Panel Rules Justice Moore Failed to Respect & Comply with Law; Judge removed from Supreme Court

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

More to follow

[exmarine]

If it weren't for secular humanists, you would be crapping in an outhouse, watching half your children die before the age of two, and hoping your wife wasn't burned as a witch.

Hahaha. You are either speaking out of ignorance or you are outright lying. 95% of our founding fathers were Christians and there were ZERO secular humanists among the founders (even that miscreant Payne was a deist of a sort). Give me the evidence that backs up this silly claim - I won't let you get away with posting an unfounded assertion.

You secular humanists are trying to establish ATHEISM as the offical religion which is a violation of the estblishment clause.

[Rebelbase]

You are pretty sick to use scripture to justify telling me that you "dont give a damn, go jump off a bridge" when I don't agree with your call for a "Christian Boycott".

This type of self righteousness is the very thing that drives people away from accepting Christ and promotes Christian hypocrisy.

What's more important, organizing a boycott or driving people away from Christ by your self righteous ignorance?

Your time would be better spent in prayer, IMO.

[TheAngryClam]

The fundie nutbars are on parade.

At least Moore got nuked.

[Belial]

Moore did what was right, and in tune with our forefathers intent.

I see that you too wish to live in a theocracy. You want to believe that the Founding Fathers built our constitution to model the ethics of "God".

There are plenty of ways to refute this childish and prideful idea, but I doubt you'd understand what I'm talking about.

At least, understand this: judges aren't hired to divine the Founders' "intents". That opens the door to all kinds of subjectivity that a neutral judiciary is supposed to eliminate.

[varina davis]

You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the boy.

Well, aren't you a condescending, arrogant elitist.

Judge Moore has fought this Ten Commandments battles for many years and I seriously doubt he would feel it necessary to be removed from the bench to launch a run for another office.

I know it must be difficult for you to accept the premise (given the state of our present society) that some folks still live their lives on principle -- but they do, and Judge Moore is one of them.

[CWW]

And we haven't missed you, either!

[E Rocc]

So we need robots to execute public service. You know many who work in the public sector work 14-20 hours a day, working overtime at home.... This isn't the Matrix

Did Moore work on Sunday? If so, he was violating one of his Commandments. If not, I suspect he went to church and was an active participant there. No one had any problem with that, it was on his own time and as a private citizen.

It's when he tried to use his governmental authority to promote a specific religious viewpoint that trouble started.

-Eric

[concerned about politics]

This judge appears to be a "victimist". Many American Christians are victimists, longing like most Americans, to be the victim of some kind of persecution. WE ARE NOT PERSECUTED IN THIS COUNTRY.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Quick correction...

Paris is currently in Australia, laying low

Paris is currently in Australia, laying everyone.

[Doctor Stochastic]

According to her publicist, Lizzie Grubman, Paris is currently in Australia, laying low.

Well, she can probably lay from any position; maybe not under an SUV though.

[WackyKat]

Moore was arguing that this was a state right, and that he disobeyed a Federal Order due to jurisdictional questions. Nobody has really been talking about that point.

That's because it's a load of cr@p.

Federal courts have jurisdiction over violations of the U.S. constitution by agents of state governments.

Moore violated the First Amendment by attempting to establish his religion as a preferred state religion of Alabama.

His intent to do so was definitively proven by his own words.

[McGavin999]

He needs to take this to the USSC. First of all, I disagree with the way he went about this, but he IS right. This is a state issue and the federal government (in the guise of a black robed liberal activist) stuck his nose in where it doesn't belong. Someone really needs to get these things straightened out and quickly.

The ACLU is trying to run this country. I didn't elect them, did you?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

LOL - his own words and actions pound him.

[E Rocc]

Chipping away at state sovereignty, and an individual's right to display their faith while at work is an affront on the first amendment.

The federal court specifically said that if he had chosen to display the monument in his office, there would have been no problem.

-Eric

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office Thursday for refusing to obey a federal court order to move his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state courthouse.


AP Photo



The state Court of the Judiciary unanimously imposed the harshest penalty possible after a one-day trial in which Moore said his refusal was a moral and lawful acknowledgment of God. Prosecutors said Moore's defiance, left unchecked, would harm the judicial system.

Moore, a champion of religious conservatives, had been suspended since August but was allowed to collect his $170,000 annual salary. He was halfway through his six-year term.

Speaking immediately after the decision, a defiant Moore told supporters he had only acknowledged God as is done in other official procedures and documents.

