Posted on 10/28/2005 7:08:15 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
HARRISBURG — It was surely one of the most anticipated moments in the history of federal jurisprudence, the appearance, finally, of former Dover Area School Board member Bill Buckingham at the Dover Panda Trial. And it did not disappoint. It was, in the truest sense of the word, unbelievable.
Really.
Unbelievable.
At the onset of his stay on the witness stand, Buckingham raised his right hand and swore, or affirmed, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Then, for the record, he stated his name.
"William Buckingham."
By the time he left the stand, six hours later, I almost expected the judge to ask him for a photo ID to make sure he was indeed William Buckingham.
A telling moment came when he was asked about how the Dover Area High School had acquired 60 copies of the book "Of Pandas and People," a brilliantly dumb book that promotes the idea of intelligent design.
In a deposition given in January, he said he didn't know how the district got the books. He said he didn't know who donated the books. He said he didn't ask because he didn't want to know. He said he didn't know who donated the money to buy the books.
So, during his testimony Thursday, Steve Harvey, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, asked Buckingham about the books and how the money was raised to buy them. He specifically asked Buckingham whether he raised the money at his church.
He said he hadn't.
Then, he said he had.
Then, he said he hadn't.
He said he stood before the congregation one Sunday morning and said "there was a need" for money to buy "Of Pandas and People" and if anyone wanted to give, they could.
"But I didn't ask anyone for money," he said.
Harvey asked him whether he took up a collection at his church, Harmony Grove Community Church.
"Not as such," Buckingham said.
So the lawyer asked him whether he got in front of the congregation and asked for donations.
"I didn't," Buckingham said.
He paused.
"I'm sorry, I did say that, but there was more to it," he said.
Anyway, he collected the money — wherever it came from — and then he wrote a check for $850 to Donald Bonsell, father of then-school board President Alan Bonsell.
But previously, when asked by the lawyer about who donated the books, he said he didn't know.
"Mr. Buckingham, you lied to me at your deposition ... isn't that true?" Harvey asked.
"How so?" Buckingham responded.
It went on for a while before Judge John E. Jones III told Harvey to move on.
"You made your point very effectively," the judge said.
Earlier, Harvey had made an even more effective point.
Buckingham said he never read about his adventures on the school board in the newspapers and never talked to anyone about them. He also said he never mentioned creationism at school board meetings or in the press or anywhere, for that matter.
So at the time the board was talking about creationism, Buckingham granted an interview to a Fox 43 news reporter. I guess he forgot about that new-fangled invention, videotape.
On the tape, which you can see at http://www.ydr.com/mmedia/multi/528, Buckingham, wearing the same lapel pin he wore in court Thursday, said he wanted to balance evolution in the classroom with something else, "such as creationism."
Oops.
He said that the reporter "ambushed" him and that he was "like a deer in the headlights of a car" and that the newspapers were all reporting that he and the board were talking about creationism and that he thought to himself, "Don't say creationism."
Double oops.
It was like he had a Homer Simpson moment. He was thinking "Don't say creationism. Don't say creationism. Don't say creationism." And then he opens his yap and says "creationism."
D'oh!
And to compound the prevarication, he said he was thinking about something the newspapers reported — something he didn't read or talk to anybody about.
It went on like that all day. He'd say he voted for buying a new biology book. Then, he said he voted against it. He said he thought intelligent design was a scientific theory. But he said he didn't know what intelligent design was. He said he wasn't the force behind the board adopting intelligent design and then, confronted with what he said, under oath, previously, he'd say maybe he was.
He said a lot of things, and then he'd say a lot of things that weren't exactly what he had said to begin with.
And then, he attributed his spotty, selective and just plain weird memory to his OxyContin addiction.
Unbelievable.
This must be some definition of 'conservative' I'm not familiar with.
Which of you guys has the ping list? This is a must-read column!
Seems ironic to have a really really really stupid person promoting intelligent design.
You work with what you have.
This simply substantiates many of my previous rants about how creationists/IDer's tend to lie, I mean misspeak, about creationsism, ID and science in general. Based on testimony and evidence in this trial, ID is an attempt to inject religion into science classes and the attempts to cover it up are miserable failures.
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How sad! Poor guy. Of course, he should never have been elected to the school board, but that's how school board elections go. We rarely know much about the candidates.
Perhaps this will change in Dover at the upcoming election. Perhaps the community will do better.
Perhaps this gentleman will learn his own limitations, as well.
Sick, really sick.
And intelligent people are forced to deal with a clown like this.
Even Vill Clinton couldn't have wiggled his way out of this one.
Maybe Rand was right and we should all go on strike.
I think the only one who's going to come out of this looking better than when it all started may be Mike Argento. Wouldn't surprise me if he parlayed this exposure into a much bigger gig than the York Daily Record, and deservedly so.
Even Vill could be Evil, but we all know it's just plain Bill.
Nice post. :-) WOWOWOWOW!
Yes. And, yet, we will see people come onto this thread and defend this liar and what he's lying about. We will have people coming here and pasting nonsense from some of the creationist sites into their messages.
It is a crying shame that the creationist side of this issue feels that it is OK to say untrue things in their attempt to push a scientific theory out of the schools. A shame.
It's the pills talking, apparently. At least in the case of this clown, anyhow.
However, anyone who's been on a crevo thread or two would know to expect something like this had to be going on there.
It would seem to me if you're going to make a test case of something, you'd choose your venue very carefully.
Maybe that's why DI pulled out. Could it be even they were appalled?
Thanks for the ping!
I would think that anyone who lies intentionally about these issues cannot possibly really believe in Christianity. If they did, they would have to speak truthfully. I mean, that's in the basic 10 rules.
It's something for good Christians to think about. If someone is telling you something that you know not to be true, or if it is demonstrated that the person is deliberately lying, then it might be worthwhile questioning which side they're on.
I have no problem with those who take Genesis as the literal truth. That's a matter of religious faith. I have a problem when people lie about things to try to get their religious beliefs taught as science in the public schools.
That particular phraseology has proven...touchy, in the past. I'm tolerably certain it contributed to the downfall of jlogajan, who rather regularly deployed it ;)
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