President Bush uses eminent domain to save Mount Soledad Cross

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 14 — President Bush on Monday signed a law transferring a 29-foot-tall Latin cross high on a hill in San Diego to the federal government, stepping into a long-running dispute over the separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush, in the latest unusual action designed to save the Mount Soledad cross, in the La Jolla district, sided firmly with cross supporters who acknowledge that it is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity but contend that it forms part of a secular war memorial.
An atheist, Philip K. Paulson, has fought the cross, built in 1954, for 17 years in federal and state courts. Mr. Paulson says the memorial was built only after he protested the cross and filed suit, and is a ruse to cover its intent to promote Christianity.
The legislation that Mr. Bush signed uses eminent domain to transfer the memorial land, which includes the cross and six concentric walls holding nearly 2,000 plaques honoring war veterans, from city ownership to the federal government. The private group that built the cross, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, will continue to maintain it.