Judge Myron H. Thompson, a federal district judge in Montgomery, Alabama, recently ruled that murder, larceny, dissing your parents, swearing, lying, and coveting your neighbor's toys, not to mention his wife, are constitutionally guaranteed rights in the United States of America.

What else is one to conclude after his ruling that ordered a display of the Ten Commandments be removed from the Alabama Supreme Court house within 30 days?

The monument, a 5,280-pound chunk of granite, which in addition to the Ten Commandments also contains a line from the Declaration of Independence -- "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God -- and quotes from several of the Founding Fathers including George Mason and James Madison, was placed there by Chief Justice Roy Moore in July 2001.

But the impetus for this lawsuit dates back over ten years before Judge Moore served on the Alabama Supreme Court. As a lower court judge, he hung a simple plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, stoking the fires for what has now become a raging conflagration, which I doubt will be extinguished any time soon as an appeal is contemplated.

Even a brief perusal of America's legal foundation demonstrates that we were a nation of laws rooted in the Bible.

David Barton, the founder and president of Wall Builders, a pro-family organization that focuses on America's godly heritage, prepared an affidavit written in support of the Ten Commandments to the U.S. District Court of Kentucky, London Division. The document cites numerous instances of divine law being incorporated into American colonial law.

"The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, established in 1638-39 as the first written constitution in America and considered as the direct predecessor of the U. S. Constitution, declared that the Governor and his council of six elected officials would 'have power to administer justice according to the laws here established; and for want thereof according to the rule of the word of God.'"

This was not some political aberration in America's legal system, as Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, his atheist sycophants, and their accomplices in the ACLU would have the rest of us believe.

Dozens of states in colonial America wrote laws dealing with theft, adultery, murder, perjury and respect for parental authority based directly on the Ten Commandments.

And in more recent times, the evidence for a biblical basis of American law is also abundant. Here are just a few examples.

In a 1940 Supreme Court ruling in California, the justices wrote: "Defendant did not acknowledge the dominance of a fundamental precept of honesty and fair dealing enjoined by the Decalogue and supported by prevailing moral concepts. 'Thou shalt not steal' applies with equal force and propriety to the industrialist of a complex civilization as to the simple herdsman of ancient Israel."

In 1950, the Florida Supreme Court stated: "A people unschooled about the sovereignty of God, the Ten Commandments, and the ethics of Jesus, could never have evolved the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. There is not one solitary fundamental principle of our democratic policy that did not stem directly from the basic moral concepts as embodied in the Decalogue…"

In 1974, the Supreme Court of Indiana declared, "Virtually all criminal laws are in one way or another the progeny of Judeo-Christian ethics. We have no intention to overrule the Ten Commandments."

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Mississippi reproached a prosecutor for introducing accusations for which the prosecutor had no evidence during cross-examination of a defendant. The court stated: "When the State or any party states or suggests the existence of certain damaging facts and offers no proof whatever to substantiate the allegations, a golden opportunity is afforded the opposing counsel in closing argument to appeal to the Ninth Commandment. 'Thou shalt not bear false witness…'Exodus 20:16."

The vocal minority whose raison d'etre is to overrule anything having to do with God has succeeded in large measure. But their success comes at the expense of our well-being.

By overruling the Ten Commandments, another of God's laws is violated, the law of sowing and reaping, which declares, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com. Visit our website at www.amyfound.org.