What Coppage needs to do is find a way to be less annoying to his co-workers. That is his real failing — the one he refuses to change. Coppage worked his way up to a management position, so he obviously has skills. If he had learned to keep his opinions more to himself or at least saved them for outside of work hours, he probably would’ve been more valuable to keep around or likely find employment with one of the private space venture companies.

That means no tax money can be spent on, for or against ANY religious activity, and that specifically prohibits public schools from advocating religious beliefs such as creationism and intelligent design. It does NOT mean public school students can’t pray privately or form after-school religious clubs as that would violate their right to practice religion. Nor does it prohibit teaching classes ABOUT the religions of the world as long as they’re not actually advocated. Otherwise it wouldn’t even be legal to teach Greek mythology, but it obviously is.

Now there are people (such as the Discovery Institute) who claim with a straight face that intelligent design is somehow different from creationism, and that the name change isn’t just a cynical attempt to get around the First Amdentment and into science classrooms where it doesn’t belong. But judges aren’t quite that stupid, especially one judge in particular: John E. Jones III of the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He wrote such a good opinion on Katzmiller v. Dover Area School District that the Discovery Institute hasn’t been heard from quite as much since.

The ID people have tried to play both sides of this game for far too long.