It’s quite the battle brewing at Alabama and at Washington, D.C., over the placement of a Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Judiciary Building. Two years ago, the chief justice in Montgomery, Roy Moore, installed the 5,300-pound monument at the building. Recently, the Court of Appeals for the 11th United States Circuit upheld the ruling of a federal district judge, according to the Associated Press, that the monument was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by the state. The district judge, Myron Thompson, had ordered the removal of the monument. Federal marshals are now set to execute the 11th Circuit’s decision.

There’s one catch, though. Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican from Indiana, introduced an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary spending bill forbidding the federal government from spending any money “to enforce the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Glassroth v. Moore, decided on July 1, 2003.”The amendment passed the House 260 to 161 and is now pending in the Senate.

Such a power struggle between the Legislature and the Judiciary cuts to the heart of our constitutional system. Our guess is the 11th Circuit will win the case, if it ever gets to the High Court; imagine, after all, the anger of the Nine were Congress to have refused to fund United States marshals enforcing its order to, say, integrate the schools at Little Rock. But if the case does go to the Supreme Court, we would like to think that the Court will draw extra wisdom and inspiration from the ceiling frieze in the court’s own chambers, which depicts, among other things, none other than Moses, himself, bringing down from Sinai the tablets of the law.