In the Discovery Institute's ongoing war on logic and truth, they claim that:
Someone should ask Judge Jones why he is suddenly so reticent to talk about his ruling. During the past year, he has traversed the country to speak at public events and talk about his ruling at length, usually before friendly audiences.
In actual fact, Judge Jones made it a condition of his talk at KU and elsewhere that the talk not be about the details of the Dover case. His talk at KU was entitled "Judicial Independence and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District," and you can watch it here.
Judge Jones begins his talk (go to about minute 13:00 in the video above) by saying:
I'm aware that I was invited to speak to you today, and indeed flown out from far away Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because I am and probably forever will be known as the judge who decided the Dover intelligent design case. But when this gracious invitation came to me some months ago, I gave the caveat that if I spoke it would not be to rehash the trial or my opinion on the issues presented to me for resolution.
Now there are good reasons for that. As a judge, you see with literally hundreds of cases in my docket, my duty, what I am charged to do, is resolve a case and then move on to the next one. …
Contrary to what some of you may believe, I come here not as some of your other speakers perhaps have and will as an advocate for anything as it relates to the evolution/intelligent design debate. That is not my function as a judge.
He went on to explain that he wants to use his temporary fame as an opportunity to discuss the role of the federal judge in society, in social issues and the importance of judicial independence. He rejected as "inappropriate" the idea of discussing his personal views on the issues that came before his court.
Tim Sandefur at the Panda's Thumb points out that the DI's complaints are without merit in any event. Jones issued findings of fact and findings of law which drew on proposed findings of fact and of law that were filed by both sides, but relied more heavily on the findings of – wait for it – the side that won the case.
I know, I know, it's shocking. Judge Jones goes around the country speaking about how judges actually do what they do in order to prevent exactly this sort of ill-informed criticism, and the response is to heap even more criticism on him.
Click through to see what happens when Billy Dembski looks in a mirror.
Bill Dembski, whose cowardly exit from the legal defense of the school board signalled that the Discovery Institute didn't care what happened in Jones' courtroom (or knew the case was lost), refers to Judge Jones as a narcissistic putz. Dembski, who makes a career of touring the DI's circuit of church socials and trumped up debates over ideas of his that were long ago rejected on factual and mathematical grounds, complains that "Judge Jones tours the American countryside seeking the adulation of our intellectual elite and extolling the genius of his Kitzmiller v. Dover decision."
Is that projection or jealousy we're reading?
While we're on the subject of Dembski and narcissistic putzes, I encourage you to check out the increasingly less IDolatrous Dave Heddle's discussion of how Billy banned him from a super secret ID email list (via Elsberry). The offense? Challenging the IDC orthodoxy (and stirring up trouble about the earth not being 6,000 years old):
the default view of ID for this list is the position hammered out over a fifteen year period starting with Phil Johnson and moving through to Behe, myself, Wells, Meyer, Nelson, Pearcey, Gonzalez, Richards, and O'Leary. Any of you who have a fundamental problem with that position need to consider carefully whether you should be on this list at all.
Others had been chastised as "unreflective" and asked by Billy:
Have you read Behe, Johnson, or my own work? -- I'm not asking this question rhetorically. It's precisely comments like this that have led a number of my senior colleagues to want to jump ship from [the super s3kr1t list] and start a new list. … Please don't post anything so unreflective again.
Heddle had avoided reading Dembski's arguments precisely so that he could plead ignorance to the errors in them and preserve his own belief in "cosmological ID," but Billy's narcissism forced him to confront that demon, and he came away badly unimpressed.
Jones isn't the putz here, Billy D. is.
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I was lucky in that I got to see Judge Jones give a talk at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Philadelphia this year. He's a great speaker and has a great sense of humour.
What he said about intelligent design: they failed utterly in their arguments. Jones had no choice but to rule so lopsidedly in favour of the parents, based on the case that was in front of him.
He also gave a reason why he ruled that 'intelligent design' was not science. While he was asked to rule whether it was science or not by both sides, he was not obligated to do so. However, because this issue was likely to come up again in another district, he decided to use this trial to form a benchmark, where other judges can refer to it when it does rear its ugly head again. Outside of Pennsylvania, they are not legally obligated to follow it, however, they can refer to it if they deem it appropriate.
The main thrust of his speech was about judicial independence. Legislators work based on popular opinion. Judges must respect the rule of law, the constitution, and prior judgments. If he sticks to these fundamental principles, then he is doing his job properly. What he found in the end, however, is that all the right-wing pundits and supporters of the christian right thought that he had stabbed his appointers in the back (because he was appointed by Bush and others of the religious right, people expected him to pay them back by giving a ruling based on a "popular" opinion, rather than one based on law).
He also talked about how there were ballot measures in some states to reduce this independence, where people can sue the judge if they lay down a ruling they don't like or have them impeached (none of these passed since that speech). He said that these attacks on judicial independence erode the checks and balances the framers of the constitution intended.
Importantly, he said that judges should NEVER be free from criticism, however. Independence and criticism are two different beasts. Criticism is necessary to the process of understanding the law and constitution.
He also said that he found surprising that, when he was sentencing crack dealers to 20 years in prison, he never got any death threats, but he makes a ruling that upsets fundamentalists and the threats are scary enough so that he has to get protection from the U.S. Marshalls (his wife wasn't allowed to walk the dog outside of Xmas eve without a "escort").
Muguelito wrote
That is more telling about the creationists than any argument in court (or church).
It's interesting that before the trial, someone at the DI or UD (DaveScot?) was crowing that with Judge Jones on the bench, the ruling was sure to be in favor of the Dover School Board defendants. Why, with a Bush-appointed judge who was a conservative and a Christian, who could doubt it?
Interesting that now, after Jones has made the ruling any honest judge would have to make in light of the evidence and the testimony of the incredibly incompetent defendants and "expert witnesses" for the defense, he now is a "narcissistic putz," an "activist judge," or worse, and is threatened by fundamentalists with death for his decision.
He's still a Bush appointee, still a conservative, still a Christian, and yet (amazingly!), he saw through the ridiculous attempts of the defense to defend the indefensible behavior of the defendants. If you read the transcripts, it will be clear to you that the Thomas More Law Center's defense was incompetent, as were key defendants Bill Buckingham and Alan Bonsell, who committed perjury by telling stories on the stand that conflicted with their earlier depositions.
The plaintiffs had a strong case that the Dover School Board's intention was to introduce creationism into public school science classes under the guise of "a statement" about ID and evolution. In Jones' decision, he clarified that ID is, essentially, what used to be called creationism, and therefore is unconstitutional to teach in public schools.
Judge Jones upheld his responsibility to the Constitution. And now the ID crowd are acting like three-year-olds denied an ice cream cone. Too bad they're spending so much energy on vituperation and none on science.
One cannot "delete people," first of all.
Second, Billy bans anyone who doesn't agree with him, even if their comments are on-topic. I ban people who actively interfere in discussions and don't even engage a thread's topic, and I will continue to do so. Off-topic comments about other forums, speculation about my personal life, and bizarre rants about nuclear war and evil atheists are not on topic here and people who can't say anything else are banned, as are people who post under different names from the same IP addresses. These are standard rules on blogs and forums everywhere, and people who break them have no entitlement to post here or anywhere.