Use the Schwartz!
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.
He's not merely advertising. He's distributing promotional samples! :-)
It would be an interesting test to test the scientific literacy of the more egregious posters to see if they are this ignorant on all scientific matters, or whether it is just "blind man's bluff" when it comes to evolution...
Cheers!
Many teenage boys subscribe to onanism whilst they are mesmerized by Victoria's Secret catalogues.
...then they graduate to the Internet.
Cheers!
They are perjorative for those who prefer flavorful beer.
Cheers!
Use the Schwartz!
Oh, and Korea. You conspicuously left out Korea.
Mea culpa. Don't want them to feel bad.
While we're at it: France, Italy, Spain, Uruguay, Nigeria, New Zealand...
Did you have a point?
"Did you have a point?"
His point is since one scientist in Korea did some fraudulent work, all science is bunk and only mathematicians know anything about anything.
That would be his point in most of his posts here actually.
Exactly why do you feel this judge is a liberal? If someone calls ID pseudo-science (which it is) are they a liberal?
Assuming he was silly enough to have that in mind:
Jimmy Swaggert
Jim Bakker
Different definition of fit. Less chance of a cytokine cascade = more fit in this case.
Too often cr/ids equate fit with "big and strong," don't want to appear to help them out.
'Twas exactly my point. The first to drop from the 1918 flu (and presumably from H5N1) will be those with the most robust immune system--which in most other cases DOES have survival value...
Cheers!
There is a difference between "recognizing somehting and seeing it as your role to protect others from it" and "recognizing something and adapting a laissez faire attitude", or even "recognizing something as inevitable and jumping on board"
Given the way most libs talk (multimillionaire Veep candidate Jonathan Edwards and his lover running mate Jacques Francois Kerry come to mind), makes them seem like they adopt the first. But their actions definitely lean toward the other options, so your mileage may vary.
I agree that the other poster is wrong, but you and I have different takes on precisely what the error is. It's not worth ruffling any feathers over it...
Cheers!
Well every great technological advance and acquisition of every bit of scientific knowledge about our past and present was made solely through the application of pure, unapplied mathematics, wasn't it??
QOT material! It never ceases to amaze me how so-called "conservatives" become nutcases when their particular ox gets gored.
Another "Religion of Peace" strikes again....
####And, ironically enough, Judge Jones.####
Not surprising, since the media storyline that President Bush is packing the court with ideologues, and that independent (i.e., leftist) judges thus feel intimidated, is a lie. I give President Bush credit for appointing a lot of very fine judges, but he isn't perfect. Judge Jones & Harriet Miers are proof of that.
####Actually, this story originated with the US Marshal's service becoming concerned about the content of certain messages directed to Judge Jones. Somehow, I doubt those messages consisted of mere intellectual disagreement.####
I didn't deny that the judge likely got some nasty e-mails, and I agree that such e-mails are inappropriate and the sender deserves to be prosecuted if the content oversteps the bounds of the law. However, the story did not originate with the U.S. Marshals' Service. It was Judge Jones who took this story to the press, and he did so after seeing the favorable press reaction to O'Connor & Ginzburg when they did it. That confirms prior suspicions that he was playing to the media with his initial ruling.
Think about how hateful and vicious the left is toward President Bush and other conservatives. And I'm talking about their PUBLIC statements. Can you even imagine the type of hate and vitriol they must spill in private and anonymous e-mails? Yet, we never hear of Justice Scalia getting nasty or threatening e-mails. Is it because he never gets any? Or is it because he doesn't play the media with them? Not to mention that even if he did, the media wouldn't give a damn.
Ultimately, this whole matter isn't all that bad for conservatives. With homeschooling and private schooling on the rise, more and more kids are escaping the PC thought controlled public schools. The internet allows kids to find out about alternatives to evolution. Every time the ACLU runs to court to ban anyone from even questioning evolutionary theory, it plants more doubts in people's minds about the theory's strength. That's why polls show so few people believe in naturalistic evolution, even after decades of being practically ordered to believe it by every left-wing outlet imaginable.
And Judge Jones has outed himself as another Souter before anyone made the tragic mistake of elevating him to the Supreme Court.
Actually, my contention is that the system encourages fraud and unsupportable, overblown and half-assed work. Korean stem-cell research is just one of a plethora of symptoms of a larger disease.
I don't understand your point.
Although I think you were trying to set up some sort of strawman. Would you like help with it? I know biologists aren't too bright.
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