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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas, has ruled a Ten Commandments monument on the state Capitol grounds does not violate the U.S. Constitution by establishing a state-sponsored religion. Thomas Van Orden, a homeless man, had sued, claimed the monument was a government endorsement of Judeo-Christian values. In its ruling, the appeals panel agreed with the state, which argued the Ten Commandments are historical in nature because they provide a foundation for Western law. "The Ten Commandments are undoubtedly a sacred religious text, but they are also a foundational document in the development of Western legal codes and...

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/7254764.htm Posted on Thu, Nov. 13, 2003 Court rules Ten Commandments can stay at CapitolAssociated Press AUSTIN - The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the state's position that the placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds is not an unconstitutional attempt to establish state-sponsored religion.Thomas Van Orden, a homeless man living in Austin, had sued to have the monument removed, calling it an endorsement of Judeo-Christian beliefs by the state government.The state countered that the 6-foot tall red granite monument is more historical than religious, with key segments of law founded on the moral...

Justices won't hear 10 Commandments appeals Moore faces trial next week on violation of judicial-ethics charges The Supreme Court won't be deciding the outcome of the pitched battle over suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument. Justices refused today to hear appeals seeking to put the 5,300-pound granite cube back on display inside Alabama's state capitol. WorldNetDaily reported the controversial monument nicknamed "Roy's Rock" was removed Aug. 28 from the rotunda of the Judicial Building in Montgomery after Moore was suspended by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission for refusing to comply with a federal judge's ordered removal. He...

F R O M D O U G P H I L L I P S A N D T H E V I S I O N F O R U M , I N C . N O V E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 3 Supreme Court Considers Petition to Hear Alabama Ten Commandments Case Announcement Expected Monday “Before the Federal District Court here in Montgomery sits a bust of the Greek Goddess Themis. You won’t find federal authorities scurrying around to conceal that bust behind a screen. And neither should we hide...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--A privately funded 40-foot-high bronze sculpture of five naked women and four naked men has been unveiled on public ground in Nashville, Tenn., and some are questioning why such "artwork" is acceptable while a display of the Ten Commandments is not. The $1.1 million sculpture, called "Musica" and placed in the center of a roundabout on Music Row in downtown Nashville, is meant by the sponsors to provide tourists with a sense of the different types of music that have emerged from Music City. But some observers note there is no obvious connection between naked sculptures and music,...

1. I thy Lord do not exist. 2. Do not take the Lord's name during high-school football games, pledges of allegience, in school, in public buildings... hell, just don't ever take the Lord's name. 3. Do not worship other gods, unless they are named Gaia or Allah. 4. Honor thy Sabbath shopping specials. 5. Honor your parents, and everyone else's parents, by never daring to touch socialist security or medicaid, even if they bankrupt the country. 6. Thou shall not steal, unless the victim makes more than $50,000 a year in which case always call theft "progressive taxation." 7. Thou...

Motivated by what he views as an assault on free speech by the ACLU, a Georgia man has launched a campaign to distribute thousands of Ten Commandments signs across the nation. Robert Frey, a 33-year-old "average guy who's fed up and wants to do something," has set a goal of selling 100,000 signs, suitable for front yards, through a website, TheRevolutionWillBeLive.com. "By joining together in this spiritual battle we can give the ACLU a nightmare of fits when it realizes that the more it and its ilk try to destroy America, the stronger we will be, the louder we will...

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - A Milwaukee-based foundation is asking the city to remove its Ten Commandments monument from a public park following complaints from several residents. The stone monument has sat in a corner of City Park since 1965, when it was erected by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles. No one had complained to city officials about the monument in recent years until they received a letter this week from the Freedom From Religion Foundation asking for its removal. ''We have members in Casper who asked me to complain,'' foundation member Annie Laurie Gaylor said. ''That is how we...

DES MOINES (AP) More than 200 Christian conservatives, including Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, rallied Thursday outside the new Iowa Judicial Branch Building, demanding that the Supreme Court display a framed copy of the Ten Commandments donated to the state. We are here to send a message to the Iowa Supreme Court, King said. They have the authority to make that decision. Timm Reid, an attorney for the Iowa Liberties and Justice Center, the legal arm of the Iowa Family Policy Center, which sponsored the rally, offered to defend the court without charge if it s sued for displaying the Ten...

The Federal Judiciary Is A Spoiled Child, And Congress And The President Are The Pushover Parents That Spoiled It! By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon September 16, 2003 People today seem to think that the federal judiciary is the supreme law of the land. They are wrong! The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Just as the executive and legislative branches of government are bound to uphold the Constitution, so is the judicial branch. However, for too long now, the federal judiciary has assumed tyrannical tendencies. What liberal socialists could not do through...

