faust

How about a poll on what Moore will announce tomorrow, and/or what happens on Aug 20th when the deadline expires. Make your predictions now and the "i told you so"'s can follow tomorrow and later!

Rhaedas

He's simply stubborn, and I don't see him backing down, regardless of what penalties may result. I don't see him resigning, that would be admission of wrongdoing. And between the two choices that leaves, I wouldn't doubt in a moment that Ashcroft uses his power to stop any actual action againt him. So result...nothing. Progress as usual.

StrictSeparationist

He's a damned coward, and he'll throw in the towel tomorrow, but not before the required bitching and moaning about his free exercise rights require that he be allowed to erect two and a half ton Christian monuments on state property and that all the federal courts are out to get him. I hate this gutless sack of theistic crap, and I dearly hope the Alabama voters throw him out on his ignorant ass. I do realize it's not very likely, but a separationist can dream, can't he?

beejay

Moore will announce that he won't move the 10C.

The state of Alabama,which has to pay the fines for civil contempt, will move it for him.

He gets to say he never compromised on his principles,

but the unconstitutional monument will be moved.

Stephen Maturin

Oh yes, we can always dream, my separationist brother. And yeah, that scenario isn't at all likely considering that the "Ten Commandments Judge" shtick is probably what got him elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in the first place.

The sorry part of all this is that Moore apparently evidences complete sanity on many issues. SLD practices law in Alabama and informs us that Moore has good track record on consumers' rights and such. On this religion horseshit, though, he's a raving fundy nutburger, a knob-gobbling political opportunist or both.

Edit: FWIW, I voted for the second option on Jonathan's poll. Moore "will stick to his guns", thereby foisting the onus of complying with the removal order onto other state officials (not to mention providing more grist for D. Jimmy Kennedy's fundraising mill).

StrictSeparationist

Of course Moore won't be ousted over this. If anything, it will garner him more popular support. However, I do find it interesting that I've seen several editorials in Alabama newspapers attacking Moore's defiant rhetoric towards the federal courts. Two explanations suggest themselves.

The more likely reason that there are Alabamans unafraid of condemning Moore on this is that Alabama's checkered history of defying federal courts and the reasons for which that defiance occured are pretty much an embarrassment to any post-neandrathal residents of the state, raving fundie lunatics or no. Although the editorials in the Montgomery paper that I have read seem to deliberately shy away from the topic of past defiance, the undertone is clearly there. They hoist the banner of "rule of law" to explain their insistence that Roy end his shenanigans.

Another, less likely possibility is that the unconstitutionality of this particular monument is obvious to anyone with eyes and a couple of brain cells to scrape together. This isn't some tiny little plaque on the service entrance of a court house- it's a monstrosity which dominates the rotunda of the State Judicial Building. So blatant is the problem with the Chief Justice pushing his religion in the form of 4,500-pound monolithic slab of granite that even the devout and sometimes fanatical Joe Sixpack (Alabama model) must admit that it cannot stay.

Most likely, the true explanation for these surprising editorials lies somewhere in between. Undoubtedly, this legal odyssey is giving Alabama a huge PR problem that most citizens of that nearly intolerable state recognize as problematic. However, it's possible that some people are, in fact, disgusted at this sort of cheapening of religion for politics' sake in the form of this brazen Decalogue-shaped rock. Here's hoping the Moore realizes that public opinion is not, perhaps, so strongly behind him as he had hoped it would be, and that he ends this ridiculous saga tomorrow afternoon. I just want to see that damn thing hid away somewhere so that we don't have to feel ashamed to be in the same republic as a state that has it sitting in the middle of its highest court.