Press Alert                                           For Immediate Release
Contact: Rhonda Putman                     502 241-5552 www.firstprinciplespresss.org

On Thursday, April 20, 2000, at 1:00 p.m., EST, the Honorable Jennifer B. Coffman, United States District Court, Eastern District, in London, Kentucky will hear oral arguments of Defendants Motions to Dismiss in the three (3) cases brought by the ACLU against Pulaski and McCreary County Judge Executives Darrell Beshears and Jimmie Greene and Harlan County School superintendent, Don Musselman, which seek to suppress or censor the public posting of official and historical American political documents.  The suppression of the official history of America and her government has increased over the past forty years, particularly in public schools. Defending the McCreary and Pulaski County Judges and the Harlan country schools is lead counsel Colonel Ronald D. Ray.  Ray is a Kentucky constitutional attorney who is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration, and his co-counsel is Ted Amshoff, Jr., of Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1992, KRS 258.195 was passed by the Kentucky legislature to stop the censorship of official historic documents of America’s civil government.  The Kentucky General Assembly mandated: 

There shall be no content-based censorship of American history or heritage in the Commonwealth based on religious references in these writings, documents, and records. 

This legislation signed by then Governor Brereton Jones provided the authority for school boards to allow any teacher or administrator in a public school district of the Commonwealth to read or post original and official American historical documents in their classrooms without fear of coercion or reprisal.  The official government or “political” documents being questioned in federal court are:

á        an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence;

á        the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution;

á        America’s national motto “In God We Trust;”

á        a copy of the February 2, 1983, Congressional Record, the official publication of the proceedings and debates of the U.S. Congress, declaring 1983 as the “Year of the Bible” which contains the text of the Ten Commandments in this official government document;

á        a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln;

á        a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan; and the Mayflower Compact.

The educational reason for posting the Ten Commandments is historical, because they are the precedent legal code upon which American law and civil government is based.  Section 7 of the Senate Joint Resolution 57, which was recently passed by both houses in the most recent session of the Kentucky General Assembly and will be signed this week by Governor Paul Patton, states “The General Assembly finds the Ten Commandments to be the precedent legal code of the Commonwealth which has provided the foundation for many of the civil and criminal statutes enacted into law throughout the history of the Commonwealth.”  The Congressional Record officially makes that historical and governmental point very well.  Congress adopted without objection the remarks of Congressman Phillip M. Crane of Illinois, who said that: “I believe that it would serve an educational purpose for our citizens to become familiar with the important role which the Bible and the Ten Commandments have played in molding our American traditions and laws.”  However, when two County Judges in the Commonwealth choose to do so in their own courtrooms, they were told to remove them, or face a lawsuit.  Yet in Washington, DC, in the building which houses the United States Supreme Court, at the entrance to this prestigious courtroom, the Ten Commandments are posted in three (3) places, including an engraved marble plaque mounted into the wall behind the bench where the Justices sit to hear cases.  Since the construction of the Supreme court building, no one has dared to question the official governmental endorsement, legal or constitutional validity of these postings.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has long attempted to censor and suppress the display of these official and historical political documents, because they contain or refer to the name of our Creator, Almighty God, the Bible and the Ten Commandments.  As a part of their campaign of suppression, both the ACLU and other critics of posting historic documents in “public schools or government property” recently admonished Kentucky legislators not to allow the posting of the Ten Commandments, claiming that any references to Almighty God, the Bible, Christianity, the Lord, or the Ten Commandments converts “political” documents into “religious” documents, thereby violating the establishment of religion provisions of the First Amendment.

This is contrary to what the Supreme Court recognized in the precedent-setting 1980 case, Stone v. Graham.  There is nothing in the First Amendment to the federal Constitution which permits any suppression or censorship of the Ten Commandments in any display of official public documents reflecting the official and permanent history of American civil government.

In conclusion, Oral Arguments on the three cases brought by the ACLU on April 20, 2000, are not really about the Ten Commandments as “religious” documents.  After decades of misleading information and historical erosion by the ACLU, many Americans today misunderstand the Ten Commandments as only a “religious” document because of the suppression and censorship of historical American documents.  However, the Ten Commandments in America are much more than a “religious” document.  Historically, it is the precedent legal code of American law and civil government which is evidenced by and contained in the laws of the 50 states as well as other legal and historical documents.

The Defendants will argue that the People of Kentucky have an absolute and unfettered right to know, and have unrestricted access to the official public acts of every branch of their civil government, which includes the right of public officials and teachers to display, read and understand the public acts of each of the separate, but equal branches of our civil government reflecting the public business of our elected representatives in civil government.  American liberty rests upon an Informed Citizenry without censorship of the official primarily public acts of their civil government.

WE THE PEOPLE are the government as the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States makes clear.  WE THE PEOPLE must be well informed of the public acts of their representatives.  Original and official sources are essential to the People’s being able to give our informed consent to be governed, with a truthful and accurate understanding of our past, which includes teaching America’s official and permanent history of this Republic.  The ACLU has brought an unprecedented case of first impression and would have us believe that this case somehow only concerns the usual First Amendment arguments against “religious” custom concerning an establishment of religion.  Such is not the case at all.  This is a revolutionary political attempt to suppress to our official and founding history of our Republic, always termed “One Nation Under God.”                           (*** End ***)