Posted on 11/03/2005 11:39:36 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Not long into his cross-examination Wednesday, Dover schools Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa talked about a seminar he had attended about creationism in public schools.
The typically calm and confident administrator started his testimony with shaky hands and a weak voice as he explained to plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Rothschild that Supt. Richard Nilsen sent him to the Messiah College seminar on March 26, 2003.
Baksa had returned to the stand in a federal civil suit over Dover Area School District’s decision to include a mention of intelligent design in ninth-grade biology class. It was Baksa’s third appearance on the stand after being bumped by out-of-town witnesses for the defense.
Knowledge of the seminar wasn’t new. But the plaintiffs’ attorneys used it and other testimony from Baksa and school board President Sheila Harkins, who also testified Wednesday, to try to tie together events leading up to the science curriculum change and show that religion played a role in the board’s decision.
A policy that had a religious purpose would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Baksa testified that hours after attending the conference, he went to a Dover board retreat. According to previous testimony, board member Alan Bonsell said at the retreat that creationism should balance the teaching of evolution. Earlier in the trial, board members, former board members and Nilsen testified about notes made during board retreats in 2002 and 2003 at which Bonsell mentioned creationism and prayer in school.
After the retreat, Baksa said, he told Bertha Spahr, head of the science department, that Bonsell wanted to give another theory equal time to evolution in science class.
Baksa received a memo dated April 1, 2003, from then-Principal Trudy Peterman that said a board member wanted to give creationism equal time with evolution.
“My first reaction is, ‘She got it wrong,’” Baksa said, referring to Peterman’s use of the term creationism. But he didn’t approach either Spahr or Peterman to correct the information, he said.
A little more than a year after Peterman’s memo, controversy erupted during June 2004 board meetings when board members, and one board member’s wife, made religious comments while talking about buying new biology books.
During Wednesday’s questioning, Baksa corroborated some news coverage by saying he heard former board member Bill Buckingham talk about creationism, saying that “liberals in black robes” were taking away Christians’ rights and that the ninth-grade biology book was “laced with Darwinism.”
Baksa said Buckingham said something about a man dying on the cross 2,000 years ago but didn’t remember if the comment was made in 2003 during talks about “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or in 2004 during discussion on the curriculum change.
He also said Buckingham made a comment about the country not being founded on Muslim beliefs but said he didn’t know when that was said.
Earlier Wednesday, Harkins testified she didn’t remember Bonsell talking about creationism or prayer during retreats. She said she heard Buckingham mention liberal judges but didn’t know whether his mention of a man dying 2,000 years ago on the cross came at a 2004 board meeting or in earlier discussions about the pledge.
She also said people in the audience were talking about creationism at the June meetings, while then-board member Jeff Brown talked about intelligent design.
“My recollection is it seems to me I was thinking Jeff was the first one to bring up mentioning intelligent design in the conversation,” she said. “I was thinking Alan, Noel (Wenrich) and Bill got in on the conversation.”
Baksa and Harkins both testified that, at those June meetings, they didn’t know what intelligent design meant.
In August 2004, before the October vote on the intelligent design statement, Baksa and others received e-mail from Stock and Leader lawyer Steve Russell. The district had asked him for advice about the pro-intelligent design textbook “Of Pandas and People.”
“Today I talked to Richard Thompson. . . . they refer to the creationism issue as ‘intelligent design,’” Russell wrote, referring to Dover’s lawyer from the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan.
After court, Thompson maintained that creationism and intelligent design were separate.
Russell’s concern, according to the e-mail, was about various talk for putting religion back into the schools.
Baksa said in court Wednesday that he considered Russell’s words as advising caution in using “Pandas.”
In the summer of 2004, the board decided not to spend taxpayer money on “Pandas” as a companion text. Baksa testified that Nilsen asked him to research how much 50 copies of “Pandas” would cost so the board could then give the information to donors.
Later that year, Alan Bonsell’s father, Donald, and members of former board member Buckingham’s church anonymously gave 60 copies of the book to the district.
Outside court, Thompson said the events simply coincided.
“I don’t think they’re connected,” he said. “I think it’s just happenstance. At that point, I don’t think they were connected. The only reason that’s brought up is because of the case that exists today.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys declined to comment Wednesday.
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Another day, another batch of lies.
Does anyone think the Church gave the books to the school to NOT advance a religious purpose?
It's seems to be wrapping up quickly.
Looks like the school board is anxious to lose and move on to the next level.
"Equal Time"?
A statement that there may be another explanation is a long way from "Equal Time".
If you balanced all the "facts" of ID with Darwin in equal time, Biology class would take, what, maybe 30 seconds?
The more you post, the more pathetic this mess is. I'm surprised the Thomas More Law Center bothered with this.
I very much doubt that there will be a next level. As I understand it an appeal does not introduce new testimony or facts. The current judges decides the facts. What would there basis be for appeal?
How could competent counsel fix the stupidity of the defendants?
Continuing ed?
I doubt the ACLU is in a settling mood.
Insanity?
It will be strictly based on legal issues -- specifically, whether the facts, as the judge finds them, mean that the school board's actions violated the First Amendment. The currently prevailing case on this is LEMON v. KURTZMAN, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
I've posted this a few weeks ago, but it's relevant now that the case is winding up.
That case lays out the three-pronged "Lemon test":
First, the statute [or state action] must have a secular legislative purpose;second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,
finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
Is there anyone who imagines that the mandatory ID statement which the Dover school board imposed on the schools can pass that test? (Don't get hung up on the word "statute." The school board's mandate undoubtedly qualifies as "state action" under the 14th Amendment.)
By the way, in Selman v. Cobb County School District, the Georgia textbook sticker case, the court cited and relied on the Lemon test. But there's a bit of Supreme Court politics involved here. In Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education v. Freiler, a creationism case where the Supreme Court denied certiorari (in 2000, only 5 years ago), Rehnquist, Scalia & Thomas indicated that they'd like to re-visit the Lemon test. So it's going to be a long and bumpy ride.
Do I see Kobe Bryant in there?
(Running for cover.)
The best that the IDers can hope for is a very narrow decision, which I think will be the case. The board can drop it's attempt and hope they don't get booted out of office. Then the IDers can go along blithely saying the Dover case was a fluke and badly handled and look for a setting where the actors are better looking and try again.
For the judge to slap them hard I think is unlikely since judges hate to be overturned.
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