I’m probably just about the last science blogger on Earth to note this, but the Dover Panda Trial decision was handed down today, and it’s a doozy. I particularly like the summation:
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.
That is one pissed-off judge…
You can find lots of good commentary (and the full text of the decision in PDF form) at Dispatches From the Culture Wars— just keep hitting “next post” for a while.