"Ten Commandments judge" wins old job back

Roy Moore in his Montgomery, Ala., office last month / AP Photo/Dave Martin

MONTGOMERY, Ala. The former judge ousted for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument has won his old job back as Alabama's chief justice.

Republican Roy Moore defeated Democrat Bob Vance. With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Moore had 52 percent of the vote compared with Vance's 48 percent.

Moore became known as "Alabama's Ten Commandments judge" in 1995 when the ACLU sued him to remove a homemade plaque of the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the state judicial building. The Alabama Supreme Court threw out the suit, but the legal battle helped him win the race for chief justice in 2000.

A state court for judges kicked him out of office three years later when he refused to abide by a federal judge's order to remove the monument.

[nancy_naive]

This is why Romney, Mourdock, Akin, etc., etc., lost. Rabid Evangelism in this country is waning, FINALLY. It is being relegated to the backwaters with the snakehandlers.

[nancy_naive]

A state court for judges kicked him out of office three years later when he refused to abide by a federal judge's order to remove the monument.

Nothing has changed. He'll do it again, and they'll boot him again. Insanity is doing the same irrational things over and over while expecting a rational result.

[collie61]

My sincere congratulations Judge Roy Moore. You are a true American who holds the founding father's values.

[frankie2fing]

Yes! Our founding fathers were explicitly clear that religion had no place in our government. But only if you went to SCHOOL would you have 'lernt' that...guess you only majored in FOX-101..

[cmhart811]

Amen to COLLIE61! We need more people like him who are willing to lose their job to stand up for the ONE true God. And to those who are in opposition of this person's accolade to the Judge, our founding fathers were trying to keep Government out of the church. What is offensive to you about the Ten Commandments to you? I'm just going to take a wild guess and say it's because you feel you have the right to be free from religious oppression. Well to that I have to say that you should feel grateful that even if we have different beliefs we are called to try to bring you from salvation, and from the tortures of an eternity in Hell. So whether you are a Christian or not is beside the point you should just feel comforted that complete strangers all over the world care enough about people like you to not only give up their jobs, but also their lives, families, and their own freedoms.

[lfitts2]

In Alabama, what were you expecting...the heart of Dixie and the American Taliban!

[HM8432]

Yes, the South is the last region in the country to recognize a freak when they see one, as Flannery O'Conner put it. We live in an age of spineless flip-flopper's, so good for the judge for standing up for his moral principles; because sometimes what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.