FOR A MOMENT, SANITY

Judge John E. Jones III ruled that so-called "intelligent design" is nothing but creationism wrapped in fancy tin foil. Students in Dover, Pa., are spared the ridicule now heaped on Kansas.

Jones' decision -- here's a link to the .pdf file -- did not deter ID addicts. According to the York Daily Record:

The pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute issued a statement that called Jones "an activist federal judge" who is trying "to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work."

Dr. John West, the institute's associate director of the Center for Science and Culture, said Jones improperly combined Dover's actions with the position of the Discovery Institute, "and he totally misrepresents intelligent design and the motivations of the scientists who research it."

"Judge Jones found that the Dover board violated the Establishment Clause because it acted from religious motives. That should have been the end to the case," said West. "Instead, Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur."

West also vowed to continue to press the theory of intelligent design.

"Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," West said. "Americans don't like to be told there is some idea that they aren't permitted to learn about. It used to be said that banning a book in Boston guaranteed it would be a bestseller. Banning intelligent design in Dover will likely only fan interest in the theory."

Shame on you, John West. Laying claim to the phrase "banned in Boston," coined because H.L. Mencken's writings were forbidden in 1926; he made fun of fundamentalists. The year before he had famously covered the Scopes Trial in Tennessee and wrote about the anti-Darwin creationists -- words that still need heeding, 80 years later:

Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates.

The Hun may not be intelligent, but he has designs on you.