Musgrove, Barbour want Mississippi to display monument

[FRAFG]

Musgrove, Barbour want Mississippi to display monument

JACKSON (AP) — Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and his Republican rival Haley Barbour said Mississippi would take the Ten Commandments monument that was removed Wednesday from a public area of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

The separate statements were issued within minutes of each other, and it’s unclear which was written first. ‘‘For too long our courts and politicians have interpreted every American freedom of religion as freedom from religion,’’ Musgrove wrote in a letter to suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who installed the 5,280-pound monument two years ago in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. ‘‘It would be my honor to host this monument as a symbol of every Mississippian’s dedication to the fundamental principles of the Ten Commandments,’’ Musgrove wrote on official stationery with the state seal.

Barbour, who’s challenging Musgrove in the Nov. 4 general election, issued a news release saying the court-ordered removal of the Ten Command-ments monument in Alabama was wrong. ‘‘Tell Judge Moore, who is a hero to so many of us, that if they don’t want the monument in Alabama, we want it in Mississippi,’’ Barbour said. ‘‘I’ll send a truck over today to pick it up, if they’ll let me have it for the Governor’s Mansion.’’

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. It would be political suicide for them to do otherwise

Mississippi is a pretty conservative state.

[CMT]

2. Musgrove is playing to the electorate

of course he might actually believe it himself. He is still wrong.