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.
Bottom quartile in reading comprehension, right?
I wouldn't presume to know your academic record; all could see were your assumptions.
The news story talks of "threats" but that they did not rise to the level of a "direct threat." So what is a "threat." Do you feel "threatened" by this?
Judges and other government officials have this "it doesn't stink when I use the toilet" mentality, but the media has this desire to promote an agenda of creating "bogey men" who are "threatening" judges. The pro-evolution people let their feelings get in the way of the facts that this is a trumped up hit piece on people who criticize judges. Real threats result in real arrests. Any suspects arrested here. NO...NO...NO.
Yep! No one should ever threaten a judge, but it's obvious that there's a concerted effort to stifle public criticism of liberal judges and rulings.
I don't doubt for a minute that Scalia, Thomas, and other constitutionalist judges get threats. They surely do, and likely more of them than any liberal judge has to put up with. But they don't go public with them, and they wouldn't get any media sympathy if they did.
The media want to create the impression that the "independence" of the judiciary is being threatened by the "far right". It fits into their storyline that President Bush is "packing the court" with "ideologues" such as Roberts & Alito. And those judges who remain "independent" (i.e., render liberal rulings) are feeling "intimidated".
That's where this story originated. And media darling judges know they can get a favorable, sympathetic story by going public with their hostile e-mails. The story will then make the rounds of the liberal blogs and be "planted" into conservative blogs by the usual route.
No one should EVER threaten a judge or even hint of violence. If anyone has done that, then they should be prosecuted. I'm sure threats happen on both sides. But there is clearly an effort by the press to create a "radical right is trying to intimidate judges" storyline, designed to shut down any public opposition to liberal rulings.
This would have been a very successful media campaign a decade ago, but as the dinosaur media decline it may not have the success now that it once would have.
But according to Behe, ID *can* teach that the designer might be dead.
Politics should benefit people who support politicians, right. Here in PA the Pennsylvania State Education Association supports the candidates and they vote in a bigger pension for school employees.
Phyllis figures that if Christians vote in politicians, they should deliver with good judicial appointments and the judges then should make good decisions. Isn't that how politics works?
Perhaps you confused me with another poster. I asked if you believed that the reaction to Craig Kilborn's "Snipers Wanted" gag was similarly overblown.
You mean precedents like "Dred Scott" and "Plessy vs. Ferguson." I wouldn't rule in favor of slavery and segregation, but they were once your sacred "precedents."
There are liberal judges ruling against the Pledge of Allegiance and for Gitmo terror suspects, so lets get some conservative judges who will stir up dust and in the style of Gen. George S. Patton: "Grab those precedents by the nose and kick em' in the a**."
And that includes the 1987 decision of the Supreme Court that was Jones' "precedent"
in this case.
Not up on Craig Kilborn, but just the facts here. Liberals trying to imagine enemies and shut people up brownshirt style. This is the United States of America 2006, not Germany 1936. Go troll somewhere else. Freedom reigns here and we aren't threatening anyone, just speaking the truth and if it hurts, there's always Cuba and North Korea to go to. They don't allow "threats" like free speech there.
Your posts are most enlightening. Therefore, in compliance with your wishes, they will henceforth be ignored.
Oh, didn't know RWP was following it; maybe we can get some info over here.
I checked the photos and decided it was real also, but I haven't heard any crids agree.
Seems to have happened here.
But it almost sounds as though Ms. Schlafly would have preferred a leftist judge to feel the defendants were losing self-esteem because science doesn't agree with them, and rule that the students' feelings rule.
The first duty of any public official in this country is to support the Constitution. That's where the Dover school board failed.
God bless Judge Jones! By driving a stake through the heart of ID, he saved us from having to litigate this mess over and over again, which would only have fueled the MSM in their self-appointed task of declaring that conservatives are idiots.
Ok, you are on record as saying that method=methodology.
Does zoo also = zoology?
FYI, methodology is a study of methods.
So it seems you are equating method with methodology _and_ with dogma.
Strange.
Now please define "good student."
Are you suggesting that evolutionary biologists should change the outcome of their research so that it's more pleasing to the masses? Trofim Lysenko would be proud.
By the way, I've never met a practicing "Darwinist". Do you know any?
Tell that to Richard Sternberg (2 PhD's in theoretical biology and molecular evolution). He wasn't driven out of the Smithsonian on a rail for nothing.
...Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions ... . During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.
James McVay, legal adviser, The Office of Special Counsel, Findings, as quoted in National Review (August 16, 2005)
Cordially,
I'm confused. Did Sternberg publish peer reviewed articles on ID?
Soon ...
100
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