Published: December 01, 2007 07:13 pm         

Commandments displays thrive

While Swanton resident Jeff Davis is still pushing the Allegany County commissioners to move the Ten Commandments from outside the county courthouse, a growing number of communities in Georgia are displaying the commandments in their government buildings.

The most recent are Barrow County and Dougherty County. Within the last 10 days, the two counties have decided to install the Ten Commandments as part of a historic document display.

About 10 Georgia local governments have bought and installed Foundations of American Law and Government Collections, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

State lawmakers approved a law last year allowing such displays after a controversy over the posting of the commandments at the Barrow County Courthouse. The law was a result of a federal judge’s previous order to take down the commandments at the insistence of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 2005, the Allegany County commissioners moved the commandments to behind the Gilchrist Gallery next to the courthouse, but after public protests, the commandments were taken back to the front lawn of the courthouse. At a recent commissioners meeting, Davis again requested that the commandments be moved or that his organization be allowed to place a statue honoring the U.S. Constitution next to the commandments monument....

We received word through Don Mason, former Allegany County state’s attorney, that Al Darby, a retired Cumberland News reporter, has died at age 86.

Darby moved to his native Martinsburg, W.Va., after his retirement in the mid-1980s. He worked for The News, for 37 years and was the newspaper’s court reporter. He and Mason were both graduates of Washington and Lee University....

Garrett County residents who are highly incensed over paying a “flush tax” to clean up the Chesapeake Bay — even though they do not contribute to the bay’s runoff pollution — are probably clamoring to buy a new music CD that includes the song: The Maryland Flush Tax Blues.

The CD features Rusty Halo, also known as Rodney Durst, and its entitled Heard It on Talk Radio....

And, on the topic of talk radio, Tom Brokaw recently had some harsh things to say about the genre and, in particular, Rush Limbaugh.

Brokaw said talk radio is full of “a lot of wannabees.” As for Limbaugh, Brokaw said Rush “doesn’t interview people ... he mocks people. He doesn’t want to hear another point of view except his (own).” ....

Cumberland received some favorable publicity last week when the Uniontown (Pa.) Herald-Standard published a three-day, four-part series about a recent trip made to the Queen City by a group of Connellsville residents and officials.

The group wanted to learn how “Cumberland transformed itself from a dying former industrial center to a booming city friendly to tourists.”....

Scripps Howard News Service reports one of the little-known perks of Capitol Hill will take another step closer to oblivion Jan. 1. That’s when the Democrats have decreed that cigarettes and cigars will no longer be sold in shops in the Senate office buildings or the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol.

For years, smokes could be had at a substantial discount from the prices of nearby stores.

On the House side, though, cigarettes are still on sale and lawmakers can smoke in their offices, although new rules bar everyone else from smoking with 25 feet of any House office building....

Seen on the Internet — Mostly useless facts:

• More bullets were fired in “Starship Troopers” than any other movie ever made.

• Most toilets flush in E flat.

• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

• Since 1978, 37 people have died by vending machines falling on them. While trying to shake merchandise out of the machines, 113 people have been injured.

• Mike Nesmith”s (the guitarist of The Monkeys) mother invented White-Out.

• The only real person to ever appear on a PEZ dispenser was Betsy Ross.

Jan Alderton is managing editor of the Cumberland Times-News. His email address is jpalderton@times-news.com.