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 granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the middle of the state's top...