Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who's now suspended, keeps saying (for instance, on Fox News last night) that his fight to preserve the 5300-pound granite Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building is required of him by the state constitution:

The point is it's not about violation of order, it's about violation of my oath of office. And my oath of office to the Constitution requires an acknowledgment of God. It's that simple.

These Moore supporters explain (emphasis theirs):

The preamble to Alabama’s Constitution reads, “We, the people of the State of Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama.”

Upon being sworn in as the Chief Justice of Alabama, Roy Moore pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the state of Alabama.

Here's my question: Would Moore and his supporters say that every previous Alabama chief justice who didn't have a 5300-pound granite Ten Commandments monument placed in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building was failing to uphold the state constitution? Is having a 5300-pound granite Ten Commandments monument placed in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building specifically required by the constution of the state? Would Judge Moore say that a granite monument weighing a mere 5000 pounds, or 4000 pounds, would pass constitutional muster, or is 5300 pounds the minimum acceptable weight?

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Incidentally, the extremist former presidential candidate Alan Keyes is a Moore supporter. Give a listen to his rather hysterical defense of Moore on The Tavis Smiley Show. If I understand Keyes's argument, he believes that it would be permissible for each and every one of the fifty states to establish a state religion if it so desires -- the Constitution, he argues, prohibits only the establishment of a national religion. Apparently U.S. citizenship is not, according to Keyes, truly a shield against theocracy.