made brand new every morning, and the Counties are simply asking us to ignore perfectly probative evidence; they want an absentminded objective observer, not one presumed to be familiar with the history of the government's actions and competent to learn what history has to show." The Court, reviewing the lower court's ruling de novo, upheld the lower courts' rulings, noting that a pastor was present to testify to the certainty of the existence of God at the dedication of one of the displays, the modified displays contained "theistic and Christian references," and there was a "religious purpose" in the final modification. Concurring opinion Justice O'Connor expressed her own views of the controversy in a concurring opinion: It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment . . .. Nor can we accept the theory that Americans who do not accept the Commandments' validity are outside the First Amendment's protections. There is no list of approved and disapproved beliefs appended to the First Amendment–and the Amendment's broad terms ("free exercise," "establishment," "religion") do not admit of such a cramped reading. It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now. They may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home. They surely could not have predicted new religions, some of them born in this country. But they did know that line-drawing between religions is an enterprise that, once begun, has no logical stopping point. They worried that "the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects." Memorial 186. The Religion Clauses, as a result, protect adherents of all religions, as well as those who believe in no religion at all. Dissenting opinion Justice Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he argued that public acknowledgement of the God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is permissible under the First Amendment: Besides appealing to the demonstrably false principle that the government cannot favor religion over irreligion, today's opinion suggests that the posting of the Ten Commandments violates the principle that the government cannot favor one religion over another . .