Former Chief Justice Roy Moore speaks to parishioners in 2003 after his Ten Commandments monument was removed. (Getty)

Republican Roy Moore , a conservative activist and formerly a controversial jurist, announced Monday that he will again seek the Republican nomination for Alabama governor after falling well short in the 2006 primary.

Moore, who heads a religion-oriented conservative foundation, was ousted as chief justice of the state Supreme Court by a state judicial panel in 2003. This occurred after he defied a federal court ruling ordering the removal of a monument to the biblical Ten Commandments that he had installed in the court building. The dispute brought Moore national attention and a base of like-minded supporters, but lost his 2006 primary challenge to Republican Gov. Bob Riley by a ratio of 2-to-1.  

Moore — who this time will be running in the 2010 open-seat race to succeed the term-limited Riley — kicked off his campaign by unveiling a high-tech Web site that includes feeds to popular social networking sites such as Twitter.