Sense and sensibility in Dover, PA

The US District Judge ruled against intelligent design proponents in Dover, PA:

Intelligent Design Barred From Pa. School District (Update1)
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A Pennsylvania school district cannot require the teaching of intelligent design in high school biology classes, a federal judge ruled in a case that may influence other challenges to the theory of evolution.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ruled today that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board can't force the teaching of intelligent design, a theory that claims that the universe is too complex to have developed randomly and must have been designed by a superior power. The board in October 2004 ordered that intelligent design be introduced alongside the theory that life evolved by natural selection.

"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."

Here's the story.