Score One For Sanity

A federal judge has ruled against the Dover school board in an intelligent design case. The case was somewhat moot because all eight of the idiots on the school board that were pushing intelligent design were round stomped in November's election. However, this ruling is still a complete victory for science as it sets a good precedent. From The Washington Post:

In his ruling today, Jones said several members of the Dover Area School Board repeatedly lied during the trial to cover their motives for promoting intelligent design even as they professed religious beliefs, the Associated Press reported.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID [Intelligent Design] Policy," Jones wrote.

Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors," adding that he did not believe the concept should not be studied and discussed, AP reported. But he concluded that "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

Specifically, Jones said the school board's policy on intelligent design violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

[snip]

But Jones wrote in his 139-page opinion that "the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

Jones sharply criticized some of the school board members, writing, "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

That's a spanking folks, Judge Jones actually went as far as to call the promoters of ID liars. With the turnover on the school board this case is dead, but it will come up again somewhere else and another school system will be forced to use valuable resources to defend itself.