Further Thoughts on West's Attack on Judge Jones

West's argument here is against the concept of judicial review itself. He prefers absolute, unlimited democracy which "giv[es] everyone a stake in the discussion."

West's argument here is against the concept of judicial review itself. He prefers absolute, unlimited democracy which "giv[es] everyone a stake in the discussion."

ha! funny we both picked the exact same quote to focus on.

cheers

Thanks Tim, your legal expertise is extremely helpful. You argue much more forcefully that which I, as a novice feels is wrong with West's claims. I am merely arguing from a personal understanding of the legal issues. Even then I found West's comments to be poorly argued, and showed a certain level of unfamiliarity with what the judge actually said and how he was following 3rd circuit common practices.
Anyone with access to the Judge's ruling could read and understand what he said.

I guess activist now refers to courts follow standard judicial practices.

That Judge Jones' decision to address whether ID is science may very well have been inspired by the Discovery Institute's Amicus brief may come as a cold shower to the Discovery Institute. Ironically, it may very well have been the Amicus brief filed by the Discovery Institute which led the Judge to provide a full analysis why Intelligent Design fails being science. Judge Jones has presented a very thorough analysis of the situation and covered all the bases.

All this could have been easily avoided if the defendants could have shown that ID had some (non trivial) scientific value. As Judge Jones so clearly showed, it has few redeeming qualities in this area. And that's why the DI is scared as it may affect how school boards around the country are going to approach these issues.
I have argued elsewhere that the cost of misleading people to believe that there is positive scientific evidence for design is not limited to just theology but also to real life situations where people, based on flawed information, insist on implementing something which cannot pass legal muster.

Ohio's "Critical Analysis of Evolution" model lesson plan was created to implement a benchmark in the Ohio state science standards which requires students to be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards also clearly state that they do not endorse teaching intelligent design.

Flint

West isn't arguing against judicial review, he's protesting a decision he sees as denying his religious convictions

Well, he's doing both but surely he's most offended by the latter (though he doesn't come right out and say it like an honest person might).

I addressed this point here

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/12/activist_judge.html#comment-64599

and the same question comes to mind: will these NeoChristians eventually merge their religion completely with politics? If the intend to do this, then surely the time is now when the ability of our nation's journalists to debunk and defame charlatans and habitual liars is at a historical low.

For the hardcore NeoChristian, there is but one "True Christian" position for any policy issue and, most disturbingly, that position tends to gravitate towards the platform of the Texas Republican Party.

At the end of the day, this is just wholesale abuse of the idea of "religious freedom." Where that phrase once meant that you won't be forced to practice a religion imposed on you from elsewhere, it now means that anytime anyone disagrees with a NeoChristian about anything, it's an "attack" on their "religious belief."

And that's a lie. It's the Big Lie. It's the kind of lie that immunizes the liar in our society from serious examination because of our current society's norms when it comes to allegedly Christian religious beliefs.

In my opinion, this situation has to change or this country is going to rapidly swirl down the toilet.

In theory, this blog could help to facilitate that change but it won't be a comfortable ride.

Ohio's "Critical Analysis of Evolution" model lesson plan was created to implement a benchmark in the Ohio state science standards which requires students to be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards also clearly state that they do not endorse teaching intelligent design.

Of course West will lash out. He's angry and upset, and probably frequently breaks out in tears these days.

Several DI guys went to Harvard, and they successfully founded a multi-million dollar institute. You just know at some point these guys felt on top of the world, unstoppable. The future was theirs. But this week an impartial judge called their activities pathetic, their hidden agenda obvious to even a child. The PR train has come to a halt. Everyone can see that their life's work is a failure. Even some conservative politicians like Santorum now cross the street to avoid eye contact. In their Seattle building they sit, filled with shame and lonliness and no idea how to recover. It is hard for others to understand how ashamed they are of themselves, how completely they have been humiliated in public. Their 'darwinist' opponents have built careers and reputations which earn respect and invitations to international conferences, while they have nothing to show for their lives but some semi-literate fans and the occasional royalty check. They are middle-aged failures, and people talk behind their backs, people know they are liars. They write opinion pieces about how healthy they are, how ineffective Judge Jones's ruling is, but no one believes them, not even themselves. When they walk through the halls and see colleagues they don't see a winning team anymore, they see losers looking at their shoes as they pass, and they wonder if they should just get in their car and drive away from this building, which now reeks of dishonor and inadequacy.

Judge Jones, according to West, "wanted to decide the larger public controversy for all future legislators, school boards, and judges. That is judicial activism with a vengeance.

