Avatar for Pensacola Voters

Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times thinks she's found the avatar for Northwest Florida's electorate. Sad to say, it may be so.

The stand-in for typical Pensacola voters are Charles and Rhoda Harding, a debt-ridden pawn shop proprietor and his wife. Their business is located "across the street from Dinosaur Adventure Land, a 'Bible-based creation museum."

They twice voted for George W. Bush, hate Hillary Clinton for no reason they can articulate, and are drawn to Mike Huckabee because "he sounds like he wants to help people."

The Hardings, who are in their early 60's, have suffered greatly under the Bush administration. "By almost every indicator," Roug writes, their "quality of life... has worsened since 2004."

When the Hardings voted for Bush, they trusted the war would end once U.S. troops uncovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were hopeful their wrecked world would return to normal once the insurance company paid to repair the roof blown off by the storm.

Though the couple believe in minimal government, they expected there would be emergency help -- perhaps a loan to cover the hurricane damage. Their insurance company paid only half the cost of repairing the roof, and federal officials turned them down when they applied for assistance. They never returned to an even keel.

The Hardings, who earn about $2,000 a month, could no longer afford health insurance. When their son Ronnie started suffering from bouts of fatigue, he refused to get tested because it would strain family finances, and his leukemia went undetected.

Ronnie died July 28. He was 43.

The week Ronnie spent in a hospital cost almost $100,000, and the Hardings are already $50,000 in debt. All they got from the government was $250 in assistance for their son's cremation. "That's what you're worth here in America," Rhoda says.

After two decades of running Adams Pawn, they are trying to sell their business. But in this depressed economy, there are no buyers.

So there you have it: they're anti-war, pro-national health care, for a competent FEMA, and against Bush's consumer bankruptcy law amendments. In other words, their political views almost exactly match those of a liberal Democrat -- and they don't even know it.

It's a phenomenon that we've seen before. Years ago, a legal aid worker of our acquaintance happened to win a hard-fought Social Security disability case for a horribly injured unemployed blue collar worker. What should have been an open-and-shut case -- the guy couldn't walk and was dying of an incurable lung disease -- was made extremely difficult because of changes in federal disability law forced through Congress by the Reagan administration.

The client was, of course, grateful for our friend's devotion to his case. He also was thrilled that he'd won. After profusely thanking our lawyer friend, his family loaded the man's wheelchair into their broken-down van and started off for home.

"As I was waving good-bye," our friend recounted, "I happened to glance at the bumper sticker on the back of the van. It said, 'Re-elect Reagan.'"

What makes this scene double ironic was that at the very same time, the Reagan administration also was fighting to abolish funding for the legal aid society.

The source of the disabled man's legal problems was the Reagan administration. And the only avenue for a cure was under attack by the Reagan administration. Yet, just like the the Hardings in today's LA Times story, the disabled man and his family were about to vote against their own interests -- and they didn't even realize it.

Two Dinosaurs in Local News

Local radio Friday afternoon was reporting that Dr. Dino, more formally known as Kent Hovind, was sentenced today to ten years in the poky. Hovind was convicted late last year on 58 felony and misdemeamor counts related to tax evasion. His wife's sentencing has been delayed.

(UPDATE: Michael Stewart has the quick story and, a day later, the full story at the PNJ.)

Hovind made a small fortune himself -- or, if you still believe in fairy tales, for god -- by preaching that dinosaurs cohabited the earth with mankind. The root of his problem seems to be that god forgot to file his income tax returns and so the IRS turned to Hovind, instead.

Maybe Hovind was right about one thing. At least one dinosaur coexists with mankind: Tom Banjanin, former county commissioner for the district that includes Pensacola Beach.

Banjanin announced today that he will be a candidate to nuzzle up to whatever public feeding trough he can manage to fool somebody into giving him. Today, it's the special election to fill state House District 3, recently vacated by Holly Benson after she was named head of Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Before making a career of getting paid to do nothing as a county commissioner, Banjanin learned his trade as a state representative, where he also did nothing. So, you can certainly say he has experience.

Republican voters will have their second chance in four months to vote against the insipid Banjanin when early voting begins January 29.

Dr. Dino's Judgment Day

The federal court jury Thursday afternoon convicted Kent Hovind ("Dr. Dino") and his wife Jo of multiple counts of tax fraud. The jury deliberated only two and a half hours; much of that time, we suspect, was occupied by ordering lunch and selecting the foreman.

Nicole Lozare once again drew the short straw at the Pensacola News Journal:

"Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.

"Jo Hovind was charged and convicted in 44 of the counts involving evading bank-reporting requirements. She faces up to 225 years in prison but was allowed to remain free pending the couple's sentencing on Jan. 9."

Many may suppose the convictions were a foregone conclusion when Dr. Dino's lawyer was admonished by the judge for wasting the court's time and, the next day, both defendants elected not to call any witnesses or to testify themselves. The truth, however, is that unlike cynical hypocrites such as the Hovinds, who made a small fortune peddling biblical fantasies to simple-minded religionists, lawyers have to work in a world of reality with the facts they are given.

In the end, reality always prevails, sooner or later.

Amplification Dept.
Two Dinosaurs
Dr. Dino gets his sentence.

