a NOUN.

It doesn't mean: Congress shall make no law respecting the "establishing of a religion."

It probably means: Congress shall make no law respecting AN "enterprise" of religion."

In other words, "don't deal with religion in any way, shape, or form."

[Blood of Tyrants]

Pay him no attention. If you read any of the Judge Roy threads, you will find that he is vehemently anti-Christian.