When you find yourself in a hole, it’s time to stop digging. That’s a bit of folk wisdom officials in McCreary and Pulaski counties should heed now that they know just how deep a hole they have dug themselves into with their decade-long legal fight over posting the Ten Commandments in their courthouses.
This week, U.S. District Judge Jennifer B. Coffman ordered the counties to pay the American Civil Liberties Union and the citizens it represents in the case more than $400,000 in legal fees and expenses. In response to the counties’ argument that the bill was too high, Coffman said the defendants “cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by the plaintiffs in response.”
Officials in the two southern Kentucky counties started digging themselves into this huge hold back in 1999, when their postings of the commandments prompted the ACLU to file suit on behalf of residents in each county. Coffman ruled the displays unconstitutional and ordered them removed. The counties appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they lost.
That was in 2005, and the digging should have ended then. But the two counties launched another appeal that is ongoing. So, the tab they will owe the ACLU if they lose their appeal keeps mounting.
With what would seem to be a shaky case at best, considering the earlier Supreme Court ruling, and with a tanked economy cutting into revenues at all levels of government, common sense says it’s time for the two counties to stop digging and start climbing out of the hole they’re in.
Larry Dale Keeling, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has spent most of his 35-plus years in journalism reporting on or writing editorials and columns about Kentucky’s politics and political issues. He now brings his experience and expertise on those topics to the KyKurmudgeon blog.
The ten commandment argument is simply a battle of wills and benefits NOBODY! Those who honestly care..know where they are loscated. Those who don’t care are not going to read them if they are posted on a wall somewhere. How many people read the documents posted on the wall of a courthouse or a school building? Why waste public money trying to force them down the throats of other people?
How about the creeds of the KKK or the creed of the Wichens (witches)…or any other outfit that goes against the grain of Christians.
Christians would not sit still for those documents.Those other religions will not sit still for the ten commandments.Let it be.
If Christians post the ten commandments on the walls of public buildings, every other religion has the same right…..right?
Religion is a private matter. Open your Bible. Read them carefully. The original commandments were nailed to the cross with Jesus and HE amended them and brought a NEW and BETTER LAW with them. Why not use HIS version…if you want to get technical.
It is a ball of yarn that nobody can untangle!
Let’s not waste public money that will get us absolutely nowhere…not even to Heaven.
There are as many opinions on the subject as there are subjects. Let it rest!
No kidding. Stop trying to appeal, when the law is set in stone, you crazy hilljacks.