Cover Story: Rep. Lynn Westmoreland
Can't teach himself the Ten Commandments
In 2005, U.S. Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., co-sponsored four bills intended to put the Ten Commandments on display in Congress.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Ten Commandments is a list of religious and moral rules delivered by God, R-Everything, to Moses, R-Sinai, shortly after Moses led the Jews out of their bondage in Egypt. The Ten Commandments appear not only in the Old Testament, but also in a popular 1956 film of the same name that stars Charlton Heston and that ABC used to air every Easter. That Red Sea scene gets me every time!
One might think that, having co-sponsored multiple pieces of legislation designed to force the display of religious tracts on public property, Westmoreland would have committed them to memory by now. Think again.
Appearing on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" in June, Westmoreland could name only three of the 10. Westmoreland's communications director, Brian Robinson, says Westmoreland actually named seven, but Colbert's show edited seven down to three for comedic effect.
Either way, that's not good. In Westmoreland's words, "The Ten Commandments is not a bad thing for people to understand and respect. If we were totally without them, we may lose our sense of direction." By his own math, Westmoreland is 30 to 70 percent directionless.
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