Fom the text: "West goes on to complain that Jones "use[d] judicial power to decide [a] divisive cultural controvers[y]." "

I thought this was a scientific controversy.

At that time, some members of the board and supporters of ID insisted there is nothing in the lesson about intelligent design. But documents released by the Ohio Department of Education reveal that staff scientists and outside reviewers alike regarded the lesson as embodying intelligent-design creationism without labeling it as such. Even pro-creationist reviewers of the lesson thought it contained ID. One urged the department to add yet more information about intelligent design. During the lesson plan production process, state Department of Education staffers went so far as to comment that one aspect of the lesson was a lie. Other notes made clear that material presented was wrong, off-topic and an oversimplification. Outside reviewers of the lesson agreed. One noted the lesson linked to websites including ones that were ID thinly veiled and obviously ID, and a slick ID site.

Lenny Flank, a legislative quibble:

Santorum's amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act was not introduced as a Sense of the Senate resolution. He wanted it to be part of the law. The chief sponsor of the NCLB, however, was so unhappy with the amendment that he first asked Santorum to not offer it, and when Santorum claimed to have the votes to pass it (probably true), the bill's sponsor said he'd take down the entire bill. Sen. Ted Kennedy was the chief sponsor, and he understood the Trojan Horse Santorum was trying to push through the gates.

Other senators listened to Kennedy, and Santorum was convinced to offer the amendment, changed into a sense of the Senate resolution, with a colloquy scripted between him and Kennedy. Sense of the Senate resolutions are absolutely non-binding, and that effectively removed it from the NCLB bill -- as such a resolution, it was not even printed up in the bill passed by the Senate. No one on the House side offered any corroborating amendment. The conference report on the bill notes that the resolution existed on the Senate side.

My recollection of the Ohio affairs is that at one point Discovery Institute operatives testified to the state board of education that NCLB requires intelligent design in biology. The ever-prepared Kenneth Miller protested, however, and was able to bring up on his laptop, for projection to the Ohio board, the text of the NCLB from the Library of Congress' Thomas website; a search of the text revealed that there was no such language in the law. (Maybe someone has news reports of that?) Scalded, the Discovery Institute began a scurrilous campaign claiming that conference reports have the force of law, an issue that federal courts have rejected in minor arguments before.

Sen. Kennedy has noted before that the Bush administration broke several promises to him on NCLB, including the promise to provide adequate funding so that the bill doesn't require the sapping of financial resources to schools (the testing burden alone has required cutbacks in instruction and numbers of teachers in several states, and even ultra-conservative Utah has refused to play under the NCLB rules). Kennedy's office has been most adamant that the Santorum Amendment has never been law. Santorum claimed to understand that when he asked Kennedy for the colloquy, but he has since claimed otherwise.

The Santorum Amendment is one more in a long string of broken promises made to America's school children and school systems. But you're right, it is not law, and it is not binding.

It's not smart, either. Other nations continue to eclipse our nation's performance in educating kids in and about science. It is now a serious challenge to our national economic system (see the balance of trade deficit with China, for example). My conversations with medical school recruiters recently indicates that our failure to teach evolution straight up and well is definitely a contributing cause. Foreign students know how the world works better than U.S. students, even in life sciences. Our balance of trade deficits grow because we import their technological achievements now.

(Yes, intelligent design is a threat to our nation's economy and future.)

Finally, and most importantly, Meyer offered a "compromise" on the issue. This was, of course, accompanied by a slide labeled "compromise" showing cartoon people smiling, shaking hands, and slapping one another on the back. Compromises, apparently, make people very happy. The compromise was that his side was willing to drop its insistence that ID be placed in the State standards --- if, of course, the standards made it clear that individual teachers should be free to teach the scientific controversy about Darwinism. This, he said, would help Ohio to open the minds of its students, and would meet the high standards for evolution education mandated by the "Santorum language" in the new education law, the No Child Left Behind Act. My jaw dropped as he concluded with this statement, but more on that later.