Dr. Dino Defense Rests

UPDATES BELOW
In Wednesday's installment about the Dr. Dino trial, the Pensacola News Journal reported "The defense has subpoenaed 10 witnesses." For Thursday's newspaper, however, the PNJ is reporting "the defense will not present a case."

As we said yesterday, there is "literary precedent" for this. Given a defendant who scams millions by preaching that dinosaurs and mankind were set down on Earth simultaneously, Morgenhall himself couldn't have said it any better:

"Tactics, you see. We'd decided not to trouble with science."

---------
UPDATE # 1

In the print edition of Thursday's paper we're told, "Before the break, [defense counsel Alan] Richey discussed with [Judge] Rodgers the witnesses he planned to call. After Wednesday's session, Richey said there was no need for a defense."

Sounds to us as if the judge may have issued a gentle -- or not so gentle -- private warning to Richey. Something along these lines, we imagine:

"I will not have any religious screwballs making a circus out of my courtroom, Mr. Richey. So I suggest you check your witness list twice to be sure every single one of the ten witnesses you have subpoenaed has personal knowledge of some admissible fact relevant to the case, not just a hair-brained opinion or 'faith-based' belief that defies reality. Otherwise, the U.S. Marshall will be measuring you for an orange jumpsuit, too."

UPDATE # 2

Red State Rabble ("A skeptic's dispatches from the fly-over zone") got off a good one about the defense's failure to offer any evidence:

"Hey, wait just a minute. That's the same proof they offer for creationism and intelligent design."

Dr. Dino's "Terrible Trumpet"

"There are ways and ways of losing."

-- John Mortimer, The Dock Brief, Sc. 2

To her credit, Nicole Lozare slips in a bit of courtroom color in her article summarizing yesterday's doings at the trial of Dr. Dino. At last, readers are given a taste of the real flavor of the courtroom, with all the bumblings and fumblings and missteps and outbursts that try judge's souls and make the proceedings ever so human:

"[O]n Tuesday, it wasn't always clear where [defense lawyer] Richey's lengthy cross-examination of Schneider was going. The Washington attorney was admonished by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers for asking irrelevant questions.

"One example: Richey questioned Schneider about a letter U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson sent to Hovind in response to the evangelist's questions about taxation. Nelson wrote that the IRS is committed to ensuring that "everyone pays their fair share of taxes."

"'Does everyone in your office pay their fair share of taxes?'" Richey asked Schneider. Schneider didn't respond because Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Heldmyer objected and the judge agreed it was irrelevant."

Although Lozare doesn't give us an exact body count, offering that snippet as "one example" suggests that, overall, Tuesday wasn't a good day for the defendants -- or Dr. Dino's defense lawyer.

"When Richey spent several minutes looking for documents, [Judge] Rodgers excused the jury. She then told Richey he was wasting their time. Rodgers then suggested Richey come in earlier or stay later to make sure his files were organized."

Who is this Richey fellow? "DodgerDean" over at The Panda's Thumb speculated last September in the comments section that he might be the same Port Hadlock, Washington, attorney who previously represented one Nadine Griffen who was convicted of filing a false tax return on her earnings as a saleswoman of off-shore seminars which "promoted and marketed fraudulent tax schemes."

Well, as they say, there are many opportunities to specialize in the law. You just have to find your niche.

The larger question Lozare's dispatch inspires is this: Is there any method to Dr. Dino's madness in having Mr. Richey as his lawyer? One precedent, of a literary kind, comes to mind: John Mortimer's classic radio play, The Dock Brief.

The play was later filmed and released under the title "Trial and Error" starring Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough. As Bosley Crowther explained in a New York Times review at the time of original release, the film, like the play on which it is based, is --

"[N]othing more than a long dialogue ... between a meek little man [played by Attenborough] accused of murdering his eternally cheerful wife and the ponderous and dull-witted barrister [Peter Sellers] assigned by the court to defend him.
* * *
"The humor is in the fumbling discourse, the clumsy clichés by which these two expose their pathetically dull backgrounds and their horribly middle-class minds.

"The law's a tricky business," Mr. Sellers sagely observes, and Mr. Attenborough, after some cogitation on that weighty observation, replies, with the profundity of a pundit, "It is a bit chancy, yes."

We can't find a full text version of the play on-line, but Wisconsin law professor John Kidwell's essay offers a deliciously detailed description of the plot and liberally quotes from the script of this hilarious satire of lawyers at their work:

"The Dock Brief ... gives new meaning to the phrase 'ineffective assistance of counsel.' It opens with Morgenhall, a barrister played by Peter Sellers, being admitted to the cell of a man who has been accused of murdering his wife. Morgenhall, we quickly learn, is an unsuccessful barrister who has been waiting for years for the court to assign him a case; in England such an assigned case is referred to as a 'dock brief' -- hence the name of the film. Morgenhall’s first dock brief -- and in fact, apparently, first case of any kind -- is the defense of the unfortunate Mr. Fowle, played by Richard Attenborough. Fowle is the meek proprietor of a birdseed shop who has killed his wife because she saw humor in everything, and her raucous laughter and practical jokes finally drove him over the edge.
* * *
Most of the film is set in Fowle’s cell, and consists of Morgenhall’s discussion with Fowle about the strategies to be employed to obtain Fowle’s acquittal, notwithstanding ... that Perry Mason, Clarence Darrow and Cicero working together couldn’t have succeeded in getting Fowle off.
* * *
Ordinarily we expect the client to be the victim of some predicament, who turns to the lawyer to be rescued. Here ... that assumption is turned on its head. Morgenhall the lawyer is the one who needs help lest his whole career be a complete failure. When Fowle admits his guilt Morgenhall suggests he is being selfish and inconsiderate.

