Oh, I know you guys by now expect me to be a frothing-at-the-mouth separation of church and state advocate. And I guess I am. But as I've said before, I just can't get too worked up over the Ten Commandments display case, being reviewed today by the Supreme Court.

I did, however, find this bit of historical trivia about most of the courthouse displays interesting: They were a movie ad campaign!

In the mid 1950s, the effort got a boost from Hollywood. Director Cecil B. DeMille decided the displays would be a good way to promote his film, The Ten Commandments, and urged the Eagles to build monuments instead of posting paper copies.

The Eagles reportedly built 4,000 of them; Demille dispatched Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, the stars of the film, to appear at some of the dedications.

"There are scores of newspaper clippings in which the local newspaper says things like "Moses Comes to Fargo,' with a picture of Heston flying into the small town," Finkelman said.

The Texas monument was installed on the Capitol grounds in 1961, but there's no indication that Heston or Brynner appeared at that dedication.

Hundreds of the Eagles monuments are still standing and countless others have been built by other groups.

So basically these things are on par with Lord of the Rings collector glasses you'd buy from McDonalds. How about instead of ruling based on Constitutionality, they just order them torn down because they're tacky?