The question period, in which each speaker was given one or two minutes to respond to each question, provided opportunity for us to reiterate and amplify our points. One particularly telling moment came when a questioner asked about the "Santorum" language in the No Child Left Behind Act, which supposedly requires the teaching of alternate scientific theories. Meyer enthusiastically agreed that it did, and urged Ohio to follow the "law". I stepped to my computer, asked for its screen to be projected in front of the audience, and then explained that I had a copy of the law on my laptop and would execute a search for the word "evolution," which supposedly is in the language of the bill. As the audience buzzed (and a few of its members chuckled), the search came up empty. Why? "Because," I informed the audience, "the ID folks have misled you" (I should have been blunt enough to say that they lied). Santorum's amendment to the Senate's version of the bill was watered down during the conference committee and then was relegated to its report. The language that Meyer cited is not part of the bill, was not signed into law by the President, and does not have the force of law. The effect on the audience was dramatic. The ID folks had been caught in a lie. How did Wells respond? Incredibly, he simply picked up a copy of the conference report and read the language slowly, apparently on the principle that if a falsehood is repeated often enough, people will begin to believe it. No one was fooled, however, and the ID folks had blundered badly on the most basic issue of all --- telling the truth.

The March 14 Commentary piece, "Illiberal education in Ohio schools," written by my colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, erroneously suggested that I support the teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to biological evolution. That simply is not true. Rather, I believe that public school science classes should focus on teaching students how to understand and critically analyze genuine scientific theories. Unlike biological evolution, "intelligent design" is not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school science classes.

— Edward Kennedy

Despite that the Santorum language in the NCLB committee report has no legal basis, ID groups of course push it as 'law.' For example the creationist Oklahomans for Better Science Education (OBSE)(http://www.obse.org/) push the 'legality' on their web site and in workshops for teachers they have offered.

[This creationist group should not be confused with our Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE)
(http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/oese/). We wonder why they picked a name so close to ours. 'Excellence' bests 'Better' anytime!].

On their web site the creationist OBSE quotes the full Santorum language and states one of their purposes: "To ensure that Oklahoma school districts and their science teachers are advised of their legal rights, through Constitutional law, that permits teaching competing or divergent scientific theories of origin."

Unfortunately, teachers attending their workshops receive a certificate that allows local school districts to give professional continuing education professional creit!

We need to do a better job in making clear that the Santorum language has NO basis in law.

Regarding all the stuff about the Santorum Amendment and the Ohio standards ---- I presume all of this will be gone over with a very fine-toothed comb if the Kansas Kooks have their "teach the controversy" crap dragged into court.

I, for my part, am VERY VERY interested to see exactly how (and by whom) "teach our alternative theory of ID" mutated into "OK, don't teach our alternative theory of ID, teach the controversy about evolution instead".

I think any judge with an IQ above room temperature will see that "teach the controversy" is nothing but the latest in a long string of attempts by creationist/IDers to attack evolution for religious reasons.

And thankfully, the Kansas Kooks were kind enough to provide a pretty good description of their religious reasons, in public, in print.

The Wedge-ites had better hang on to their crying towels. They'll need them again after Kansas.

Finally, and most importantly, Meyer offered a "compromise" on the issue. This was, of course, accompanied by a slide labeled "compromise" showing cartoon people smiling, shaking hands, and slapping one another on the back. Compromises, apparently, make people very happy. The compromise was that his side was willing to drop its insistence that ID be placed in the State standards --- if, of course, the standards made it clear that individual teachers should be free to teach the scientific controversy about Darwinism. This, he said, would help Ohio to open the minds of its students, and would meet the high standards for evolution education mandated by the "Santorum language" in the new education law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Lenny: What court challenges are pending in Ohio? I'm not aware of any.

The topic of the Santorum Amendment was brought up in Ohio as the result of another legal effort by the Discovery Institute to force "intelligent design theory" into school classrooms. In early 2002, the state of Ohio was carrying out a review of its statewide science curriculum, when chemist Robert Lattimer objected to the prominence of evolution in the science standards, and lobbied for inclusion of "intelligent design theory" as a "scientific alternative" to evolution. The effort attracted the attention of the Discovery Institute, which unleashed all its lobbying abilitites in an effort to push ID "theory" into the Ohio science standards.

"Intelligent design" advocates, however, seized on the words "critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory", and immediately re-introduced "intelligent design theory" through the back door, using a new strategy that has become known as "teach the controversy".

But I digress. "Activism with a vengeance?" Jones stayed in his court in Pennsylvania. Contrast this with West, whose minions have visited state boards in Ohio, Texas, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Florida (and probably a lot more), and played an activist role in that they brag about in federal legislation and legislation and school board policy in Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Montana, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, and we're probably just scratching the surface. Indeed, it may be said that West's group has been more activist in this issue than either national political party. Someone closely watching may wonder whether Discovery Institute shouldn't be a 501©(4) group, to legitimize their lobbying.

ID is on the ropes. *Now* is the time to go straight for their gonads. I'm tired of allowing THEM to set the agenda and pick the fights.

RBH,

Patience, yes -- but let's be prepared.

