Posted on 12/21/2005 10:23:14 AM PST by AzaleaCity5691
Riley says Moore sought protection for monument Wednesday, December 21, 2005 By BILL BARROW Capital Bureau MONTGOMERY -- During the peak of public protests over removal of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore sent an emissary who asked Gov. Bob Riley to call out Alabama National Guard troops to protect the 5,280-pound rock, according to the governor.
"That's where Roy and I parted ways," Riley told the Mobile Register of his chief opponent in the upcoming 2006 Republican primary for governor.
Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts, who came to see the governor on Moore's behalf and ended up meeting with several administration officials and at least one of Riley's adult children, confirmed that a meeting took place in the Capitol some evening in August 2003.
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Yet Butts characterizes the conversation a different way, saying his only explicit request was for Riley to "hold a press conference and issue an executive order saying that as long as he were governor, the Ten Commandments monument would not be removed from the Alabama Judicial Building."
The two men's statements come six months before the governor's primary showdown with the famed "Ten Commandments judge," and they add new details to the high-profile legal and political bout that resulted in Moore's ouster as chief justice.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
I find Roy Moore to be a very impressive man. I have heard him speak a couple of times and he is just amazing. I love the guy. I don't care what anybody says about it either.
Stuff like that is why I am glad I don't live in Alabama anymore.
Roy Moore will be the next Governor of the Great State of Alabama. By the way he is denigrated by the media and even by some on FR, you would think that the man had killed someone.
"you would think that the man had killed someone."
He did something much worse - he defended our Christian heritage!
I am glad that you do not live here. Alabama is a great state to live in.
Looks like Old Bob is scared of Roy
Any body got any polling on this?
Bob lost me when he tried that tax increase garbage
Stuff like this is why we, too, are glad you don't live in Alabama anymore.
Supposed Conservatives and Libertarians are always complaining that no one will stand up to the unconstitutional over-reaching of the Federal Government....then when someone does, they complain that he is grandstanding.....
We all ought to be scared of Roy.
He actually wanted to call out the National Guard to protect a rock!
If Alabamans want him for governor, well, you'll have to live with his idiosyncracies.
But this kind of nuttiness will kill him if he has desires for higher office.
Not if I have anything to do with it, because as much as I disagreed with Riley on the whole "Plan for Progress" thing, I do believe that incident resulted in two things.
1. He will never try anything that stupid again.
2. From all outward signs, he only attempted that move because he was convinced the state has no other viable options, in other words, he took a stance he knew would be politically unpopular because he thought it would benefit the state.
Granted, we don't need any more "Plans for Progress" but we do need more men who are willing to put the actual good of something above what's good for them, it's something quite refreshing, especially considering that I grew up in a time in which our politics were decided entirely based on a cult of personality, case in point, I was born the year Wallace was elected and I got married his final year in office as Governor. And to me, it looks as if Moore is using his same political playbook, including the concept of running an entire slate of pro-him candidates in the primary.
As far as I'm concerned, Moore is manipulating the faith of born-again Evangelicals in order to achieve political power, and I personally don't believe that his ambition ends at Montgomery.
Well, then everybody's happy.
I live in Alabama and definitely WON'T be voting for Moore. I can't stand that sleeze.
"During the peak of public protests over removal of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore sent an emissary who asked Gov. Bob Riley to call out Alabama National Guard troops to protect the 5,280-pound rock, according to the governor."
If true, Moore is amazingly stupid.
Alabama-Roy Moore ping.
And you would want the police to come if you were robbed.
You would want the fire department to come if your property was burning.
But Judge Roy couldn't ask for protection of his property from vandalism?
Double standard.
"If true, Moore is amazingly stupid"
No, actually, he's amazingly brilliant.
He wanted to do then what Wallace did in 1963, both men knew it would fail (Wallace actually choreographed the whole "Stand" incident with the Kennedy administration beforehand), but both men knew that they were playing to peoples deepest passions, which a standoff would have certainly done. Moore is out for power, while it is true that he would have lost in court, and the monument would have been removed anyway, he would have made an even bigger national spectacle of himself, could have even moreso played the role of martyr, and basically, would have been able to use the Evangelical vote to take whatever office in the state he wanted.
