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Moore commandments: A graven image

The graven image of the Ten Commandments, as well as the name of its sponsor, Judge Roy Moore, will a) fade into history or b) get enshrined somewhere in Alabama. But the debates prompted by Moore’s placement of this icon in the Alabama Supreme Court building may continue. At the time I write, my search engine turns up only two Web citations of a most important point: that Moore’s granite analogue to the Golden Calf, before which supporters were seen bowing, lists 11, not ten, commandments.

Judging the judge: Roy Moore's salvo in the culture wars

The case of Judge Roy S. Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has become the cause célèbre of the Christian right. He has refused to obey an order from a U.S. district judge to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Two years ago Moore took it upon himself to install the 5,300-pound granite monument. After losing his case in a federal appeals court, Moore, a Southern Baptist, announced: “I have no intention of removing the monument.”