The continuing saga of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore just keeps getting more absurd at every turn in the unfolding story.One man's quest to hang a small, wooden plaque of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall in Gadsden has now turned into a national media event complete with videos on sale for $19 each.
Moore already rode the issue into the top judicial spot. And after election, he developed an in-your-face strategy that keeps his name before the public and in the national spotlight.
The latest twist to Moore's journey to stardom is that he had a Christian television network exclusively film the installation in the judicial building rotunda of his two-and-a-half-ton monument etched with the Ten Commandments and historical quotes. The filming in the dead of night without anyone else's knowledge or approval not even another justice is now being sold in videotape format for a $19 "donation" to Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Coral Ridge is the same televangelist outfit that donated $130,000 to Moore's legal expenses when he was sued over the plaque placed in Gadsden.
Now he faces two other suits from Southern Poverty Law Center, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Of course taxpayers are stuck with paying for at least part of those. Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor has pledged to defend Moore's actions. While he is using outside lawyers to be paid with private funds, our attorney general will still be involving his state office in the case.
Both Pryor and Moore are portraying this as a defense of the Ten Commandments themselves, but that's a semantic farce. The charges are that Moore on his own placed his monument furthering his own religious beliefs and is denying anyone else that right in a public building.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to watch the absurdity continue and pick up part of the tab.
