Aped decision

Law: Last year's judicial blow to intelligent design came straight from ACLU attorneys | Mark Bergin

For the past year, Judge John E. Jones III has ridden a wave of celebrity. From radio talk shows to speech engagements to the cover of Time, the U.S. District Court jurist has used myriad public outlets to trumpet the reasoning behind his December 2005 ruling that intelligent design does not belong in public-school science classrooms. Darwinists have celebrated such appearances by a man they hail a hero of brilliant scholarship and strict church-state separatism.

But in the wake of new revelations that Jones simply cut and pasted significant portions of his case decision from an American Civil Liberties Union document, the talkative judge has suddenly gone silent. Jones refuses to comment on a report from the ID-supporting Discovery Institute that he copied more than 90 percent of his ruling's most critical 25-page section on whether ID constitutes legitimate science.