Mike Argento has been sort of the HL Mencken of the Dover trial, making pithy comments daily about the trial. And you knew he wasn't going to let Bonsell's testimony go unscathed. This is pretty funny stuff, but it's long so I'll put it below the fold.
It was remarkable. Judge John E. Jones III asked for a copy of Bonsell's deposition and started asking him questions about why he felt the need to cover up where the money came from to buy the 60 copies of "Of Pandas and People" that wound up in the Dover high school library.Bonsell didn't explain very well.
At one point, he replied to the judge's query with, "I misspoke."
"I misspoke" wasn't working. So he tried to layer on some verbiage -- at one point, seemingly, speaking random words that had nothing to do with what the judge was asking -- to give the impression that he was merely trying to answer the question.
When, in fact, he was merely trying to avoid answering the question.
The more he talked, the worse it got.
By the conclusion, it was clear to everyone in the courtroom that the judge was pointing out that Bonsell might have lied under oath.
That's a problem.
Ask Scooter Libby.
Or Bill Clinton.
Bonsell wasn't being asked about who outed a CIA agent or whether he had had sex with that woman. He wasn't even being asked about a crime -- the judge was asking about who bought the copies of "Of Pandas and People" that were donated to the school.
And Bonsell really didn't want to say.
In fairness, Bonsell wasn't very believable even before the judge started laying into him. He said, "I have never brought anything forward to put creationism in the school district in any shape or form" -- despite notes from board retreats and other testimony describing him bringing up creationism.
I was expecting him to say, "I did not have sex with that panda."
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I think the sentence before where you quoted the article says it best: "That was when the judge started asking him to try to explain -- um, how should I phrase this? -- certain gaps and problems with his testimony."
Gave me a chuckle :)
I'm beginning to agree with the people who say that this case won't do all that much to stop ID in the long run. Contrary to the right's screams of "judicial activism", judges like to rule narrowly when they have the opportunity. The blatant lying of the school board in this case gives Jones every opportunity to rule on the narrow facts rather than on ID in general. Furthermore, thanks to the cowardice of most of the DI types, most of the ruling and the media attention will focus on the board members' testimony. Yes Behe was demolished, but he's only one person among many witnesses. So far Barbara Forrest's testimony on Pandas has been the most damning for the ID movement as a whole, and it's obvious why they fought so hard to disallow and discredit it.
So while this case will indeed be a setback for ID, paradoxically it won't be as big a setback as it would have been had the board not been so obviously religiously motivated and had the TMLC been vaguely competent. I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if this case set any serious precedent or even if many people turned away from ID as a result of it.
I have to agree w/ Ginger Yellow here in this regard. It is also becoming clear why DI and their various "official" spokespeople were not interested in participating in this trial. They seem to have had some foreknowledge of just how messed up the school board was, and how those involved had, in the most amateur and immature of ways, lied under oath trying to keep ID and creationism separate.