Morgenhall [the lawyer]: You think you killed your wife.
Fowle [the defendant]: Seems to me.
Morgenhall: Mr. Fowle. Look at yourself objectively. On questions of birdseed I have no doubt you may be infallible -- but on a vital point like this might you not be mistaken . . . ? Don’t answer.
Fowle: Why not sir?
Morgenhall: Before you drop the bomb of a reply, consider who will be wounded. Are the innocent to suffer?
Fowle: I only want to be honest.
Morgenhall: But you’re a criminal, Mr. Fowle. You’ve broken through the narrow fabric of honesty. You are free to be kind, human, to do good.
Fowle: But what I did to her . . .
Morgenhall: She’s passed, you know, out of your life. You’ve set up new relationships. You’ve picked out me.

When the defendant gently points out that, in fact, he hadn't picked Morgenhall to defend him -- instead the court had assigned the lawyer to his case at random -- Morganhall is momentarily crushed. But he recovers quickly:

Morgenhall: Never mind. You hurt me temporarily, Fowle, I must confess. It might have been kinder to have kept me in ignorance. But now, it’s done. Let’s get down to business. And Fowle -
Fowle: Yes, sir.
Morgenhall: Remember, you’re dealing with a fellow man. A man no longer young. Remember the hopes I’ve pinned on you and try . . .
Fowle: Try?
Morgenhall: Try to spare me more pain.
Fowle: I will, sir. Of course I will.

And so it goes with the two of them, lawyer and client, sitting in the jail cell before trial as the lawyer Morgenhall tries out first one defense and then another, practices imaginary witness examinations, and dreams of delivering the clinching final argument that will win the day in court. With every exercise, however, the client gently, so as not to hurt the lawyer's feelings, points out there is no such witness as he has imagined exists. There is no evidence of his innocence, no reasoned basis for the lawyer's fantasies, because the defendant really did it.

In the end, it seems, the husband is convicted of killing his wife. It develops, as well, that his lawyer has thoroughly botched the trial. He cross-examined no one, he called no witnesses of his own. He was struck dumb before the jury when it came time for his summation.

Back in the cell after the jury has returned its verdict, the lawyer continues to be assailed by self-doubts while simultaneously yearning for his client to assuage them. From a hard copy of the play we happen to have on hand:

MORGENHALL: And then they called that doctor.
FOWLE: You were right not to bother with him.
MORGENHALL: Tactics, you see. We'd decided not to trouble with science.
FOWLE: So we had. And with Bateson . . .
MORGENHALL: No, Fowle. I must beware of your flattery. I think I might have asked Bateson . . .
FOWLE: It wouldn't have made a farthing's difference. A glance told them he was a demon.
MORGENHALL: He stood there, so big and red, with his no tie and dirty collar. I rose up to question him and suddenly it seemed as if there were no reason for us to converse. I remembered what you said about his jokes, his familiarity with your wife. What had he and I in common? I turned from him in disgust. I think that jury guessed the reason for my silence with friend Bateson.

As for the final argument:

MORGENHALL: I stood up, Mr. Fowle, and it was the moment I'd waited for. Ambition had driven me to it, the moment when I was alone with what I wanted. Everyone turned to me, twelve blank faces in the jury box, eager to have the grumpy looks wiped off them. The judge was silent. The prosecutor courteously pretended to be asleep. I only had to open my mouth and pour words out. What stopped me?
FOWLE: What?
Morgenhall: Fear. That's what's suggested.

Eventually, however, it dawns on Morgenhall that his client may not appreciate the gravity of what he supposes to be the court's judgment:

MORGENHALL: I lost, Mr. Fowle. You may not be aware of it. It may not have been hammered home to you yet. But your case is lost.
FOWLE: But there are ways and ways of losing.
MORGENHALL: That's true, of course.
FOWLE: I noticed your artfulness right at the start, when the policeman gave evidence. You pulled out that red handkerchief, slowly and deliberately, like a conjuring trick.
MORGENHALL: And blew?
FOWLE: A sad, terrible trumpet.
MORGENHALL: Unnerved him, I thought.
FOWLE: He never recovered. There was no call to ask questions after that.

The surprise comes when the lawyer at last notices that Fowle appears altogether too happy for a man who has just been convicted. As Prof. Kidwell describes the scene:

"Fowle, somewhat reluctantly, discloses that he is about to be released. When Morgenhall asks why, Fowle even more reluctantly admits it is because the trial has been ruled 'no good at all—it is all null and void—because the barrister selected for him was no good—an old crock.'

Morgenhall's incompetence, it seems, was the best defense of all.

FOWLE: Don't you see? If I'd had a barrister who asked questions and made clever speeches I'd be as dead as mutton. Your artfulness saved me... . The dumb tactics. They paid off! I'm alive!"

