Sophistry in Defense of the Ten Commandments

I find this highly amusing. Lyle Denniston of the SCOTUSblog is reporting:

The Supreme Court on Monday gave two Kentucky counties permission to make a new attempt to rescue their courthouse displays of the Ten Commandments from being struck down as a move motivated by religious objectives. The Court allowed McCreary and Pulaski Counties to file a new brief, even though the case was argued a month ago.

The supplemental brief notified the Court that the two counties' local governing bodies had "repealed and repudiated" their 1999 resolutions that gave an explicit religious justification for posting the Commandments on county courthouse walls. The resolutions wiping out those declarations were passed within days after the Supreme Court held oral arguments in the case, on March 2.

Challengers to the Commandments displays in the two Kentucky counties had made much, in their merits brief and in oral argument, of the resolutions acknowledging "Christian principles" and commemorating "Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics." At oral argument, some of the Justices focused on the 1999 resolutions, and wondered if they were still in effect. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, for example, asked: "That one wasn't rescinded?...It was adopted and it still is there, presumably?" The counties' lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, replied: "Presumably. There is nothing in the record that suggests what happened to it. Whether it was repealed or not."

Staver and his clients apparently were concerned about the effect of such exchanges on the Court's view of their Commandments exhibits. So, according to the new brief, the counties acted swiftly after the Court's hearing. On March 8, six days afterward, McCreary County's local legislative body passed a new resolution, which said in part: "...in order to make it explicitly and unequivocally clear, this Resolution hereby repeals the 1999 Resolution, completely abandons the second display and the Resolution, and repudiates both." Two days later, the Pulaski County legislative body enacted the identical repudiation language. Both resolutions also contained an assertion that the display of the Commandments was not intended "to endorse religion." (The 1999 resolutions had accompanied the mounting of the second display, one in which the Commandments was surrounded by other historical documents. The first display had the Commandments alone. Later, the counties put up a third display, a further attempt to neutralize the religious effect of the Commandments.)

You see, when they put up the displays they made it very clear, in the resolutions authorizing such displays, that their intent was to endorse an explicitly Christian viewpoint. But now they realized that admitting that was a bad idea because of the Lemon test's intent prong, so they've asked the Supreme Court to allow them a do over. They will now pretend that their clearly stated intent at the time wasn't really their intent, and the Supreme Court will allow them to rewrite the briefs they filed in order to add this absurd lie into them. Now here's what really cracks me up about this. The defenders of Ten Commandments monuments are often heard declaring that such displays are important for reinforcing the eternal nature right and wrong, absolute rules that transcend human convenience and govern our behavior regardless of whether they are expedient. So how ridiculously hypocritical is it for those who placed those monuments there to now attempt to rewrite history to disguise their real motives, motives that they stated explicitly at the time? Maybe it's time to start some sort of Liars for Jesus Hall of Fame. These folks could be the first class inducted.

Hat tip to Carpundit.