Intelligent? Who can say? Unconstitutional? Definitely.

In a recent post, I argued that “intelligent design” does not belong in science classrooms because it is not science. It seems that John E. Jones III, the federal judge who issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District yesterday, agrees.

The complete ruling is 139 pages long. You can read it in its entirety if you want to, but MSNBC and the New York Times offer some choice excerpts. My favorite extract can be found at Washington Monthly:

....Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. 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.

This bit, quoted at Pandagon, is also good:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. 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.

I don’t make a habit of reading legal opinions, so I don’t really know what they usually look like, but I’ve got to say that this one is pretty hot.

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Intelligent? Who can say? Unconstitutional? Definitely.

In a recent post, I argued that “intelligent design” does not belong in science classrooms because it is not science. It seems that John E. Jones III, the federal judge who issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District yesterday, agrees.

The complete ruling is 139 pages long. You can read it in its entirety if you want to, but MSNBC and the New York Times offer some choice excerpts. My favorite extract can be found at Washington Monthly:

....Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. 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.

This bit, quoted at Pandagon, is also good:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. 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.

I don’t make a habit of reading legal opinions, so I don’t really know what they usually look like, but I’ve got to say that this one is pretty hot.