"I have absolutely no regrets. I have done what I was sworn to do," he said, drawing applause.

He said he would consult with religious and political leaders before deciding what to do next. He could appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.

Under Thursday's decision, the governor will appoint someone to serve the rest of Moore's term, which expires in 2006.

Presiding Judge William Thompson said the nine-member court had no choice in its decision after Moore willfully and publicly ignored the federal court order. "The chief justice placed himself above the law," Thompson said.

A federal judge had ruled the monument was an unconstitutional promotion of religion by the government. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) refused to hear Moore's appeal. The monument eventually was rolled to a storage room on instructions from the eight associate justices.

The ad hoc Court of the Judiciary heard the case after a complaints filed by the Judicial Inquiry Commission.

Greg Sealy, head of the Sitting at His Feet Fellowship in Montgomery, an inner-city mission, said it was the "darkest day" he has seen in America since he moved to the United States from Barbados 23 years ago.

"They stole my vote. The judiciary stole my vote. I voted for Roy Moore," he said.

The prosecutor, Attorney General Bill Pryor, on Wednesday termed Moore's defiance "utterly unrepentant behavior" that warranted removal from office.

The chief justice testified he was fulfilling his duties and promises to voters when he refused to follow the court order.

Moore, 56, testified that he followed his conscience and did nothing to violate judicial ethics.

"To acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics," Moore testified.

He had also reiterated his stance that, given another chance to fulfill the court order, he again would refuse to do so. When one panelist, Circuit Judge J. Scott Vowell of Birmingham, asked Moore what he would do with the monument if he were returned to office, the chief justice said he had not decided, but added: "I certainly wouldn't leave it in a closet, shrouded from the public."



In closing arguments, Assistant Attorney General John Gibbs said Moore's public refusal to obey a court order "undercuts the entire workings of the judicial system."

"What message does that send to the public, to other litigants? The message it sends is: If you don't like a court order, you don't have to follow it," he said.

It was as a circuit court judge in Gadsden in the 1990s that Moore became known as the "Ten Commandments Judge" after he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) for opening court sessions with prayer and for displaying a hand carved Ten Commandments display behind his bench.

He said Wednesday that when he ran for chief justice in 2000, his entire campaign was based on "restoring the moral foundation of law." He added that it took him eight months to personally design the monument, which he helped move into the judicial building in the middle of the night on July 31, 2001.

Jones asked Moore why he didn't just go ahead and move the monument as Thompson ordered.

"It would have violated my conscience, violated my oath of office and violated every rule of law I had sworn to uphold," Moore said.

[Cubs Fan]

Once again we see liberal compassion (an oxymoron) at work.

Of course had Moore been a REAL criminal (like perhaps a black cop killer whose name starts with M?) leniency would have been the order of the day.

[PFC]

I think they were right to remove him. He is supposed to uphold the law - not be the law unto himself. Frankly I think there are loads of ways one can affirm their belief in God without putting a ten ton ugly statue in the middle of a state building.

[E Rocc]

I don't make the unsaved second class citizens. They do it to themselves.

You consider the "unsaved" to be second-class citizens?

-Eric

[exmarine]

If it weren't for secular humanists, you would be crapping in an outhouse, watching half your children die before the age of two, and hoping your wife wasn't burned as a witch.

This is such an outlandish statement, it bears further response. It was Christians who established our nation on this continent, it is Christinaity that gives you your freedom, it was Christians who abolished slavery (abolitionist movement), Christian scientists who made the biggest discoveries in history (Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Pasteur, Farraday, etc. etc.), Christian thinkers who had the greatest influence on our founders and founding documents (Locke, Montesquieu, Puffendorf, Grotius, Blackstone), Christians who first settled this land (pilgrims, puritans), Christians who started the first hospitals and orphanages, and on and on.

On the other hand, secular humanism is responsible for 100 million dead in the 20th century under the secular humanist regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Il-Sung, etc. In secular-humanism, the State is God and arbiter of all rights - and when corrupt man becomes the arbiter of rights, mass graves are the result. History proves it. The Salem witch trials resulted in a total of about 18 deaths. Care to debate it some more?

[concerned about politics]

This judge appears to be a "victimist". Many American Christians are victimists, longing like most Americans, to be the victim of some kind of persecution. WE ARE NOT PERSECUTED IN THIS COUNTRY.

Current Communist Goals (Congressional Record - Appendix, pp. A34-A35 ) - FR posting. They're doing quite well acheiving their goals, wouldn't you agree?