It seems improbable that here in Pensacola we will see Dr. Dino escape justice by relying on a similar collection of "dumb tactics" orchestrated by his out of state defense lawyer. Still, it isn't totally out of the question. As The Dock Brief defendant points out (above) to his own court-appointed lawyer, "There are ways and ways of losing."

Dr. Dino On God's Payroll

Up to bat with the latest Pensacola News Journal report about Dr. Dino's tax fraud trial is Nicole Lozare. With the excessive credulity she usually musters for any fantastic fable, Lozare again refers to Hovind, erroneously as we have hinted before, as a "tax protestor." Then she reports without a hint of irony:

"Despite a million-dollar business and speaking engagement earnings of nearly $50,000 a year, Pensacola evangelists Kent and Jo Hovind did not count the money as income.
* * *
Special IRS Agent Scott Schneider testified Monday that the couple denied that they had any income in numerous documents.
* * *
"Kent Hovind, a tax protester, makes a substantial amount of money. Schneider testified that in 2002, the ministry sold more than $1.8 million in Christian merchandise. But Hovind believes he and his employees work for God, are paid by God and, therefore, aren't subject to taxation."

It's difficult to believe Schneider actually testified that Hovind "believes" his own bull. More likely, what agent Schneider testified is that this is what Hovind claimed.

Maybe Lozare was just exhausted. She writes that Schneider was on the witness stand "for nearly eight hours," from which one can assume (because the reporter isn't saying) that the judge is making the lawyers work overtime after a week off due to a defense attorney's illness.

In any event, Hovind's substantial income didn't stop him or his wife from pleading poverty to a local medical establishment:

"'Dr. and Mrs. Kent Hovind do not earn salaries,' wrote Martha Harris, the trust secretary of Creation Science Evangelism to Baptist. 'As health insurance is not provided for this couple, we would appreciate (financial assistance.)'"

That little anecdote reminds us of a line from Edward Albee's great stage play about self-deception, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? One of the house guests, Nick, is explaining to George that he's financially set because he married a woman whose father was a traveling preacher. The preacher collected a fortune from Christian simpletons, he says, "And when he died there was a lot of money."

George asks, slightly mystified, but wasn't that "God's money?"

"No," says Nick, "He spent God's money and saved his own."

Dr. Dino's Pizza Party

It was always apparent that it would take a wicked combination of avarice, hubris, and stupidity for someone like Kent Hovind to bilk befuddled boobs out of their money by convincing them that god manufactured dinosaurs and mankind in the same week and airmailed them all to earth at the same time. Yesterday's testimony in the Dr. Dino trial proved that Hovind has all three dubious qualifications.

One of the PNJ's stalwarts, reporter Michael Stewart, has the story. It takes place "after church" two years ago when Hovind invited Seminole, Florida, attorney David Charles Gibbs "and his daughter, along with other church members... to Hovind's home for pizza and soda."

Gibbs, Stewart reports, "is affiliated with the Christian Law Association, a nonprofit organization founded by his father that offers free legal help to churches nationwide." But instead of picking Gibbs' brain for free advice about his many frivolous lawsuits and IRS troubles, Hovind spent the afternoon lecturing the lawyer on his own screwy legal theories:

"Gibbs said Hovind tried to persuade him he had no obligation to pay employee income taxes and explained with 'a great deal of bravado' how he had 'beat the tax system.'

Gibbs said Hovind also told him he preferred to deal in cash and that when you are 'dealing with cash there is no way to trace it, so it wasn't taxable.'"

Some measure of Dr. Dino's deranged view of himself can be gleaned from the analogies he pressed on Gibbs:

"'He tried to stress to me that he was like the pope and this was like the Vatican,' Seminole attorney David Charles Gibbs testified... ."

Now, the Vatican may consist of only 108 acres. But it is officially recognized by hundreds of diplomatic treaties as an independent nation. So, it's something of a hoot to learn that Hovind sees himself as the same kind of fellow as, say, Hildebrand (aka Pope Gregory VII - 1020?-1085), who excommunicated kings and emperors and fielded entire armies in his effort to fill the void left by the collapse of the Roman Empire with a religious theocracy stretching from Constantinople to London.

What's less amusing is to realize that Dr. Dino claims he is exempt from all uniform local, state, and federal tax laws simply because he asserts fruity ideas that are biblical in character. After all, to a secular realist Dr. Dino's religious ideas at a certain level of abstraction are no more outlandish or fantastical than those of other churches, religions, and faith-based organizations who have been bullying Congress and state legislatures into giving them special tax exemptions.

Just last week, the New York Times drew attention to this phenomenon with a four-part series on religious tax breaks. For online readers, most of the series is hidden behind Times Select (although you may be able to freely access a couple of them here and here. But you can get the flavor from the one installment that is still readable for free, titled "As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation":

"In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide 'war on religion' that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.

* * * {M]any have been granted in just the last 15 years — sometimes added to legislation, anonymously and with little attention, much as are the widely criticized 'earmarks' benefiting other special interests.

