Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, finds a little bit of the miraculous in Justice Antonin Scalia’s common-sensical declaration that the Ten Commandments do, in fact, contain a religious message. Scalia, who’s played fast and loose with historical fact before, disputed the standard Ten Commandments display defense — that such a display is secular and/or purely historical — when it was offered by a lawyer for the state of Texas. But Scalia, “Constitutional originalist” that he is, did one better than the Texas lawyer, arguing that the religious content of the Commandments was itself “‘a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God.'” Cohen takes Scalia up on this point — citing the soggy old Declaration and its wacky claim that governmental authority comes from “the consent of the governed” –but beyond that, he gives the judge the benefit of the doubt regarding his good intentions. He’d do better to remember Scalia’s stated constitutional standard: not some old text, but rather tradition, historical practice and long-accepted custom.