It took a lot of courage to stare down Alabama Judge Roy Moore and his 5,300-pound monument of the Ten Commandments. It took a unanimous vote from nine judges, lawyers and laymen who made up the bipartisan Alabama Court of Judiciary to remove Moore, who was charged with six counts of unethical conduct. It was not a popular decision — nearly three out of four Alabamans supported the judge’s crusade.

But it was the right decision.

At this point, the controversy is no longer about the right to plant a hefty monument of the Ten Commandments in the middle of the courthouse rotunda. It was about following the rule of law, the very law that Moore is supposed to uphold in his office.

He betrayed that office when he defied a federal court order to remove the monument. Then he tried to claim it was an example of the federal courts trampling over state sovereignty. Such a claim is laughable now that nine Alabamans have voted together to oust him — never mind that it was his own fellow justices on the Alabama Supreme Court who ordered the monument removed earlier this year.

Moore’s disrespect of the law was so flagrant that Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, who originally defended Moore’s right to display the Commandments, prosecuted the case against Moore.

“Because the chief justice intentionally and publicly engaged in misconduct, and because he remains unrepentant for his behavior,” Pryor wrote in a legal filing, “this court must remove the chief justice from office to protect the Alabama judiciary and the citizens who depend upon it for fair and impartial justice.”

But such sound reasoning is not enough to convince Moore that he is wrong. He still believes that “by placing the monument in the Capitol, the legislature of this nation would stop an overactive judiciary and restore the balance of power.”

The irony in such a statement should be obvious given Moore’s lawless behavior. If he believes an “overactive” judiciary is dangerous, then what does he think about one judge ignoring the rulings of all the other judges in his state? Is this what he means when he refers to a “balance of power?”

No doubt the debate about appropriate religious expression in public institutions is difficult and far from over.

But this is as black and white of a case as they come.

If an entire bipartisan panel and an attorney general — a Bush nominee whom some say was blocked from a seat on a federal court because of being too conservative and religious — can rule against Moore despite his overwhelming popularity, then that should be a sure sign Moore has gone far past what might have once been a noble stance.