An analysis by The New York Times of laws passed since 1989 shows that more than 200 special arrangements, protections or exemptions for religious groups or their adherents were tucked into Congressional legislation, covering topics ranging from pensions to immigration to land use. New breaks have also been provided by a host of pivotal court decisions at the state and federal level, and by numerous rule changes in almost every department and agency of the executive branch.

The special breaks amount to 'a sort of religious affirmative action program,' said John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University law school.

Professor Witte added: 'Separation of church and state was certainly part of American law when many of today’s public opinion makers were in school. But separation of church and state is no longer the law of the land.'"

So, it would seem Dr. Dino isn't the only 'Christian' who's been throwing parties and angling for tax exemptions to subsidize his magical thinking. Everybody and anybody who embraces the same or similar irrational ideations has been getting into the act. The difference is, the smarter ones buy a few politicians, first, to earmark exemptions for them.

As the Times later editorialized when the series had concluded:

"Religious institutions should be protected from excessive intrusion by government. Judges should not tell churches who they have to hire as ministers, or meddle in doctrinal disputes. But under pressure from politically influential religious groups, Congress, the White House, and federal and state courts have expanded this principle beyond all reason. It is increasingly being applied to people, buildings and programs only tangentially related to religion.

"In its expanded form, this principle amounts to an enormous subsidy for religion, in some cases violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It also undermines core American values, like the right to be free from job discrimination. It puts secular entrepreneurs at an unfair competitive disadvantage. And it deprives states and localities of much-needed tax revenues, putting a heavier burden on ordinary taxpayers."

Pizza, anyone? The "atoms of carbon which enter into its composition," as T.H. Huxley would have reasoned had he known that Pizza Hut delivers, will taste just like the sacramental wafer -- only without the cheese.

The Confidential Informant

Prosecutors in the Dr. Dino tax evasion trial yesterday apparently tried to make it look like it was a Pensacola Christian College executive who blew the whistle on Kent Hovind's tax evasion scheme.

According to the tag-team news report by Angela Fail in the local paper, Christian College vice-president Rebekah Horton testified yesterday that it was she who informed on Dr. Dino and turned taped evidence over to the feds. As Fail succinctly explains:

"[Dr. Dino] Hovind believes he and his employees work for God, are paid by God and therefore aren't subject to taxation."

Here's the surprise: according to the news report, the Pensacola Christian College executive "believed it was the college's duty to report the misleading doctrine." Consequently, the PCC vice-president testified, "Administration called the Internal Revenue Service and gave the tape to officials... ."

"Misleading doctrine"? Good grief! If PCC faculty and staff see it as their "duty" to "report...misleading doctrine" they're going to be awfully busy turning in every magical thinker out there -- starting with the screwball faculty and staff at Pensacola Christian College itself.

The truth is, the feds really didn't need Horton's crime tip. Earlier reports establish that "Dr. Dino" and the U.S. Government had been thoroughly entangled, in court and out, for years. Kent Hovind has been filing frivolous lawsuits and bogus bankruptcy claims against the IRS for much of the last decade.

Moreover, videotapes of Hovind's multi-part seminar on why Christians of his particular flavor- of-choice lived alongside dinosaurs and shouldn't pay their taxes have been in the public domain for as long as Kent Hovind has been fleecing simpletons with his Dr. Dino act. Various copies are now available on the web.

In the third video segment of a 2003 'seminar' given in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Dr. Dino happens to make an admission against interest relevant to the ongoing trial. In fake-folksy introductory remarks while speaking of his wife and adult children, Hovind says:

"We live in Pensacola, Florida. We have three kids, all married, and the dog died. I made it -- I'm home free. It's wonderful. And all three of my kids work for me... ."

Take a look, if you don't mind risking the health of your brain. The admission comes at minute 1:04, so you don't have to watch all 3 hours of his hokum.

Tag-Teaming Dr. Dino's Trial

Apparently, the Pensacola News Journal intends to cover Dr. Dino's trial for tax evasion straight, no chaser. No H.L. Mencken to give us the colorful commentary; no 'kick, bounce, or leap' in the style of A.J. Liebling, no Runyonesque accounts of the certifiably weird characters in the Dr. Dino trial who surely rival the cast of the Daddy and Peaches soap opera.

Just the facts, ma'am?

Well, not quite. The paper seemingly has decided to use a tag-team of reporters, switching from one to the next with each passing day. It's a terrible decision, no doubt driven by Gannett Corporation's devastating cuts across the news room. But once made, you'd think the dwindling staff of PNJ reporters sentenced to cover the case would at least read the news dispatches filed by their predecessors before they rush off to court themselves.

Apparently not. Today's front-page, top-of-the-fold coverage of the tax evasion trial of Dr. Dino is the handiwork of reporter Amy Sowder. Somehow, she manages to drain even more blood and context from the event than did her colleague, Angela Fail, in yesterday's paper.

For proof, we submit Ms. Sowder's lede as Exhibit 1:

"Two people who worked for a Pensacola evangelist testified Wednesday in federal court that they didn't consider where they worked to be a church."

That's a two-fer. In a single opening sentence, Sowder has managed both to focus the reader's attention on the most irrelevant part of yesterday's testimony and to camouflage the most pertinent part.