For example, I think the next round of textbook hearings should open with a hundred or so public witnesses telling exactly how and where the textbooks need to beef up the teaching of evolution. Just for one quick example, the statement of Science magazine this past week should be included in the box or chapter titled "How Do We Know Evolution Is the Theory?"

We need to beef up the examples in all the books. The Horse evolution charts need to be matched with Eldredge's work on trilobites, and all the books should specifically mention the 20 or so consensus species in the line leading to modern humans. With photos.

There should be in each of the books a discussion about how hard it is to develop an AIDS or HIV vaccine, because of the mutation rate of the viruses (I heard on researcher say that within three months of serious infection, each victim has a "separate species" of the virus.) The public health implications should be made crystal clear.

And I'd like to see a discussion in each of the texts about the economic effects of applied evolution: New apple varieties, the rise of grapefruit and the industry that has resulted from pink grapefruit, a sport mutation; the development of the Russet Burbank potato that fuels McDonalds empire; the evolution of the American apple maggot, and attempts to control it; Monsanto's moth evolution tracking laboratory, and why it exists; the war on the cotton boll weevil, now carefully coordinated to avoid pushing the weevil to evolve pesticide resistance before it can be pushed out of North America; work on wheat blights, especially by the universities in Kansas, for Kansas' big crop; the fight against imported Argentine fire ants, and their evolutionary responses to early efforts to eradicate them; the fight against malaria worldwide; etc., etc.

No textbook should be without a discussion of ring species and their implications for evolution theory.

I'm sure readers here have better examples, and more of them. We should have them cataloged, in advance, and gift them to the publishers now, so they can get the stuff in the books.

Remember the old cartoon of the two buzzards sitting in the tree in the desert? "Patience my a--! I'm gonna go kill something," one says.

Patience is easier on a full stomach.

I find it amusing that some of the same people who claim that Judge Jones "went too far" are also wont to applaud the tart, extra-judicial commentaries in Justice Scalia's rulings and dissensions.

ID is on the ropes. *Now* is the time to go straight for their gonads.

Right on Lenny.

And RBH, that's great that those documents exist. But why isn't the substance of McE's comment a front page story on the Panda's Thumb?

Here's what I notice reading this thread:

Ken Miller: "search came up empty. Why? "Because," I informed the audience, "the ID folks have misled you" (I should have been blunt enough to say that they lied).

OCS website: "During the lesson plan production process, state Department of Education staffers went so far as to comment that one aspect of the lesson was a lie."

And we know what Judge Jones said.

We were handed a can of paint by Judge Jones and the color is "LIAR."

It's time to pick up the damn brush already and give the Discovery Insitute and its lying employees a new coat. What are people afraid of???

Don't fxck it up and let the paint dry.

Every new article on the front page of Panda's Thumb should include the word "Lie" or "Perjury" or "Falsehoods" or "Distorts." Every single one.

That's how you communicate information to people who are NOT capable of grasping subtle inuendo and sarcasm, i.e., the American public.

I like this thinking. Particularly the bit about beefing up evolution education. There should be a thread for this - what things would people like to see in evolutionary textbooks?

My favourite thought at the moment is a computer-based (online?) taxonomic tree of life, with photos of living species and photos of fossils of extinct ones. Obviously doing this in its entirety would be impossible, but starting with the species closest to humans and working outwards would provide a great illustration. You'd be able to include infinitely more detail than could be put into a dead-tree version.

The DI's reaction to Dover is really very telling. The only way they've been able to respond to this catastrophe is by shooting out lies and distortions, and threatening to swiftboat anyone they perceive as getting in their way. As odious as this is, to me it's a strong hint that they have no Plan B, they that truly have no idea where to go from here. Otherwise I can't help but think their response would be a tad more coherent and dignified. They put all their eggs in one basket, and this where it got them.

It might take them quite a while to come up with a new strategy other than gutter-level character assassination.

It might take them quite a while to come up with a new strategy other than gutter-level character assassination.

I agree. That's why now is the time to hammer the living bejeezus out of them.

The public's mind is as ready now as it will ever be to receive the rest of the story about the disgusting way in which the Discovery Institute and its employees behave.

The DI's reaction to Dover is really very telling. The only way they've been able to respond to this catastrophe is by shooting out lies and distortions, and threatening to swiftboat anyone they perceive as getting in their way.

