The Defiant One

Here we go again.Whenever the Supreme Court makes a ruling we, as governed citizens are expected to heed its command. Some of the Court's more groundbreaking decisions haven't been popular - or happily followed.Segregation, affirmative action and women's suffrage were polarizing issues of their day. Yet the Court made decisions on those issues that became the law of the land.

So what happens when a government official willfully and wantonly decides to ignore a Supreme decision?

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore,faced with a federal court order, a $5000 a day fine and of late, a denial by the Supreme Court - not to mention settled Constitutional law - has effectively said "bring 'em on." (Oh, it couldn't be helped).

There's a 5300-pound Ten Commandments monument firmly planted in front of the state judicial building; the Chief Justice placed it there himself. A federal district judge ruled that the monument "is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by government." That ruling was endorsed by a three-judge panel of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court just recently put the matter to rest - again - when it refused to consider Justice Moore's appeal.

The thing is, the Court settled the inflammatory issue over twenty years ago when it opined that the Ten Commandments "is undeniably a sacred text." Therefore, "posting it on classroom walls in public schools and in public buildings violates the separation of church and state."

While the Court has not explicitly ruled whether or not the Sacred Ten can be displayed on the grounds of a government building, it seems reasonable to deduce that the 1980 decision, when reconciled with the Alabama facts, fairly dispenses with any unresolved issues.

The good Justice (Moore) proclaims that, "it's about the acknowledgment of God." Okay. And his lawyers, rallying to his side, in their appeal to the Supreme Court claimed, among other things, that "the federal judge's decision has threatened to invade the Alabama treasury for billions of dollars in an effort to cower its officials into prompt compliance with the court's final judgment and injunction, as well as to provide a significant incentive for state officials to initiate proceedings to remove Chief Justice Moore from office."

I'm rarely astonished anymore, but that argument comes darn close.

Another claim made by the Justice, that the ruling "abridges the right of the people, through their elected representative, the Chief Justice, to acknowledge God as indispensable to the administration of justice," takes me right on over that astonishment line.

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