Headline shoulda been:
"Christian pay $2000 For a Rock"
:')
"¤¤ Vox Dei ©" <vox@dei.rex> wrote in message
news:fKcPb.10$o97.29665@news.uswest.net...
City Hall Ten Commandments monument surfaces in North Carolina
WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (AP) --A granite monument to the Ten
Commandments,
placed in front of City Hall by a city council member, doesn't help unite
people, the mayor said.
"Obviously, if you are going to do something like this, this is not the
right
way to do it," Mayor Allen Joines said Monday, hours after the monument
was
installed. "We are working hard to bring the city together. Actions like
this
tend to push people apart."
City Council member Vernon Robinson, who said he was inspired by Alabama's
ousted chief justice, placed the 4-foot-tall granite block in front of
City Hall
on Monday while it was closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. He
said he
paid the $2,000 cost of buying and moving the monument himself.
The monument is inscribed on one side with the Ten Commandments and on the
other
with the Bill of Rights.
"He doesn't have the right to put it there," City Attorney Ron Seeber
said. The
appropriate process for anyone to put a permanent marker on city property
is to
petition the council for approval, he said.
The city's staff was to decide Tuesday whether it will take down the
marker or
ask Robinson to remove it, said Lee Garrity, the assistant city manager
for
public safety.
Robinson, who is running for the Republican nomination for the 5th
Congressional
District, said he didn't get permission to put up the marker because he
didn't
know the procedure.
Robinson, who is black, also said that his action was not intended to
clash with
King Day celebrations.
"This display is intended to acknowledge the undeniable role that the Ten
Commandments and Bill of Rights have played in developing the American
legal
tradition," Robinson said.
Robinson said he was inspired to act by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy
Moore,
who ordered a 21/2-ton Ten Commandments monument placed in the rotunda of
the
Alabama Judicial Building in 2001.
A federal judge found the monument to be an unconstitutional promotion of
religion by government in 2002. Moore was ousted from office last year for
violating ethics rules by not obeying the federal court order to remove
the
monument.
William Van Alstyne, a Duke University professor of constitutional law,
said he
didn't think that the marker would stand a constitutional test.
"It's merely meant to be provocative," Van Alstyne said. "I can't
conceivably
imagine it would be allowed to stand."
--
"Either the world will be ruled according to the ideas of our
modern democracy, or the world will be dominated according
to the natural law of force; in the latter case the people of
brute force will be victorious."
G.W. Bush or Adolf
Hitler ?
.
