The last few days haven’t been that great, legislatively speaking, but, thanks to the efforts of concerned citizens and a judge who decided not to ‘play politics,’ the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge won’t be thrown open to Big Oil and Creationism will be kept out to the Pennsylvania public schools (at least for the time being)… There may not be as much to celebrate this holiday season as we’d like, but at least we have these two significant wins to be thankful for.

Here’s a quote from Judge Jones concerning the Intelligent Design case in Pennsylvania:

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.

And that was just the start. He goes on to say what everyone now knows to be ther truth - that Intelligent Design, a thinly-veiled version of Creationism, is a Trojan horse being used to introduce religion into our schools. The smackdown delivered by Judge John Jones III (a Bush appointee) was resounding and leaves absolutely no room for interpretation. As evidece of this, I give to the sound of the great Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, backpedaling like a mother fucker… I take that as a very good sign.

Merry Christmas.