For Pryor, Religious, Legal Rights In Conflict

Washington Post ^ | 08/25/03 | Manuel Roig-Franzia

[Pokey78]

Senators, Bible Belt Blast Alabama Attorney General

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Aug. 24 -- Bill Pryor once seemed to be the charmed wunderkind of Alabama politics.

Clean-cut and articulate, he was celebrated as the youngest attorney general in the nation when he was appointed to the post in January 1997 at age 34. Since then, the conservative Republican has been elected twice, the second with 59 percent of the vote last year.

But Pryor now finds himself walking a precarious political tightrope.

[xzins]

He wrote newspaper opinion pieces defending what he said was Moore's right to place hand-carved Ten Commandments tablets in a state courthouse north of Birmingham.

If he believes that Moore is right about the Constitution, then how does it support the rule of law if he says a judge should be obeyed, but that the supreme law of the land should be ignored in deference to the judge.

Doesn't that make the judges the supreme law of the land?