Don't forget that there is still a stealth campaign by the intelligent design/creationism (IDC) movement to change the laws at the state and federal levels. They intend to have their way no matter what the scientific community and the courts and say. I have noticed that the Kangaroo Court in Kansas and the Dover trial have been training grounds where these fanatics shed their martyr blood and find ways to hone their stealth tactics. We will probably begin to see more fake posters at scientific conferences, more "teach the controversy" harangues, and more sophistry papers by Meyers, Wells, and others. These people thrive on generating confusion.

I am all for teaching about their controversial tactics in a social science class (it would make a lovely unit on propaganda techniques). The more people know about IDC tactics, the more they might begin to question the motives of IDC promoters

My favourite thought at the moment is a computer-based (online?) taxonomic tree of life, with photos of living species and photos of fossils of extinct ones.

— Corkscrew

Don't forget that there is still a stealth campaign by the intelligent design/creationism (IDC) movement to change the laws at the state and federal levels. They intend to have their way no matter what the scientific community and the courts and say.

It's time that those supporting ID, when they use lies, be shown to be and named as liars or, if in a courtroom under oath, perjurers. These should not be simple words of emotion, but cool descriptions, backed by indisputable proof or the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, of what these people are doing and why they cannot be allowed to influence public education.

People make the mistake of thinking IDC is coordinated by a single group, and that if you zap that group then the whole effort will be crippled.

Who are these people you are referring to? I don't see anyone here making that allegation.

Please clarify.

If no one locally is paying attention or if no one local objects, no one outside that neighborhood will even know it's happening. Before you know it, there'll be a million podunk school districts teaching junk science. This is what we have to keep in mind in pondering where to go from here.

Now that the external loonies are finally entering a retreat

Really? Is that official?

Now that the external loonies are finally entering a retreat, we should start looking at that second problem more closely.

We should have started looking at the problem, uh, 50 years ago. How many generations do you think it will take to create a public education system that creates a population of educated Americans with substantially increased literacy in the English language, science, and history? I'm guessing three or four.

Remember that Americans by and large really couldn't give a rat's behind about the state of public education to the extent they are asked to pay for improving it with their tax money.

Do you recall the outcome of the last great "debate" this country had about education? Remember "No Child Left Behind"?

How's that plan working out?

Well, I think the best response to this is to just follow what Corkscrew said: Beef up science education. The best offense is a good defense; the best way to keep junk science like IDC pushes out of the schools is to try to get good, solid science education taught in and emphasized by the schools instead.

...and pass laws restricting and criminalizing political dissent

Do you recall the outcome of the last great "debate" this country had about education? Remember "No Child Left Behind"?

Does any lawyer here think that the present Dover school boerd could sue the TMLC for bad representation?

Never work. You think it's easy representing pill-popping, semi-literate liars?

I'd sooner help edit Salvador Cordova's Handbook of English Grammar.

As a lawyer, I can see two areas where the school board could potentially sue the TMLC.

1. The lawyer has the absolute obligation to inform the client of all risks of litigation. In this case, one risk is a loss followed by payment of the other side's attorney's fees. Did TMLC adequately advise the school board of the risk of loss and the potential exposure to attorney's fees?

Any reasonable attorney would have told the client that the risk of litigation in this case was substantial. The client should have been told that it had less than a 50% chance of success, and the plaintiff's attorneys' fees might be above $1,000,000.

If the client was told this and then decided to go ahead anyway, the lawyer has no liability. If the client was not told this, the lawyer has exposure, in my opinion.

2. There was perjured testimony at trial. It is unethical for an attorney to knowingly offer perjured testimony. As is clear from this case, the result is lethal to your position. If it's unethical, it's also malpractice. If the attorneys knew or should have known that their own witnesses would commit perjury, they may be liable.

We don't know what the attorneys knew about the impending testimony or what their advice to the school board was. Only the board and the lawyers know.

There was perjured testimony at trial. It is unethical for an attorney to knowingly offer perjured testimony. As is clear from this case, the result is lethal to your position. If it's unethical, it's also malpractice. If the attorneys knew or should have known that their own witnesses would commit perjury, they may be liable. We don't know what the attorneys knew about the impending testimony or what their advice to the school board was. Only the board and the lawyers know.

Well we know that the TMLC solicited more than one school board, so we could ask them what TMLC said.

Kick 'em in the wallet and they might get the message.

Any reasonable attorney would have told the client that the risk of litigation in this case was substantial. The client should have been told that it had less than a 50% chance of success, and the plaintiff's attorneys' fees might be above $1,000,000. If the client was told this and then decided to go ahead anyway, the lawyer has no liability.

Thanks for the response Joe. It rally galls me that the whole lying charade parades itself through a federal court, gets caught in the act, and then pretends it didn't happen.