DI continues to lie about the Dover case

Now the Discovery Institute is claiming (via Michael Francisco, on the DI's EvolutionNews blog, reporting on an American Enterprise Institute article co-authored by former DI policy analyst, attorney Seth Cooper) that the newly elected Dover Area School Board intentionally cost the school district $1 million in legal fees by refusing to rescind the illegal policy in December, after the trial was over and before Judge Jones had issued his ruling. This is at odds with the fact that their rescinding the policy would not have changed the outcome of the trial or the awarding of legal fees, which is why they didn't do it until after the ruling came.

What's worse, they have attributed malice and conflict of interest (now retracted, to the original source's partial credit) to one of the new board members who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit regarding this decision, even though he was not yet on the board at the time of the December discussion (there was no vote) on changing the policy due to a runoff election.

And further worse--on William Dembski's blog, someone who pointed out the facts had their comment deleted.

There's nowhere to place the blame for the $1 million in legal fees except on the original board who put the policy in place over the warnings and objections at the time that their action was unconstitutional--and perhaps to some extent on the Discovery Institute advisor who they initially spoke with about what policy to adopt, Seth Cooper.

UPDATE (April 5, 2006): Michael Francisco has revised the wording of his blog post, probably to make it less actionable under defamation laws. Ed Brayton points out the specifics of his revisions.