The discussion you guys are holding right now is one of the things that makes me proud to be an American.

I kind of like John Hardly's suggestion, but I would make it twenty years, and I would make the law sunset itself in twenty years, just to get us past this period of political posturing. This doesn't mean that all sorts of monuments would go popping up in twenty years, it means that hopefully in a few years we will be more rational on the issue (of course, we'll be irrational about something else entirely by then).

Little known but somewhat idiotic legislation is a hallmark of late night talk shows. Passing overwrought laws as a result of political power squabbling is like going to the tattoo parlor after an all night drinking session. You wake up the next day with long-term bad news.

As Dickens observed: "The law is an ass" by which he meant that men and women who enact foolish, unenforceable, overly circumscribed, and poorly worded laws make asses out of all of us. My observation re: the commandments is that whether or not you are of the faiths that espouse them, they represent the elegant simplicity which can hold together a complex society.