Whether Dr. Dino's "Dinosaur Adventure Land" is a "church" or not is legally irrelevant to the charges he faces. As Angela Fail reported yesterday, prosecutor Michelle Heldmeyer explained it this way in her opening statement to the jury:

"...though the Hovinds refer to their business as a ministry, it's not affiliated with a church, she said.

"It's not a church," she said. "But that doesn't matter, because a church still has to pay payroll tax."

The camouflage starts with the headline -- "Workers Testify In 'Dr. Dino' Trial" -- and is repeated throughout Souder's dispatch. "Workers." That's a nice, neutral-sounding word. What Souder doesn't tell her readers is that she's using that word to avoid addressing a central issue in the trial: not whether "Dinosaur Adventure Land" is a church, but whether the people who were staffing it -- the "workers" -- are employees or independent contractors.

If the religious zealots who took money from a gullible public at Dr. Dino's emporium of ecclesiastical effluent were "employees" then Dr. Dino was required by law to secure and file W-4s, withhold payroll taxes, send out W-2 forms, and escrow both employee and employer Social Security taxes. If, instead, they were "independent contractors" then he wasn't.

The standards for resolving that issue are well known. As the IRS explains it on the web:

"In determining whether the person providing service is an employee or an independent contractor, all information that provides evidence of the degree of control and independence must be considered.
* * *
A general rule is that anyone who performs services for you is your employee if you can control what will be done and how it will be done.

Reporting facts without context is bad journalism. Even so, we'd be ready to forgive all if only the PNJ reporters would write their trial dispatches in a compelling or entertaining way.

But readers of the PNJ will search in vain through the past two days for any hint of what the witnesses really looked like on the witness stand. Did they sweat and shift uncomfortably in the seat as they came into the presence of the self-proclaimed "steward" of "god's money"? Did any of the jurors visibly react to the testimony? Is the judge keeping a tight rein on the proceedings? Or, instead, is she letting out leagues of loose rope with which Dr. Dino and his lawyers are invited to hang their own case?

Is there no moment of levity in the courtroom to break the tension among the lawyers? (That would be a first.) No quick exchange of Christ-like beatific smiles between Dr. Dino loyalists in the gallery who still believe god sent him something like a text-message to open up a commercial bank checking account and have "his employees to sign nondisclosure agreements if they wanted to keep their jobs"?

Little wonder serious people are asking if newspapers can survive the digital information age. The answer is: not if they report trials the way the News Journal is covering this one.

Dinosaur Trial Begins

The long-awaited trial of Dr. Dino has commenced. The jury has been sworn, the lawyers have delivered their opening statements. Today the evidence begins to pour in.

Angela Fail filed a workman-like story for the Pensacola News Journal. Very Journalism School, very balanced, very fair, very... well, prosaic and boring:

"Opening statements began Tuesday in the trial of Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo. Between them, the Hovinds are charged with 58 counts of tax fraud involving their Creation Science Ministry. The ministry includes Dinosaur Adventure Land on North Palafox Street, a creationist theme park dedicated to debunking evolution."

"Dedicated to debunking evolution?" Debunking? Kent Hovind is a mountebank who made millions off the ignorance and fear of an uneducated, timorous public by selling them the hallucinatory notion that the bible proves dinosaurs inhabited the earth at the same time as mankind. He no more 'debunks' evolution than the Wizard of Oz proves monkeys can fly.

Ms. Fail does okay setting up the prosecutor's story:

"Heldmeyer said from 1999 to March 2004, the Hovinds took in more than $5 million. Their income came from amusement-park profits and merchandise -- books, audiotapes and videotapes -- they sold on site and through phone and online orders, she said. About half the money went to employees."

Then she blew it by not reporting the context: what Hovind sells isn't "merchandise" -- it's pure baloney sandwiched between slices of claptrap and bunkum.

Angela! Loosen up, have some fun. More to the point, let us have some fun. Give us the smell of the courtroom, the smirk in the corner of that juror's pursed lips, the sight of the lawyer who takes mincing steps across the courtroom floor like someone whose shoes are too tight.

Wake up, Angela! This could be a career maker for you. Sure, it's a tax fraud case. Sure, you're looking ahead at a string of dreary days while soporous accountants and vapid IRS agents dutifully drone on and on about numbers without end. But your own trial reports shouldn't be equally torpid.

Take a clue from H.L. Mencken's timeless coverage of the Scopes "Monkey Trial." Look behind the curtain. Follow "the squirming and jabbering mass" out to the Hills of Zion. Tell us "to what extreme lengths the salvation of the local primates has been pushed." Let us know if the prosecutor's speech about taxing churches had the same effect as if she "had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan."

It might not conform to the usual journalism rules. Then again, apparently this isn't the usual kind of case. The defense attorneys already are complaining that when they executed a search warrant "IRS agents stepped outside their authority... interrogating employees and confiscating records and money."

Holy moley, no! Armed with a court-authorized search warrant, the agents actually "confiscated" potential evidence? How low can they go?

There seems to be enough hokum in this courtroom to fill a museum of natural history -- you know the kind we mean. A museum that shows dinosaurs in their natural habit grazing at the fast food window.

Indecent Trial Reporting

"Investigative reporters don't have a sense of humor. They can't afford one."