Weird Practices in Alabama by L. Brent Bozell, III Posted Sep 13, 2003 In the minds of the national media elite, Alabama is a strange place that erupts in the news only when some backward action happens. Perhaps it's an abortion clinic bombing, a remembrance of past segregation and racist violence, or some rerun of the strange ways those Bible-thumpin' Christians act. Enlightened journalists no doubt still chortle at the memory of the 1960s singer-satirist Tom Lehrer worrying about when "Alabama gets the bomb." The state's Chief Justice, Roy Moore, brought the national media circus to town by plopping a...

The Lesser of Two Evils Is No Longer Lesser By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon September 12, 2003 Those who believe electing Republicans is going to make a significant difference in the direction of the country need to open their eyes to what Republicans are actually doing. Consider the courageous stand of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to resist a tyrannical and unconstitutional order from a federal judge to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building. Instead of supporting the brave Chief Justice, Republican leaders in his state betrayed...

One Nation Under God? Patrick J. Buchanan September 1  2003 The granite monument of the Ten Commandments has been rolled out of the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery. Chief Justice Roy Moore has been suspended. Yet, in his defeat there is victory. For Judge Moore's defiance exposed to all Americans the naked hostility of the court to any official expression of belief that we are a nation under God. His defiance revealed how far America has traveled from the Constitution of our Founding Fathers. We no longer see through a glass darkly. We can see clearly now. Under the...

Dear Chief Alabama Justice Roy Moore, I thank thee, thank thee, thank thee for having the temerity to stand up to the United States and the Constitution to make it clear, once and for all, that it is religion that rules this country and not the people and their laws. I was beginning to lose faith that our top officials would be able to undermine the will of people all over the country, undermine the U.S justice system, and bring some good old fashioned Bible sense back into government. But people like you, the Reverend Attorney General John Ashcroft and...

Dear ACLU: Congratulations, comrades! You've won again! Removing Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument from the State Courthouse in Alabama was nice, but it was only the first step in a logical, necessary progression to eliminate the influence of God from all vestiges of American society! Your work is far from over! The next step is to remove the words "In God We Trust" from our currency, so not to “offend” the atheists worried the phrase is an "establishment of religion." Then you must work to remove the 10 Commandments etched in marble above the Supreme Court's bench. Fear not,...

Alabama Justice Chides Fellow Republicans Fri Aug 29, 9:06 AM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo! By PHILLIP RAWLS, Associated Press Writer MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and his supporters have violated Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)'s 11th commandment: Never speak ill of a fellow Republican. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Alabama Ten Commandments Monument In terse remarks, Moore chided the governor, state attorney general and his eight Supreme Court colleagues for publicly disagreeing with his defiance of a federal court order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse rotunda. The...

On Wednesday Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor oversaw the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state Supreme Court building. Pryor believes that the court ruling ordering the removal was incorrect. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court building itself has depictions of the Ten Commandments. The court opens its sessions with an invocation of God. And we know the other familiar elements of state-sponsored religion in America, from the chaplains in Congress to "In God We Trust" on the coinage. Despite his personal views, Pryor was unequivocal in ordering the removal. He was equally unequivocal in...

Phyllis Schlafly Aug. 27, 2003 Federal court decisions about the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments, and the specter raised in Lawrence v. Texas that marriage may no longer be defined as the union of a man and a woman, show that the time has come to curb the Imperial Judiciary. Not only did one federal judge overturn a nearly 60 percent majority of California voters who passed Proposition 187 in 1994, but another single federal judge in Sacramento is at this moment threatening to cancel the California recall election! Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers 78, 81...

<p>By Jan Fletcher, Faith Correspondent A seven-hour drive to Montgomery, Ala., Monday, brought one Campbellsville man to the very center of the national controversy over public display of the Ten Commandments.</p> <p>Ricky Cox, a dentist and former state representative, made the decision Monday morning to leave for the showdown at the Alabama Judicial Building after his office closed at 5 p.m. He was back at work at 10 a.m. Tuesday, after participating in a vigil for three hours -- from midnight to 3 a.m. -- alongside 150 protesting citizens. Protesters vowed peaceful resistance to stop a court order to remove a 5,300-pound monument to the Ten Commandments.</p>

Those Ministers Who Say Judge Moore Acted Improperly Need To Tear Daniel Chapter Six Out Of Their Bibles! By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon August 29, 2003 I have listened to minister after minister publicly rebuke Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore saying, as a Christian, he should have obeyed federal judge Myron Thompson's unlawful order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building. Those ministers need to reread Daniel chapter six. Daniel was a government official in the court of King Darius. In fact, Daniel was the second-in-command answering only to...