Update on the Ten Commandments courtroom removal.

[Dark Hellion]

Is there a problem with a tailor made suit, as long as it is upholding the ideals of the constitution and bill of rights. Not in my mind.

[RedImperator]

I don't see what the problem is. On the tablet, they include doccuments which were guiding principles in the movement towards freedom and independence. The Preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the 10 Commandments.

Like it or not, those 10 Commandments were a guiding influence in our country's history. As such, they should be accorded all reverence due the Emancipation Proclomation.

The 10 Commandments are given the most prominent space on the display. All other things being equal (which they most decidedly are not), the monument very clearly implies that religious law supercedes secular law.

At any rate, Judge Moore's intent is to lend the authority and majesty of the law to his particular brand of Christianity. All the handwaving and smokescreening and mumbling about "this is a Christian nation" doesn't change the fact a set of laws which devotes forty percent of its length to specific instructions on how to worship Yahweh and explicitly warns that nobody is to worship any goes besides Him has no business in a secular court.

And while we're on the subject, while the Ten Commandments might have been important in the development of American culture and society, they played a minimal role at best in the legal and philosophical foundation of this country. Even the Christian framers did not believe religion had a place in the function of the state, past guiding the men who would run it. This shouldn't be surprising, considering the religious violence of the Thirty Years' War and the Purian excesses of the English Civil War and Cromwell's republic were as fresh in their minds as the American Civil War is to ours (probably more so, since the Framers had a much better idea of the importance of history than we typically do today). Our law is Anglo-Saxon common law grafted on top of Roman legal philosophy, and our government is the product of the Enlightenment, with some practical ideas borrowed from the Iroquois. The Ten Commandments--the Bible itself--sat on the sidelines while the Framers tried to craft a nation that wouldn't repeat Europe's mistakes.