It surely didn't just begin with George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama. That was a symbolic gesture when the substance was already largely inevitable. But Alabama just has more than its share of grandstanders in executive, legislative, and judicial office. Take two recent cases:

Ten days ago, Andrew Sullivan and I took note of legislation proposed by Brother Gerald Allen who represents Tuscaloosa County's Cottondale in the state legislature. It would"ban the use of public money to purchase any work of fiction with gay characters or any non-fiction work that appears to condone homosexuality or any work of either sort that appears to condone heterosexual sodomy; and it would further bar any teacher from distributing material that or inviting a guest speaker who speaks in favor of tolerating homosexual behavior."* I was only slightly re-assured when David Beito, who does missionary work over in the wilds of northern Alabama, told us that Brother Allen's legislation is dead in the water. Come to find out now, from Brother Josh Marshall, that the White House looked fondly on Brother Allen's notoriety and invited him to come up there for a meeting with the President day before yesterday. It's a good thing Google worked out that agreement with Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, and Oxford when they did. We could get national legislation banning the faggy taint from all our library shelves. Symbolic gestures, indeed.

Then, of course, Alabama's also notorious for grandstanding from its benches. Former Chief Justice Roy Moore is the prime recent example of that. He positioned himself for a bright future in Alabama politics by slipping a two and a half ton monument of the Ten Commandments into the state judicial building's rotunda in the dark of night and refusing to have it removed. Gave up his office rather than obey orders to remove it. Now, comes Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan of Covington County. That's way to the south, just above the Florida pan-handle. Well, Judge McKathan showed up in court yesterday in a judicial robe with the Ten Commandments embroidered in gold threads on his robe. He must have been quite a sight, too, because the lettering was big enough to be read by anyone standing anywhere near him. It's the gold armbands of Chief Justice Rehnquist creeping around front to literacy and public sanctimony. Well, the defense attorney in a DUI case down there in Andalusia objected to the robe and moved to continue his client's case on the grounds that Judge McKathan's Ten Commandments were a distraction. Motions denied. The Ten Commandments represent the truth, said Judge McKathan. You can't separate the truth from the law or right and wrong. I'm thinking of renaming the county seat Indelusia.
Update: Josh Marshall has moore on Brother Allen from the Anniston Star.

*That's Ralph Luker quoting Ralph Luker, but I put those quotation marks around it in case those investigative journalists at the Chronicle of Higher Education are looking around for moore hapless historians to string up these days.