God and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party

All right, Godless CounterPunchers, we know that you are snickering about Alabama's Chief Justice Roy Moore's 10 Commandments rock. Now his eight associate judges have repudiated "Roy's Rock," and the state's Attorney General removed it. So all is well. Or is it?

On July 22, the House voted 307 to 119 for an amendment to an appropriations bill. It prohibits the use of federal money to enforce the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previous ruling that "under God" has no business in the Pledge of Allegiance. The next day it voted 260 to 161 to prohibit funding of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision demanding the removal of Moore's monument.

Ninety-one of 199 Democrats voted to prohibit funding the "under God" decision, 50 out of 197 voted to ban US money for enforcement of the order against Moore. Cynics felt that this was just populist demagoguery, that they knew that the bill wouldn't get past the Senate. Except that the Senate had previously voted, 99 to 0 and 94 to 0, to denounce the 9th's ruling in nonbinding statements.

With Alabama's court and AG promising to get rid of the 10 Commandments stone, the Senate won't have to vote on that, but "under God" is still before the courts. As of now, no one has introduced the 11th Circuit Court amendment into the Senate, and it is possible that our Senators will cook up a parliamentary maneuver to evade binding a vote on the House's handiwork. But if they do, that only postpones the political day of reckoning for our secular liberals until the 2004 elections.

http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner08292003.html