So what, exactly, is bad about this particular ruling?Nothing, at least for people who don't like "judicial activism"; but that doesn't stop DI and others from being firm belivers in Crybabyism
Posted on 03/24/2006 4:03:39 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Jones and his family were under marshals' protection in December.
In the days after U.S. Judge John E. Jones III issued his decision in Dover's intelligent design case, outraged people sent threatening e-mails to his office.
Jones won't discuss details of the e-mails, or where they might have come from, but he said they concerned the U.S. Marshals Service.
So, in the week before Christmas, marshals kept watch over Jones and his family.
While no single e-mail may have reached the level of a direct threat, Jones said, the overall tone was so strident, marshals "simply determined the tenor was of sufficient concern that I ought to have protection."
"They decided to err on the side of caution," he said.
Jones, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, decided to speak publicly about the e-mails this week in light of recent reports about threats of violence against federal judges. He said statements made by "irresponsible commentators and political figures" have gotten so extreme that he fears tragedy.
"We're going to get a judge hurt," he said.
Jones pointed to a Sunday New York Times article about U.S. Supreme Court justices speaking of the recent threats.
The article concerned a speech in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed details of an Internet death threat targeting her and recently retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
A February 2005 posting on an Internet chat site addressing unnamed "commandos" said: "Here is your first patriotic assignment. ... If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."
In another speech this month, the Times said in the same article, Justice O'Connor addressed comments made last year in the Terri Schiavo case by Rep. Tom DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans.
Cornyn hinted after the judge's decision that such rulings could lead to violence.
"It builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence," Cornyn said. "Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
'It saddens you'
Jones is also concerned with a statement uttered recently by conservative pundit Ann Coulter regarding Justice John Paul Stevens' past votes upholding Roe v. Wade.
At a speech in Little Rock, Ark., this month, Coulter was quoted as saying, "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' crème brulee."
Jones said such remarks could fuel irrational acts by misguided individuals thinking they're being patriotic.
"There is an element here that is acting like it is open season on judges," Jones said.
"It saddens me that it's come to the point, where we're talking about what ought to be an honest disagreement, then you heighten it to something that is darker and much more disturbing."
Last year, Pinellas County, Fla., Circuit Judge George Greer and his family were under the protection of armed guards because of death threats over his ruling to allow Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube from his wife, who doctors determined was in a persistent vegetative state.
And 13 months ago in Illinois, U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow's husband and her mother were killed, both shot in the head. Authorities determined that their killer was a disgruntled, unemployed electrician who was a plaintiff in a medical malpractice suit that Lefkow dismissed.
This is the first time Jones, who was appointed to the federal bench in August 2002, has availed himself of marshal protection.
But he said most federal judges who have spent enough time on the bench will need security at least once in their careers.
"It doesn't anger you," he said. "It saddens you. The reason I chose to talk about it now is that attacks on judges have really gone beyond the pale."
An attempt to educate
In a 139-page opinion [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Jones ruled that intelligent design was not science but merely repackaged creationism, which courts had previously ruled should not be taught in science classes. Jones struck down Dover Area School Board's curriculum policy that required biology students to hear a statement that told them "intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Charles Darwin's view."
And he referred to the "breathtaking inanity" of the school board's decision. "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."
While most judges are reticent, Jones said he's opted to use his recent exposure - Wired News named him one of 2005's top 10 sexiest geeks - to educate the public about judicial independence.
In the wake of his decision, the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute dubbed him "an activist judge."
And conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly chided him for going against the wishes of fundamentalist Christians.
"Judge John E. Jones III could still be chairman of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board if millions of evangelical Christians had not pulled the lever for George W. Bush in 2000," Schlafly wrote less than two weeks after the decision. "Yet this federal judge, who owes his position entirely to those voters and the president who appointed him, stuck the knife in the backs of those who brought him to the dance in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District."
Jones, a Republican who received the judicial endorsement of Pennsylvania conservative Sen. Rick Santorum, said he anticipated such reaction, but "I didn't know what corner it would come from."
People who hurl such accusations don't understand the role of an independent judge, he said. A judge's responsibility is not to interpret the desires of a political base. Rather, it is to interpret the law based on existing legal precedent.
He said decisions can't be determined by political affiliations. They must be made without bias.
"Had I ignored existing precedent," he said, "that would have been the work of an activist judge."
Discovery Institute, an organization championing intelligent design, has released a book critical of U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III's ruling in Dover's intelligent design lawsuit.
The book, "Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision" dissects Jones' December decision, in which he ruled intelligent design was creationism posing as science.
Intelligent design is the idea that the complexity of life demands a creator.
The book, which is 15 pages shorter than Jones' 139-page opinion, is written by Casey Luskin, a Discovery attorney, and Discovery fellows David K. DeWolf, John G. West and Jonathan Witt.
The writers argue that Jones' decision was the work of "an activist judge" and that he ignored the science behind intelligent design.
The book is priced at $14.95 and is available at bookstores throughout the country and online at Amazon.com. It also can be ordered directly by calling 800-643-4102.
STATEMENT FROM THE COUNCIL OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON.
The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity. The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.
So what, exactly, is bad about this particular ruling?
So what, exactly, is bad about this particular ruling?Nothing, at least for people who don't like "judicial activism"; but that doesn't stop DI and others from being firm belivers in Crybabyism
Except, of course, that the Thomas More Law Center specifically asked him to rule on the merits of ID.
That was their strategy, that was why they went looking for a school board to enact policy guaranteed to provoke a court challenge.
Blame the Thomas More Law Center for the harshness of the ruling, not the judge.
What?!?!?!?!? You're suggesting that an ID-supporter presented partial information, without "the rest of the story"? I'm shocked, I tell you....shocked.
Thanks for that.
"Darwinist" is a word coined to have negative connotations. A Darwinist is presumably a supporter or practitioner of a doctrine called "Darwinism" (which is a companion word coined for the same purpose). It's a subtle thing, and I imagine it works only in English. It's similar to words like: Chauvanist, Leninist, Maoist, Marxist, Mesmerist, Onanist, Papist, and Satanist.
Interesting. I don't find the term to be in the least bit offensive, just hilariously inaccurate. I honestly don't know a whole lot about Darwin as a person; most of what we know about evolution now has little to do with his own personal research, anyway. It's as if antagonists think the modern theory of evolution hasn't moved forward since the man passed away and adhere to his ideas blindly without the benefit of any further research. Quite strange.
So the school board could have this put on a sticker and apply it to all of their biology books to "teach the controversy".
A novel and perceptive idea you have there...
I wonder if these are from the same people that gave Paul Mirecki a beating.
Thanks for the ping!
LOL!!
That's a great tagline!
Naming a movement or doctrine after the man who founded or led it often has pejorative connotations. The suffix "ite" has a similar usage: Luddite, Millerite, etc. Thus, some creationists also use "Darwinite."
I noticed that you didn't mention that the school board members who caused this lawsuit were voted out of office by the electorate.
Seems like the voters had their say.
And why would anyone need two Ph.Ds in similar fields? Is that supposed to be impressive? Nobody who is serious about a career in science would do that.
As in, compress a tennis ball to the space of its schwartzfield radius and it would become a black hole?
No. There is a certain minimum amount of mass required to distort space enough for light to be trapped.
If you squashed a tennis ball to the size of an atom, there still wouldn't be enough mass.
For example, our sun is too small to become a black hole.
He's probably a consultant.
So when it is said that scientists who support intelligent design don’t publish in peer reviewed journals, at least if the experience of Sternberg is any indication, the aim is to keep it that way.
Cordially,
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