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.
I've long suspected that some of the more outrageous creationists are deliberately harming conservatism. When someone relentlessly, after repeated corrections have been posted to him:
* makes the same misstatements of fact,we must ask ourselves -- is that person merely lost in a sea of ideas he cannot grasp; or is he perhaps the innocent victim of mental abuse as a child; or is he a left-wing operative who comes here to discredit conservatism and to generate discord among us? In other words, is he defective, or deceptive?
* repeats errors that have been frequently debunked,
* misuses words like "theory" and "faith,"
* misquotes published or posted material,
* feigns bewilderment to misconstrue simple statements and analogies,
* claims that science supporters are leftists, gays, frauds, etc.,
* behaves as if he were a spiritual warrior in a cosmic battle against science,
* alleges a causal connection between evolution theory and -- take your pick -- communism, socialism, nazism, fascism, racism, sexism, genocide, atheism, pedophilia, illegitimacy rates, drug addiction, school violence, homosexuality, etc., or
* praises the blatantly abusive or moronic posts of others,
Threats of any kind are wrong and totally uncalled for. True threats of violence should be prosecuted.
My guess is that every judge receives quite a bit of harsh criticism and occasional outright threats. Given the unbelievable levels of hate from the left that President Bush has to put up with, don't you suppose that conservative judges get their fair share of hate mail?
But they don't whine in public about it. They turn it over to law enforcement authorities if it's serious enough to warrant it.
What's going on now is a liberal media "meme" to create an impression that judges are under some kind of special assault from the "radical right". As the media sees the judiciary slipping from the left's grasp, this will only increase, and media-savvy judges will play to it.
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."
I used to think that Schlafly was more savvy than this.
Did all those Evangelicals vote for W. because they wanted it taught that the hypothetical designer may be dead, as Behe testified?
"Had I ignored existing precedent," he said, "that would have been the work of an activist judge."
Exactly, as I have been saying ever since the decision in Kiztmiller. What Judge Jones did in this case is the very antithesis of "judicial activism."
In the Un-Discovery Institute's book that purports to refute the judge's decision, I wonder how many pages are devoted to the lies made under oath by some of the defendants in the case, or how much time they spend discussing the voluminous evidence presented at trial which proved that the "ID" text book "Of Pandas and People" is nothing but an old Creationist text in which the replaced the words for "Creationism" with the words "Intelligent Design" without so much as even changing definitions.
"Ah and we were being nice. Usually these words are typical form intended to intimidate one into silence, could we say threatening???"
Could we say *Drama Queen*? :)
"Could we say *Drama Queen*? :)"
LOL sure if it makes you FEEEEEEEL better.
"* makes the same misstatements of fact,
* repeats errors that have been frequently debunked,
* misuses words like "theory" and "faith,"
* misquotes published or posted material,
* feigns bewilderment to misconstrue simple statements and analogies,
* claims that science supporters are leftists, gays, frauds, etc.,"
These people are at a loss for what to say. Since they know little but feel they have to contribute they keep saying the same thing over and over. Other than being a drag on progress, they are relatively harmless.
"* behaves as if he were a spiritual warrior in a cosmic battle against science,
* alleges a causal connection between evolution theory and -- take your pick -- communism, socialism, nazism, fascism, racism, sexism, genocide, atheism, pedophilia, illegitimacy rates, drug addiction, school violence, homosexuality, etc., or"
These two categories are the dangerous ones. They probably know enough to know they have no thing of substance to contribute, so they attack what is probably one of the least political pursuits in existence, seeing science as physically helpless and an easy target. The results as opposed to the practictioners won't go away and the rhetoric can turn violent. Their jihad is dangerous to all thinking people.
"* praises the blatantly abusive or moronic posts of others,"
These could very well be DU trolls.
"we must ask ourselves -- is that person merely lost in a sea of ideas he cannot grasp; or is he perhaps the innocent victim of mental abuse as a child; or is he a left-wing operative who comes here to discredit conservatism and to generate discord among us? In other words, is he "
"defective, or deceptive?"
One of the problems with modern medicine is that natural selection can no longer operate as it would unfettered. Dying early from a genetic malady is Natural Selection. We don't let that happen. The weak are protected. I don't think the defective are a major problem - they can be a drag on facilities and materials, though.
Now the deceptive, purposely, knowingly deceptive for political purposes and the gaining of power - those people are very dangerous. And I agree with you that there are some of those here.
Salting FR with quotes to be mined later.
But Sandra O'Connor says that harsh language contributes to a climate of violence and dictatorship. She says that some Republican lawmakers are contributing to this "climate" by their denouncements of certain decisions. (Never mind her inane, "...At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.")
They are offended when people get too uppity and start usurping that which is strictly reserved only to the province of certain judges, you know, things like using harsh language and defining what is and isn't science and all sorts of what not.
Cordially,
Why didn't they?
BEHOLD: the "Science" behind "Intelligent Design":
Behe Cross-X Day 12[emphasis added]
source: http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12AM.pdfp22 line 25 Q. [plaintiffs' attorney] And in fact there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred, is that correct?
A. [Prof. Behe; defendants' expert witness] That is correct, yes.
There you are, folks. One of the leading academic advocates for "Intelligent Design" took the stand as a defense expert witness and under oath told the court that Intelligent Design advocates have not produced a SINGLE peer reviewed article with supporting scientific evidence describing how Intelligent Design of ANY biological system ever took place.
NOT ONE.
EVER.
Dover was ID's Waterloo.
Some people are just too serious when it comes to Ann Coulter, who's in the satire business. Stuck up serious, are you. And Phyllis Schlafly doesn't hate people, but she does hate bad court decisions. So no violent terrorists here, sorry. Call Jihad9-1101.
" Glad to provide you therapy."
It's not therapy. It's entertainment. :)
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