MONTGOMERY — Former Judge Roy Moore brought his old Ten Commandments monument back to his office in Montgomery on Tuesday afternoon. Moore said he wanted to bring the monument back to Montgomery because “it can unite us.”
The monument in question, which had been stored for years at a local church, was at the center of a dispute that forced Moore’s removal from his position on the Alabama Supreme Court in the early 2000s.
According to the most recent polls, Moore is running fourth for the Republican nomination for Alabama’s Senate seat that is currently held by Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL).
While he spoke, he was shouted at by one of two protesters that appeared outside of his office during the event. The protesters had signs that read, “No Moore Rapists in Alabama Politics” and “No Moore Hate.” The first sign was in reference to the allegations of improper sexual activity with teenagers that date to when Moore was in his 30s working as a lawyer in Gadsden. The allegations were first reported by the Washington Post during the 2017 special election when Roy Moore was competing for the same U.S. Senate seat he is currently seeking.
“We’ve denied them, we’ve sued them,” a frustrated Moore said when asked about the protesters on Tuesday, before arguing the suit should be in Etowah County instead of Montgomery County.
At the event for the Ten Commandments’ reintroduction, Moore talked at length about his belief that the lack of acknowledging God in public life was the cause of almost all of modern society’s issues. He also revealed his plan to reintroduce the “Constitution Restoration Act” if he is elected to the Senate.
In 2019, Moore’s current campaign for Senate released one video that was a copy of an ad he ran in 2017, except the end was changed to a sentence of text that reads, “The truth is out about the 2017 misinformation against Roy Moore.” Later, the campaign released a new four-minute video titled, “Smear.” It painted Moore as a fellow victim of the mainstream media’s overzealousness alongside people like Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.
Those videos in concert with the public remarks from Moore and the Ten Commandments ceremony on Tuesday have many Alabama political observers wondering if Moore’s strategy for winning the U.S. Senate seat in 2020 that he lost to Doug Jones in 2017 revolves around the rehashing of old fights he has been involved in throughout his long career in Alabama politics.
Drawing Moore’s particular anger is Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). Moore lays his 2017 loss squarely at the feet on Alabama’s longest-serving senator.
“Doug Jones was elected because of Richard Shelby,” argued Moore at his event on Tuesday.
The Constitution Restoration Act about which Moore spoke at length was in part authored by the judge after his first removal from the Alabama Supreme Court. It was sponsored in the U.S. House by Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville) and in the U.S. Senate by Richard Shelby (R-AL). After multiple attempts in 2004 and 2005, the bill did not make it out of committee. If enacted, it would have curtailed the federal judiciary’s ability to rule on cases that involved a judge or justice of a state court acknowledging God.
“I have the opportunity to introduce this bill again,” said Moore at the event.
“We forbid our children from reading ‘thou shalt not kill’ and then we wonder why they go kill each other” Moore implored the audience at his office on Tuesday.
He added, “We’ve been convinced to take God out of our lives, then we wonder why we have senseless murders like Aniah Blanchard, Kamille McKinney, or Miss Houston, or any number if you turn on the news any day. Crime is growing senselessly. Murder, thefts. Why do you think we have political corruption? Why do you think in Iowa they can’t even find out who won? Ladies and gentlemen, we have corruption because we’ve forgotten morality.”
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: [email protected] or on Twitter @HenryThornton95.
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