However, Riley (and I do believe the story, because this is a rumor I had heard before) basically didn't give him what he wanted, and while it is true Roy lost, he lost in a way not as beneficial for him, even with the grandstanding he got in. And this has given his opponents an oppurtunity to attack him on various issues, such as his ties to trial lawyers. It would have greatly helped his political standing had he had the full blown-out standoff.
He was defying a court order that specifically addressed government property. It's not the same thing at all.
God give us men. The time demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.
-- Josiah Gilbert Holland. 1819-1881
I love that. Thanks.
A two-ton rock in a capitol rotunda guarded, around the clock, by state troopers, also needs tanks and planes to keep somebody from hauling it off?
Moore played you saps like a fiddle. God knows what kind of stunts he's going to pull if he becomes governor.
Yeah, imagine what he might do. A Governor who will actually start obeying the U.S. Constitution for a change.
Nothing in the Constitution requires a public official to put a big ole rock with the Ten Commandments on it in a public building.
You're right. But more importantly, his right to put it on display should not have been barred by those clowns in robes deliberately perverting the Constitution to suit their own radical ACLU anti-religious agenda.
Roy wants to do whatever he wants. I'm sure he'd like to ask the religion of everyone that comes in front of his court, since he thinks Christianity is the nation's faith, with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and any others coming in a distant second.
But, he can't do that, just like he can't stick his rock in everybody's face who walks into the Alabama Supreme Court building.
Yeah, demanding his own religious rights as specified under the U.S. Constitution. How dare he !
"I'm sure he'd like to ask the religion of everyone that comes in front of his court, since he thinks Christianity is the nation's faith, with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and any others coming in a distant second."
The fact this nation is Judeo-Christian is the reason any of those faiths are allowed to exist in peace and freely practice. Some like to deny that fact.
"But, he can't do that, just like he can't stick his rock in everybody's face who walks into the Alabama Supreme Court building."
They may not like it, but they have to respect his right to place it. The only argument that could ever have been made against Chief Justice Moore for judicial misconduct is if he attempted to disregard Constitutional law in favor of "Biblical law" (where penalties would come into conflict with the former). Since that was never the case...
So a powerful and influential judge who is fond of Islam, could put up some pithy sayings of the Koran in the lobby of the court house?
Yes.
OK. I admire your answering the question forthrightly. You are my kind of guy. But think of the cost of moving the rocks in and out, as the personage of the powerful and influential judge changes. No, I don't agree with your point of view. The lobby of the court house is not the personal religious speech place of the powerful and influential judge. Let him put it up in the front yard of his home, assuming the zoning laws and CC&R's allow it.
The problem here was that this wasn't some "extremist nut", but a Chief Justice attempting to do nothing more than place a monument inscribed with the basis of Judeo-Christian law (and hence, our own society) upon it in a building with which he had jurisdiction over and the vast majority of the public agreed with. He was within his Constitutional rights to do so.
Maybe I see it as something more symbolic and important, in that we need to rise up and stop this disgusting abuse and contortion of Constitutional rights to freely and openly practice their (Judeo-Christian, in virtually all instances) religion. Moore, in my estimation, never overstepped his bounds and certainly "established" nothing. He forced no one to convert, nor did he apply "the Ten Commandments" (of which there is no penalty stated for violating such) in such a manner is to violate Constitutional or state law. If he did, than the argument would be quite different.
Does that matter to you when it comes to First Amendment jurisprudence?
Moore was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He was attempting to make a symbol of Judeo-Christianity a prominent part of a public structure.
How would you feel, if you were a Muslim-American, or a Buddhist-American, arguing a case before a man who thought your religious faith something that should be merely accommodated?
Perhaps I use an argument that really shouldn't matter... in that just because the vast majority of the public wants or agrees with something doesn't necessarily make it morally, ethically, or legally correct. However, saying that, I've seen far too many instances where if "any Judeo-Christian symbolism" or "practices" is anywhere in the public eye, a handful of extremists come popping out of the woodwork to scream this is somehow a "violation" of their rights, and manage to persuade a "judge" who hasn't read the second half of the religious clause in the First Amendment that their position is correct, and in doing so, trample the rights of the vast majority. This trampling of the majority has been going on for decades, and needs to finally be brought to a halt once and for all. It's why I backed Moore's position to the hilt.
Yes. And that's not unconstitutional.
"How would you feel, if you were a Muslim-American, or a Buddhist-American, arguing a case before a man who thought your religious faith something that should be merely accommodated?"
