Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.
For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.
During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.
When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.
“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”
Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.
It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”
Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.
In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop, which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.
Would that mean that Vatican City is some sort of linguistic Galapagos?
That phrase was in a private letter from ONE of the numerous authors of the Constitution, is not part of the Constitution, and cannot be used to define the First Amendment EXCEPT BY ACTIVIST JUDGES.
The phrase Wall of Separation is NOT from any author of the Constitution. Thomas jefferson was not an author of the Constitution. He was not even in the United States when the Constitution was written. He was serving as the US Ambassador to France. The phrase separation is from a Letter written in 1802 by Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association when he was President of the United States. This is the text of the letter for anyone who is interested. As you read it ask yourself if the meaning of a Wall of Separation as used in this letter is the same as it is used today:
Mr. President
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful & zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more & more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802.
How can science ever say something is impossible?
But they're still languages.
All it takes is one example of speciation to show speciation occurs. All it takes is one transitional form to show transitional forms exist and one organism from one higher taxon can evolve enough to occupy another higher taxon.
Although this isn't a direct answer to your question it is an answer for your implied assertion that any question of source or lack of information automatically negates any and all related conclusions.
I didn't imply it negated anything, only that it would be open to interpretation, as is all science.
Why?
"We can choose to accept that ZERO is eternal or that SOMETHING is eternal.
Am I correct in assuming you are using 'zero' to denote the nothingness before the BB? If so, how does 'eternal' fit in to it?
There is no "before" the Big Bang since time itself started with the Big Bang.
With all due respect to professor Fairman, I read the Congressional debates surrounding the ratification of the 14th Amendment, I mean the actual primary source documents, for a research paper I wrote at Columbia. The people who actually wrote the Amendment, including John Bingham, were crystal clear that they intended the Amendment to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. They made it abundantly clear the Bill of Rights were the privilidges and imunities referred to in the first clause.
Having read the actual primary source documents, I also became appauled at the degree to which people like Fairman and Raoul Berger mine quotes and rip them out of context to argue against incorporation. That the framers intended the Amendment to incorporate the bill of rights is so obvious from the text, that I can only conclude Berger and Fairmen are either deliberately duplicitous or blinded by their ideology.
When it achieves effective genetic isolation from the *original* parent species.
When did proto-Indo-European become English? Or German? Or Spanish?
and why is any such transitional form not a separate species?
They can be. Old English is transitional between proto-Indo-European and modern English, but it's also a separate language in its own right.
And none of ths even addresses the problem evolution has explaining how one classification of life can be transformed into another classification.
What "problem" would that be? Enough accumulated change eventually reaches the point where people decide to give it a new classification. But such classifications are human constructs, not nature's.
An example would be how did a cold-blooded animal get transformed into a warm-blodded animal?
Why is this a "problem"? Be specific. Endothermy is not a big leap from ectothermy. It's a matter of degree, not kind. But don't just take my word for it:
"Many elements of mammalian and avian thermoregulatory mechanisms are present in reptiles, and the changes involved in the transition to endothermy are more quantitative than qualitative."Even ectotherms have regulatory systems to handle excess heat or cold, and generate internal warmth from their body's metabolism. The transition to endothermy only involves cranking up the internal metabolism, and fine-tuning the temperature-regulation mechanisms to maintain a more steady internal temperature.
-- The evolution of endothermy and its diversity in mammals and birds, Grigg GC, Beard LA, Augee ML, Physiol Biochem Zool. 2004 Nov-Dec;77(6):982-97"Avian and mammalian endothermy results from elevated rates of resting, or routine, metabolism and enables these animals to maintain high and stable body temperatures in the face of variable ambient temperatures."
-- The evolution of endothermy in terrestrial vertebrates: Who? When? Why?, Hillenius WJ, Ruben JA, Physiol Biochem Zool. 2004 Nov-Dec;77(6):959-81.
There are animals even today that serve as a good example of how things would look partway through the transition from classic ectothermy to modern endothermy. They have sort of a "half-assed endothermy", and they function just fine. Google for "homeothermic", especiall on pubmed.com, to come up to speed on the subject. Echidnas are just one example.
ROFL!
Yes, but what is the cause of such behavior?
1. lack of information, or confusion due to misinformation,Can you suggest any others?
2. bewilderment, possible feeble-mindedness,
3. cognitive blockages implanted during child abuse,
4. insanity, derangement,
5. dishonesty,
6. demon possession
Apparently connectthedots is having a little problem connecting the dots!
That's because the court blatently disregarded the original intent of Bingham and the rest of the authors of the Amendment right from the beginning, starting with the slaughterhouse cases. The court in the 1920's was only undoing the bad jurisprudence of earlier courts.
But, if the intent of the 14th Amendment was to so fundamentally alter the American system of federalism, it seems kind of cryptic to do so with the language..."no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law"...no?
Agreed. That's because they were intending to incorporate the BofR with the "privilidges and immunities" clause. Unfortunately, the Slaughterhouse Cases blatently disregarded the framers' intended meaning of this clause. Later courts wanted to restore incorporation, but didn't want to overtly overturn slaughterhouse, so they invented the substantive due process doctrine. This was kind of silly, I admit. They should have simply overturned slaughterhouse, but at the end of the day, the effect was the same.
In the case of the Estalishment Clause, there is almost irrefutable proof that the 14th Amendment did not make it applicable to the states...specifically, the Blaine Amendment of 1875
It's very refutable. A lot happens in 7 years. The composition of Congress was vastly different when the Blaine Amendment was being voted on than it was when the 14th Amendment was being voted on. Therefore, what Congress rejected in 1875 has no bearing on what it passed in 1868.
Furthermore, Blaine's motivation for pushing his Amendment was the fact that SCOTUS had already set a precident about the meaning of the privilidges and immunities clause that was at variance with Blain, Bingham, and other framers had clearly intended back in 1868. We know that because they explicitly said so. Therefore, the Blaine Amendment is actually evidence in favor of incorporation, not evidence against it.
Professor Charles Fairman wrote a Stanford Law Review...
Professor Fairman was full of it, and if you go and actually look up his quotations of Bingham and others, you will see it for yourself.
After experiencing many crevo threads on FR, I think I know just what he is referring to.
That's been a while, I'm gussing.
If the ACLU has thier way, those will not be allowed either. Without the research at hand, I would bet they are already gone in some districts. You aren't naive enough to belive the ACLU did this all in the name of higher learning.
Again I ask (though not of you specifically) , in what year? You CAN'T say the word Jesus in school, at least in Connecticut, in 2006.
I graduated high school in 1994.
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