ICR Lawsuit in Texas

[BigEvil]

The actual legal complaint is here. (http://ncseweb.org/webfm_send/814) Warning: Its a big document, 67 pages long.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars reccommend this blog (http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2009/04/icr-lawsuit-against-texas-higher-education-coordinating-board.html) about it by Timothy Sandefur. I found the blog more interesting than the complaint.

[DMB]

If the blog analysis is accurate, would that suggest that the lawyers handling the case must be creationists, and thus suffering from brain rot?

[Garnet]

Wow. That's one of the most poorly written complaints I've ever seen.

ETA: Heh. I wrote the above comment before I read the blog.

[BigEvil]

If the blog analysis is accurate, would that suggest that the lawyers handling the case must be creationists, and thus suffering from brain rot?

Yep.

See this link: You Don’t Trust Creationists With Your Science Education… Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Trust Their Lawyers, Either (http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/you-dont-trust-creationists-with-your-science-education-heres-why-you-shouldnt-trust-their-lawyers-either/)

That link is a analysis of the legal complaint, most of it is technical legal stuff, that I don't have much interest in. But its written for the layman, so one doesn't have to be a lawyer to understand it.

What I did find interesting is this:

Although the signature block is cut off in the complaint, the ICR’s lawyers are clearly identified in this document. Apparently, the briefs were written by the ICR’s own James J.S. Johnson, whom FindLaw describes as a “family lawyer.”

it goes on to say

I should add that “family law” generally means as “divorce law,”

The article list two contributions by James J.S. Johnson that are on the ICR website:
The Graffiti of Judgment (http://www.icr.org/article/graffiti-judgment/) and To Tell the Truth: The danger of accommodating Darwinism through false testimony (http://www.icr.org/article/tell-truth-danger-accommodating-darwinism-through-/)


The article further states:

(ICR’s local counsel in Texas seems to be the firm of Adams, Lynch & Loftin, P.C., but they do not appear to be actively involved in the litigation so far.)

The principal attorney is Neal W. Adams. A google search came up with NEAL W. ADAMS APPOINTED COORDINATING BOARD VICE CHAIR (http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/reports/PDF/0860.PDF).
Excerpt:
AUSTIN, August 10, 2005 -- Neal W. Adams of Bedford was appointed Vice Chair of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board by Governor Rick Perry on July 29.

[BigEvil]

ICR has another article by their lawyer James J.S. Johnson entititled Censorship in Texas: Fighting Academic and Religious Discrimination (http://www.icr.org/article/4598/).

Excerpts:
Scientists and professors who are Christians, and even non-Christian academics, continue to face persecution from science censors. Ben Stein's Expelled documentary in 2008 clearly demonstrated that even highly-qualified scientists in secular institutions are facing various forms of expulsion simply because they question "recognized" Darwinian beliefs and the tenets of evolutionary science.4

and

I still remember from my boyhood the days of racial segregation in America, and walking past public bathroom doors labeled "Men," "Women," and "Colored." Discrimination was ugly then, and discrimination is just as ugly today.

ICRGS is now the victim of academic (and religious) viewpoint discrimination in the Lone Star State. And because this government-mandated viewpoint ban is now enforced against the content of ICR's school catalog within the state, this viewpoint discrimination includes censorship-stifling freedom of the press.


Evaluating Christianity (http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/) has an article (http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/the-icr-answers-all-your-questions/) about it.

I don't know much about Evaluating Christianity. I found it by following a link from Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/).

[Ray Moscow]

I for one deplore the discrimation against dumbassedness in secular academia.

[Worldtraveller]

This is actually funny to watch, in a train wreck sorta way. I think at least one of the lawyers was also involved on the losing side of the Kitzmiller case. And their understanding of law appears on par with their understanding of science, for what it's worth (I am neither a lawyer nor scientist, but have a lay interest in both).

Cheers.