The Sentence
Well, that was quick. Not even twenty minutes after I had posted that I was waiting for news of the Hovind sentencing, it turned up:
Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.I can't say as I'm disappointed in the sentence at all. Serving time for all of the charges concurrently would have only resulted in about a fourteen year max (and being realistic, no one in their right mind thought he'd actually get the sentences ordered consecutively for a 280 year total), so he's pretty close.
After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:
-- Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
-- Pay the prosecution's court costs of $7,078.
-- Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.
Hovind's wife, Jo Hovind, also was scheduled to be sentenced. Rodgers postponed her sentencing until March 1 to allow her defense attorney an opportunity to argue possible discrepancies in sentencing guidelines.
There is, however, one part that really irks me:
Prior to his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind, also known as "Dr. Dino" asked for the court's leniency.Yeah, asshole. You broke the law, and then tearfully volunteered your flock to pay your fines for you. Very fucking big of you.
"If it's just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach," Hovind said.
I seriously hope this wakes a few people up, but sadly I doubt it will.
26 Package(s) of Returned Poo:
I wonder if hovind will find some dinosaurs in jail?
I wonder if he's going to a minimum security white-collar prison or a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison?
"Bend over, Dr. Dino. It's time to feel God's love."
Federal prison. IRS cases are in federal court. I suppose when he's done with that Florida could probably charge him as well, unless they don't have a state income tax there...
"If it's just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach
What a fucking worm. How dare he? Hasn't he cheated enough money out of enough innocent people? Seriously, WHAT a worm.
Jake, that's mildly insulting to worms. I like our annelid, nematode and various outher vermiform friends, and I don't think any of them would try such a lame, stupid plea in front of a judge.
But I do agree with your sentiment. Hovind is a loser; I hope his 'flock' abandons his pathetic idiocy.
*** topic shift ***
This blog has a weird formatting messup happening on my computer. The sidebar and all posts older than a few days ago are just gone. There's nothing there at all. I'm using I.E. 7 (yes, yes, tool of MicroSoft, blah blah blah), but I'm not getting this problem anywhere else (e.g., other blogs on blogger).
What a jackass. I'm glad he got sentenced, since offering the money of his followers is a really slimy thing to do.
non-sequitor: my word verification today made me think of fruit!
thebrummell:
Yeah, me too. I don't get the sidebar anymore or any posts older than the beginning of January. (I, too, use IE7)
Regarding Hovind's slimy statement. Isn't this really to be expected? Just look at the entire conservative culture from the last decade. It is entirely made up of people who screw up royally (totally of their own intention) and then blame everyone else under the sun. Only to beg for help from everyone else. As a tragic example, just consider how many warmongers on the right scream "support the troops" but then insist other people go do the heavy lifting.
Hovind isn't uniquely disgusting, he is nothing but one garden-variety conservative in a long line of partakers of this "ethic".
as a side thought:
From now on, whenever I write about YECs, I can now truthfully write something along the lines of this:
"This [Insert person or group here] is using a similar argument made by convicted felon Kent "Dr Dino" Hovind"
You can, Jeff, but it's intellectually dishonest. Like someone with a Ph.D. in Sociology calling themselved Dr. I R Butthead, Ph.D. when promoting their magic weight-loss pills, you know? True, but violating Grice's maxim of relation
Every time I think of Kent Hovind in a PMITA prison I get this little frisson of schadenfreude that nearly makes me feel shame. Nearly.
Being sentenced to jail for being a weasel of the highest order is the best thing that could have happened to him.
Second best was his treatment on da Ali G Show.
And yet he still has his defenders. Boggles the mind doesn't it?
Damn Internet Explorer anyway. There's nothing corrupted in the coding that I can see off-hand, and it shows up just fine in Firefox. The only thing I can think is that when I finally got off my ass and claimed my owner shares on Blogshares, I had to paste in the code for their button to display and I only republished the index files after that. I'll republish the whole thing right now and if that doesn't cure the problem, let me know and I'll dig a little deeper...
Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/kent_hovind_10_years.php) has a comment from someone at "Shelley the Republican" - I didn't go there but I think it's a group blog, where this asshat says:
"A quick review of the case show that the federal court unfairly denied Hovind's sensible and truthful defence: Kent owes no tax because everything he "owns" is really property of God. This is a fact that we would all do well to remember!" (original and link in the pharyngula post). Maybe the IRS should start investigating someone else?