As we 'noted' the other day, after the latest round of reductions-in-force at the Pensacola News Journal, the unfortunates who remain in Gannett Corp.'s employ are being required to double-up, or worse, in journalism assignments. Increasingly, it seems, editors are sending them far afield from their usual beats to cover subjects about which the reporters couldn't care less -- or aren't competent to handle.

This doesn't make for an informed readership. But we have to admit, it is entertaining to watch.

Take two of today's front-page courtroom related stories. The first one was covered by Michael Stewart, one of the few left at the PNJ who justly might be considered a skilled investigative reporter. He was assigned to waste his talents reporting on the federal court prosecution of the "Christian" proselytizer Kent ("Dr. Dino") Hovind.

The second story was handed off to Nicole Lozare, who formerly malpracticed her trade on Pensacola Beach. This week, she was dispatched to the state courthouse to cover the trial of Janelle Bird, the 25 year-old school teacher who is accused of bedding a 15 year-old student of hers.

Time was when the Pensacola News Journal, aware of the rich veins of public policy -- not to mention local lunacy -- to be mined in the depths of local courthouses, hired actual trial-wise reporters for such stuff. No longer.

Neither of today's reporting assignments make much sense.

We've mentioned the Dr. Dino story before. Hovind and a fervent band of college students from Pensacola Christian College for some time, now, have been shaking down credulous simpletons by thumping on the Bible and telling them dinosaurs and mankind shared the earth together a few thousand years ago. Now, "Dr. Dino" and his wife have been charged in a 58-count indictment with failing to pay nearly half a million dollars in income taxes, employer Social Security withholding, and Medicare employment deductions.

Hovind raked in the money and stiffed the callow college kids at "Dinosaur Adventure Land," a pathetic backyard of a house he festooned with ridiculous-looking yard ornaments and playground equipment resembling cartoon dinosaurs. Then, he started charging money to see them and buy his propaganda books.

Now, "Dr. Dino" claims all that money really belongs to God and he is merely guarding it from the Darwin-loving grasp of the IRS.

The latest twist in this hilarious tale is that Hovind, based on various cockamamie constitutional arguments, is demanding that the federal court return his passport while he's out on bail so he can fly to South Africa next month. The trip was planned, as Stewart writes, so Dr. Dino could "'square off against several luminaries who hail from different scientific disciplines,' according to the Web site for Power Ministries."

He'll hurry back for the trial. Yeah, sure. As long as God buys him a return ticket.

Much as we appreciate his talents, this courtroom story doesn't deserve heavy artillery like Michael Stewart. It needs a comedy writer.

As is well known in the world of journalism, investigative reporters don't have a sense of humor. They can't afford one. Otherwise, they'd be giggling all the way through the interviews with crooked public officials, hypocritical politicians, and randy religious leaders caught with their hands in the till or up the skirts of parishioners.

As for the Nicole Lozare story, the inappropriateness of sending her to cover a court trial of any kind should be evident to anyone who knows her work. She lacks the substantive knowledge, listening skills, and critical thinking ability to report on anything more serious than a beach bathtub race.

But -- who'd a thunk it? -- Nicole does have a talent. As a steamy romance writer! Get this lede:

Tears rolling down her face, a former teacher who faces up to 60 years in prison testified there was nothing lewd and lascivious about her relationship with her 15-year-old student -- just love.

Janelle Bird, 25, said she loved him so much that, despite a Pensacola Christian College education that preached against premarital sex, she gave him her virginity.

"Gave him her virginity?" If that's a quote from the defendant's testimony, you'd think Nicole would have given her readers some sort of clue -- like quotation marks, for instance. Perhaps she feared that doing so would make it seem, to borrow Lynn Truss' words, like "a kind of linguisitic rubber glove, distancing [herself] from vulgar words [she] is too refined to use in a normal way."

Apart from the steamy prose, obscurantism, and the (yet another) example of Lozare's carelessness with quotations, she seems to have missed entirely the story-behind-the story. According to Lozare, the teacher --

didn't deny that she had sex with the teen nearly a dozen times in August and October. But she denied that it was lewd and lascivious.

Now, here is where a real trial reporter might have done some good. What on earth is the defense doing? Why would the accused teacher take the stand and testify so explicitly to her long-running affair with a 15 year-old male student? Why would the defense lawyer let her? Don't they watch Law & Order?

These are questions we imagine most readers are asking themselves today. They have to ask because these questions don't seem to have occurred to Nicole Lozare.

Could it be that the Florida Supreme Court has "reserved" approving a standard jury instruction for "lewd" and "lascivious" to share with juries? Might it be that the state's statutory definitions of those words are vague and even contradictory? Even on-line dictionaries offer what some could argue are incompatible definitions of lewd ("lustful" or "indecent") and "lascivious" ("expressing lust" or "salacious").

Add to that the fact that the whole of the "common law of England" -- we're talking over seven centuries of judicial decisions, now -- is expressly made part of Florida criminal law by the very first section (775.01) of the Florida Criminal Code, and you can begin to see there may be some method to the madness of having the defendant testify that, sure, she had an affair. So what?

