In Dover suit, a day to sweat

On the witness stand during Monday’s session of the Dover Panda Trial, Dover Area School Board member Alan Bonsell accused the press of just making things up.

Keeping that in mind, here’s a description of what happened Monday afternoon.

Wearing a nice gray suit, Bonsell answered every question to the best of his ability and was positively forthcoming and when the lawyers pointed out certain inconsistencies in his testimony, he thanked them profusely and offered expansive explanations for why he may have been misunderstood and cleared up any misunderstandings that may have arisen.

OK, all of that was made up.

Except for the part about Bonsell wearing a gray suit.

Actually, at the conclusion of his testimony, he was in serious danger of ruining that suit.

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.

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.�

And so the Dover Panda Trial took an interesting turn. Certainly, the big issues — mostly notably, separation of church and state — remain. But now, members of the Dover Area School Board may have to worry about those aforementioned gaps and problems in their testimony.

Of course, the defendants are going to turn this around and blame those darned liberal activist judges. It doesn’t work. For one thing, Jones was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush, not known for appointing liberals. And, you know, insisting that witnesses tell the truth in court isn’t exclusively a liberal proposition.

On the one hand, school board members can use this to defend against the charge that they were motivated by religious belief in introducing intelligent design or creationism into the biology curriculum. If they were motivated by religion, how come none of them ever heard of the Ninth Commandment — you know, the one about bearing false witness?

On the other hand, it’s really a sad day for America when public officials can no longer lie convincingly enough to get it past a federal judge.

I blame the public schools. I mean, just look at some of the bozos in charge of them.

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Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com. Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike.