Kent's in the dock; will God get him out?

We're in for heavy doses of high comedy and rollicking entertainment over the next — well, however long it takes to find him guilty — as creationist pest and tax cheat Kent Hovind goes on trial, with his wife, for failure to pay nearly half a million dollars owed to the IRS.

Hovind's defense is taking a comical "taxes? what taxes?" tack. They're claiming poor innocent Kent was entirely ignorant of the many laws he's broken, which is kind of like a kid, when caught by his mom stashing porno magazines under his mattress, frantically claiming they're not his and he doesn't know where they came from.

We also get heaping, hilarious doses of the common fundamentalist practice of calling things by other names, in the hope they'll actually become those renamed things. Hovind claims his Dinosaur Adventure Land park had no employees, simply kind-hearted, godly "volunteers" who came over, did work, and got given a "love offering" that just happened to take the form of cash money. See, calling a wage a "love offering" magically makes it no longer a wage! So you don't have to put it on the books, you see. Or at least, that's how it works in Hovind's alternate universe.

I wish this was going to be televised. I cannot wait to hear the prosecutor shred poor Kent's claims of well-meaning innocence. For one thing, hasn't anyone who's been pulled over for an illegal U-turn already heard the phrase — all together now, kids — "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" from just about any motorcycle cop alive? And for Kent and his wife to have a number of just-under-$10K (the level where banks have to report the transaction) cash withdrawals on record, all the while trying to claim he just didn't know any of this was against the law, should make for the most consistent round of belly-laughs since Monty Python went off the air.

This guy has been daring the IRS to come after him for years. He's gotten his wish. Time to sit back and watch the fun.

Oh yeah, one more thing. It occurs to me that this might be the opportunity Christians everywhere have been waiting for; the final proof of God's existence that will decisively shut up atheists and annoying libruls around the globe. If God really supports the work Kent is doing in His name, it seems all He'd have to do is put in a surprise appearance in court, demand the prosecutors lay off, declare Kent's infantile brand of young-earth creationism to be true, and settle the issue once and for all, leading America to the great spiritual revival the fundamentalists have been working toward for the last several years.

Then again, if Kent goes up the river, it could just mean that God chose him to be a martyr for the Word. Drat those unfalsifiable propositions! I knew there was a reason science worked and nutbars like Hovind can only desperately scramble at lies for their pitiful salvation.