WHILE DEMONSTRATIONS for and against Israel, the Palestinians, and Jean-Marie Le Pen were hogging the headlines last week, a quintessentially American flap was unfolding in Chester County, Pennsylvania. There, a crowd reportedly reaching 350 gathered in “boisterous” protest as a work crew affixed a cover to a plaque on the courthouse wall that bears–but of course–the Ten Commandments.

The workers were doing the bidding of U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, pending a decision about the ultimate disposition of the plaque by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Under the controlling precedent, a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case called Stone v. Graham, it seems likely that the Chester County plaque will have to go.