A darn sight better than before an ACLUite judge that thinks Christianity should be purged from every aspect of public (if not private) life, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.
That's what makes you scary people. Christians get their way, and to hell with everybody else.
I addressed your question, you just didn't like the answer.
"That's what makes you scary people. Christians get their way, and to hell with everybody else."
My, now that sounds like a statement from a bigot.
His property?
Quote from Roy:
"It is required that this nation acknowledge God's law as its foundation, because both the Constitution and Bill of Rights enshrine those principles."
Of course, the fact that there is no verbiage in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights acknowledging God's law as its foundation, or requiring anyone in this nation to acknowledge God in any form, is a detail that Roy must have missed.
There was never anything wrong with the monument itself, it was Roy's stated reasons as to why he put it there that made it necessary for it to be removed.
Roy knew it, he knew that it would play well with the rubes, and that it would advance his political career.
""The monument serves to remind the appellate courts and judges of the circuit and district courts of this state and members of the bar who appear before them as well as the people of Alabama who visit the Alabama Judicial Building of the truth stated in the preamble of the Alabama Constitution that in order to establish justice we must invoke 'the favor and guidance of Almighty God." -- Roy Moore
So, one cannot get justice in Alabama unless one acknowledges God?
Which God?
Whose God?
What if one does not believe in God?
Do atheists somehow get a different set of rules in an Alabama courtroom than Christians do?
Roy built the monument, set it in place, and sabotaged it.
All for political gain.
There isn't a religious bone in this man's entire body.
Thomas Jefferson had Roy's number.
It is in Alabama.
Alabama State Constitution, Section 3:
"'That no religion shall be established by law; that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship; nor to pay any tithes, taxes or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship, or for maintaining any minister or ministry; that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles."
"...that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles." -- Alabama Constitution.
""The monument serves to remind the appellate courts and judges of the circuit and district courts of this state and members of the bar who appear before them as well as the people of Alabama who visit the Alabama Judicial Building of the truth stated in the preamble of the Alabama Constitution that in order to establish justice we must invoke 'the favor and guidance of Almighty God." -- Roy Moore.
You did not. How would you feel, as a Muslim-American, bringing a case before a man who has stated that you belong to an inferior faith, and has a rock set up in the lobby, next to the elevators that the Muslim-American uses, to prove it?
I read it. And I'll say it again, it's NOT unconstitutional.
I answered your question. I'd trust Chief Justice Moore to adjucate more fairly than ANY 9th Circuit Clown or ACLUite adjucating on the rights of Christians, period.
You're wrong.
It is.
-- Alabama Constitution
"The monument serves to remind the appellate courts and judges of the circuit and district courts of this state and members of the bar who appear before them as well as the people of Alabama who visit the Alabama Judicial Building of the truth stated in the preamble of the Alabama Constitution that in order to establish justice we must invoke 'the favor and guidance of Almighty God'." -- Roy Moore.
So, the Alabama Constitution clearly says that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of the citizens of the State shall not be affected by their religious principles, and Crazy Roy claims that his rock was there to remind everyone that in order to get justice in his Court, you had to pray to God, but you do't think that there was anything unconstitutional about this whole thing.
Yeeeehaw!
Am I in DU land or the ACLU forum ? Did you even read what you posted ?
I thought this was a CONSERVATIVE forum, not "beat up on Christians website." Shame on you.
They can have whatever religious opinion they want. Nothing changes the fact that they enjoy their religious freedom because of the Christian principles which gave birth to religious freedom of conscience in America. We have religious freedom because of our Christian heritage, not in spite of it.
Bingo. Shame the ACLU/Christian-hating wingnuts on here don't "get it."
Meaning he would treat Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and other non-Christians like second-class citizens.
That's what I've been saying all along, and that's why Roy Moore is a dangerous human being.
Roy said that in his Court, in order to get justice, you had to invoke the name of God.
That's forcing me to share Roy's religious opinion if I am to expect justice from him, in his Court...unconstitutional.
What if I don;t believe in God?
That's the exact opposite of what you said.
Nothing changes the fact that nothing in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights compels anyone to acknowledge any religion whatsoever.
Did you?
Once again, you get it wrong. You're not even fit to utter the man's name. He's better than you'll ever be, which is an anti-Christian bigot.
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