You knew this was coming.
GADSDEN, Ala. -- Roy Moore, who became a hero to the religious right after being ousted as Alabama's chief justice for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, announced Monday that he is running for
governor in 2006.Moore's candidacy could set up a showdown with Gov. Bob Riley, a fellow Republican, and turn the Ten Commandments dispute into a central campaign issue in this Bible Belt state.
Two Democrats, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley and former Gov. Don Siegelman, are already running. The Republican and Democratic primaries are June 6.
Moore, 58, said that if elected, he has no plans to relocate the Ten Commandments monument from its new home at a church in Gadsden.
"But I'll tell you what I will do. I will defend the right of every citizen of this state -- including judges, coaches, teachers, city, county and state officials -- to acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law, liberty and government," he said.
In 2000, Alabama voters elected Moore as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and the next summer he had a 5,300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building. A federal judge ordered Moore to remove it as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, but Moore refused.
His fellow justices had the monument moved to a storage site out of public view. And in November 2003, a state judicial court kicked Moore out of office for defying the
federal court.Moore took appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost at every level.
Since then, he has traveled the country, speaking to church and conservative groups and promoting his book about the controversy, "So Help Me God."
To those who have criticized him as a one-issue candidate, Moore said Monday that his main issue is summed up by his campaign theme: "Return Alabama to the people."
Moore signed a giant copy of his campaign platform that called for limiting legislators to three terms, barring lawmakers from holding two state jobs, ending annual tax reappraisals of property and imposing new penalties on businesses that employ illegal immigrants.
4 comments:
This joker is a prime example of a guy that you don't want to be running things.
The guy is no doubt been posturing for this opportunity, but there isn't much to argue about when you read the agenda in the last paragraph. If Moore could actually win on those issues, would it be worth the Ten Comandments in granite sitting on public land to my pal Dude?
He showed extremely bad judgment and insubordination on the Ten Commandments thing. Even if we agree on some things, I wouldn't trust the guy enough to vote him into any position of authority. All I know about him is that he is some kind of religious activist, and in my book, those guys are generally bad news.
I'm in the minority in that I've never seen this issue as a religious one. Moore may be religious, but he wasn't promoting any particular religion. He was simply acknowledging a higher power than his court or courts in general. I think this scares the oligarchic nature of our judiciary that has been trying to undo Jefferson’s words since the 1960s. The debate isn’t being framed in these terms, but does anyone doubt that our courts consider themselves the last word on everything, including our rights as individuals? Is it a coincidence that they have struck down mentions of the one thing higher than themselves when elected officials even in liberal states wouldn’t dare?
The people who believe that we can spend our way out of poverty are guilty of promoting a religious belief that is much more dangerous than Judaism or Christianity. At least monotheists stay out of our wallets.
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