Word in PZ's comments is that Shelley is a not-so-obvious satire. It seems over-the-top enough that I'm willing to grant that. Plus somebody found an archived page that had been removed from the site identifying it as such.
Jake,
Its certainly crass and suggestive, but I don't believe for one minute its intellectually dishonest.
For example:
Dr Dino thinks humans walked the earth with dinosaurs
AiG thinks humans walked the earth with dinosaurs
If I were to post about AiG and their new museum (which has a display of adam and eve walking with dinosaurs), and I mention convicted felon Hovind, I'm merely making an association based on identical notions. I am not, however, making any statements saying that AiG is also committing tax fraud.
Like I said, crass, but truthful through and through. They both have the same idea, and I merely added another truthful statement as a descriptor to hovind.
(For the record, I doubt I'll actually ever do that, but its fun nontheless to consider)
No, what I'm saying is that his commission of tax fraud is not relevant to the truth value of his views about the origins of animals. So saying that he's a convicted felon in arguments about creationism is just a reversal of argument from authority.
RE:
"Bend over, Dr. Dino. It's time to feel God's love."
Hovind might be happy that dinosaurs don't exist in prison.
This is true only if Jeff uses "convicted felon" as a reason that Hovind is wrong in his scientific claims. If it is merely an aside, it is, as Jeff said, crass and a bit rude, but a truthful statement. It might be seen as disingenuous if not accompanied with a disclaimer (i.e. "Hovind's felon status is not related to his inaccuracies, it's just fun to mention") but so long as its not the premise of an argument, it's not intellectually dishonest. As you said, it is "not relevant to the truth value of his views about the origins of animals," and so as an aside, it's logically neutral.
As you said, it is "not relevant to the truth value of his views about the origins of animals," and so as an aside, it's logically neutral.
I don't think it is. When someone like Bill Dembsky says of an engineer or mathematician "Dr. Dumbum, with a Ph.D. from MIT, agrees that ID is a likely and plausible hypothesis" we rightly call him on his dishonesty in implying (despite not saying explicitly) that Dr. Dumbum's Ph.D. is relevant to the discussion. Equally, saying "Kent Hovind, convicted felon, believes in Young Earth Creationism." is dishonestly implying (despite not saying explicitly) that Hovind's criminal status is relevant.
OTOH, Hovind's particular crime (tax evasion) may point to certain aspects in his personality (such as greediness, delusions of grandeur, and a willingness to be dishonest, and a desire to get others to give him money he doesn't deserve) that may speak to his reliability in other matters.
There's still no sidebar or older posts in IE. In Firefox it works fine, true, but I don't like Firefox, so I only use it when I absolutely have to. The whole "free-is-better" ethic just pisses me off the way all dirty hippies do.
[/cartman]
I use FireFox because it is TEH UBER BR0WS3R!
Being free is just a bonus.
On the sidebar issue, I'm still using IE 6, and I don't get the sidebar, either. I checked going to the individual entries for some posts (like this one), and the sidebar shows up there, if that helps track down the problem.
As a webmaster for a couple sites, myself, I'll give the obvious advice - always check your pages on multiple browsers, and if you've made a big change, see if you can get some of your friends to check it on other systems (Mac, Linux, PC), as well. And try your best to maintain backwards compatibility. Checking my logs this month, I'm still getting visitors using IE 4.0 and Netscape 3.0.
Okay, I checked it with IE 6 (I do have it on the computer... I just haven't bothered to use it ever since I grabbed Firefox) and I'm showing the same issue. That pretty much narrows it down to the BlogShares coding, since that's the last thing I did to the template and that's precisely when complaints started coming in. I'll move a few things around and see what happens...
Now I've gotta admit I'm stumped... apparently the problem isn't where I thought it was. Any suggestions would be great...
Nevermind... I found the culprit. Now it's time to figure out how to make it workable.
It really is poisoning the well when saying that Hovind is a felon has some sort of bearing on his views on Evolution. One has nothing to do with the other. Yes he's a fucking moron and a liar when he stands up and spews the spewings he does, but being a tax evader doesn't immediately make him wrong in his views. Being wrong makes him wrong.
If you are discussing his character then you can bring up both because they both show what a slime ball he is.
For what it's worth, I agree that it's an intellectually dishonest tactic to mention Dr. Dino's conviction in passing when referring to his 'scientific' views. The implication that he is a bad person and therefore wrong/not to be trusted, will be attached to the statement whether you actally say it or not.
That said, if someone is discussing the moral character of ID supporters Vs. Atheists or something, feel free to bring it up. I sure will.
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