TRANSIT STRIKE: BLOOMBERG.COM ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN. In a significant setback for proponents of idiotic design and The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled today that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board cannot mandate the teaching of intelligent design, Bloomberg.com reports:

"To preserve the separation of church and state" mandated by the First Amendment, the Dover Area School District is barred from maintaining the ID policy in any school, Jones wrote. "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."

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In his opinion, Jones said the key issue is "whether Intelligent Design is science," and said, "we have concluded that it is not."

Jones said the concept of Intelligent Design, "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Photo: David Marc Fischer

ADDENDUM: I idiotically forgot to mention this Doonesbury Sunday strip.