At the least, there seems to be enough confusion in Florida law over what "lewd" and "lascivious" mean that even a linguist would have trouble reaching a reasoned judgment. Even if the jury eventually throws out whatever definitions the court may give it and concludes -- as Justice Potter Stewart once did about what constitutes obscenity -- that they know lewd and lascivious when they see them, it's a good bet there will be protracted appeals to higher courts.

Is that what the defense has in mind? We can't be sure. The reporter covering this trial isn't saying.

Dr. Dino, Tax Free

"If the leaseholders' tax suit fails, maybe we can have another go by declaring beach life a religion and Pensacola Beach the promised land. After all, there is plenty of scriptural support."

Jennifer Liberto reported in yesterday's St. Petersburg Times that the Florida legislature is seriously considering passing a new statute which would award a property tax exemption to "A biblical theme park in Orlando where guests pay $30 admission to munch on "Goliath" burgers and explore reproductions of 2000-year-old tombs and temples... ."

"So far," Liberto reports, "there doesn't appear to be any organized opposition to the bill, which sailed through a Senate committee Tuesday with no debate."

The Senate bill is being promoted by state senator Daniel Webster R-Orange County) , who is chairman -- chairman! -- of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A similar bill is being sponsored in the Florida House by Rep. Frederick Brummer (R-Orange County), chairman of the House Tax and Finance Committee.

Obviously, these two guys are heavy hitters in the mental ward known as the Florida legislature. They also must be colossal dumbbells.

Even the "director of ministries" for "Creation Science Evangelism" recognizes the proposed exemption "should be a little more broad in scope and not even limit it to Christians. That seems a little discriminatory."

It isn't clear to us, either, why one faith-based theme park should be exempt from taxes and tens of thousands of others not. There's just as much scientific evidence that Mickey Mouse married Minnie after getting her pregnant as there is that the Earth was created in six days, with one day off for good behavior. Or, for that matter, that 72 virgins await you in heaven. There are countless other myths and magical thoughts from world religions that could become a tax-free theme park.

Creationist nuts already are starting to fall out of the trees in their haste to get aboard this legislative gravy train. Liberto reports that among them is Pensacola's very own alleged "religious theme park," Dinosaur Adventure Land (“Where dinosaurs and the Bible meet!”).

Dino Land, as it is known locally, is run by Kent ("Dr. Dino") Hovind. Hovind has been described by some as a "creationist and tax dodger". He describes himself as one of the leading authorities on "Science and the Bible." More than you'd ever want to know about him is available at Carl Marychurch's web site named, appropriately, Analysis of Kent Hovind.

The 'doctor' part comes from a degree awarded by something called "Patriot University" in Colorado. PU, so it has been reported, charges $100 for a Ph.D.

The "tax dodger" part stems from Dr. Dino's well publicized run-ins with the law , other bizarre court cases, and his attempted bankruptcy filing, which was dismissed for being filed in "bad faith."

In a November 2004 profile by Greg Martinez, Hovind's Dino Land was revealed to be not much more than a "converted backyard ... stuffed full of children’s games and playground equipment . . . and lots of fiberglass dinosaurs." The essential "theme" of this "park" is that the Earth is no more than 6,000 years old, God created mankind and dinosaurs at the same time, and Noah left the big dinosaurs behind to be drowned in the Big Flood but took a few small ones aboard -- which, we are assured, "explains Bigfoot."

Inside the visitor center, an investigator for Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center -- the same heroic organization that put Richard Butler's "Aryan Nation" out of business in Idaho, as Firedoglake coincidentally reminisces today -- found a bookstore selling:

various books on "Evolution and the New World Order." (At least one of them, Fourth Reich of the Rich, alleges a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.) * * * Citizens Rule Book, popular among antigovernment "Patriots"; Media Bypass, an antigovernment magazine with strong anti-Semitic leanings; and titles by America's leading authority on tax-dodging... .

It isn't particular clear to us why Florida should grant a tax exemption to one myth-based religious theme park and deny it to others. But Pensacola Beach residents should pay attention, anyway.

If the leaseholders' tax suit fails, maybe we can have another go by declaring beach life a religion and Pensacola Beach the promised land. After all, there is plenty of scriptural support, starting with Genesis 1:6:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Water on two sides. Firmament in between. Sounds to us like it ought to be a tax-free Holy Land Theme Park.

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Dept. of Amplification
Sharp-eyed Bryan points out in the reader comments, below, that just this week Dino Land was ordered shuttered by a state circuit court judge. The story was carried in today's PNJ, of all things.

Here's a snippet:

Owners of the park, which shows how dinosaurs may have roamed the Earth just a few thousand years ago, did not obtain a building permit before constructing the building in 2002. They have argued in and out of court that it violates their "deeply held" religious beliefs, and that the church-run facility does not have to obtain permits.

After almost four years of litigation, the judge disagreed and said the county has the authority to close the building until the owners comply with regulations.

The judge also fined two church leaders $500 each per day for every day the building is used or occupied. If church officials continue to refuse to comply with local ordinances, the judge may decide that the building can be razed, Allen's ruling said.

County commissioners showed no sympathy to members of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry who spoke out Thursday night at a commission meeting about the county's actions.

"Scripture also says 'Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.' And right now, Caesar demands a building permit," County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said.

Whaddaya bet we haven't heard the last of Dr. Dino and 'Caesar' Mike Whitehead?