This is beyond belief ...
Senators Sessions and Kyl Demand Answers on Obama's Negotiations with Iran-Backed Terrorist and Release of a Terrorist Responsible for Murdering U.S. Troops [Andy McCarthy]
The Washington Times has the story this morning, here.
My column on this disgrace is here.
I realize the media is in the tank for this president, but this is the most shocking story we have had in a steady stream of shock since the start of the Obama presidency. Will no one ask about why we have released an Iran-backed terrorist who is responsible for the 2007 abduction/murder of our troops (five murdered, four of them after being kidnapped) in Karbala?
The administration, if anyone bothers to ask, will undoubtedly spout nonsense about promoting "Iraqi reconciliation." But this is a terrorist who murdered Americans — an unlawful combatant who committed war crimes. Even if that were not true, it's absurd to suggest that releasing the leaders of a terrorist network is going to promote peace in Iraq — does Obama think we should release the Blind Sheikh, the embassy bombers, or KSM to promote a peaceful settlement with al-Qaeda? But even if it were not absurd on its face, the Iraqi interest here is not the paramount interest for us; terrorists who methodically target and kill Americans, and whom we capture, are supposed to be tried and executed or imprisoned by us. We don't release them for the benefit of other countries, and we certainly don't barter them for hostages — in violation of American policy and common sense — because that endangers our troops, our civilians, and our allies.
Why are we still in negotiations with an Iran-backed terror network to release the network's leaders? Even if that were not a stupid idea on its face, have we learned nothing from the last go-round? In exchange for the terrorist described above, we got back two dead bodies of British hostages — i.e., not even the five live British hostages whose freedom we were foolishly hoping to secure.
Finally, why is this being done at a time when the Iranian regime is not only murdering and repressing its own population but, as Michael (Ledeen) pointed out yesterday, is continuing to support and train terrorists to kill American military personnel in Iraq?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Ricci Case post game analysis; Sotomayor; Supreme Court
Good editorial from NRO:
Reckoning with Ricci [NRO Staff]
Our editorial this morning:
The Supreme Court ended its term on Monday by ruling that the City of New Haven’s intentional discrimination against 20 mostly white firefighters — denying them promotions after they had received the highest grades on qualifying examinations — violated federal law. Honoring the principle of equality under the law, the Court’s much-anticipated decision in Ricci v. DiStefano awarded judgment in favor of the firefighters, reversing lower court rulings that had peremptorily dismissed the case.
The Court also honored the principle of judicial restraint. The ruling, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the Court’s conservative bloc (Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito), resolved the case strictly under the governing statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1991. The justices left for another day the core constitutional question of whether the Civil Rights Act’s “disparate impact” provisions — which sometimes require race-conscious remedies — are valid under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
The decision is a sharp rebuke for Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter when the Supreme Court convenes in October. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion that was joined by the Court’s three other reliable liberals (Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer), and thus administration spinners are already whirring about how the 5-4 majority purportedly shows that Sotomayor’s handling of the case was in the mainstream.
That rhetorical sleight of hand, however, misstates both the facts and the nature of the complaint against Sotomayor.The only consensus the nine justices found was that the handling of case by Sotomayor’s three-judge appeals-court panel was shoddy. Even the four dissenting justices agreed that the Second Circuit applied the wrong legal standard.
The majority was less charitable, rehearsing the machinations by which the lower courts tried to bury the firefighters’ discrimination claims: While conceding evidence of intentional discrimination, a district judge disposed of the claims in an unpublished order, which Sotomayor’s panel then rubber-stamped in an unpublished summary order of its own. That maneuver prompted a withering protest from Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, a highly respected Clinton appointee, who was startled at his court’s cavalier treatment of such profound legal issues.
Judge Cabranes was prophetic. Even without reaching the constitutional question at the heart of the dispute, the case generated four opinions, totaling 93 pages, from the nation’s highest court. Sotomayor had not thought the claims worth discussing at all. Furthermore, that Sotomayor had reached the wrong result was never the main point of contention. It was her frivolous manner of addressing weighty issues — evidence that, as Edward Whelan observed at NRO’s Bench Memos, “the ugly flip side of [Sotomayor’s] selective empathy towards certain favored litigants is selective antipathy towards disfavored litigants.”
Obviously, the decision is bad news for both Sotomayor supporters and New Haven officials, who (as detailed in a hair-raising concurrence by Justice Alito) worked frantically behind the scenes to kill the promotional test results in order to appease influential agitators in New Haven’s black community. Regrettably, businesses across America will also be left unhappy. The ruling, at best, will merely refine future discrimination litigation, not end it. Thanks to the courts and Congress, this area is a morass.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 targeted intentional discrimination — that is, disparate treatment in employment opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It did not encompass disparate-impact-discrimination theory, the notion that illegal discrimination should be inferred, even in those cases in which illicit intent cannot be discovered, if employer actions cause outcomes that are uneven by race or the other suspect categories. Disparate-impact discrimination was concocted by the Supreme Court in 1971 and, unfortunately, codified two decades later when President George H. W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (over this magazine’s objections).
The act’s internal contradictions put employers in a pincer. The law mandates race-conscious remedies if disparate impact suggests discrimination, yet it also prohibits intentional discrimination in employment decisions. An employer must fear being sued both if he unintentionally discriminates and if he takes curative steps that are race-conscious.
Today’s ruling clarifies that the mere fear of being sued will not justify an employer’s intentional discrimination unless there is a “strong basis in evidence” to believe the employer will be liable under disparate-impact discrimination principles. But it won’t make such lawsuits much less frequent or less prohibitively expensive. And for many of these suits, it won’t make resolution any easier. It may be straightforward enough when, as in Ricci, an employer appears to be citing disparate-impact concerns as a pretext to avoid provoking a powerful political constituency. But in other cases, the employer will not be acting pretextually — he will be motivated to take race-conscious remedial action because he fears, in good faith, being found liable.
That is, this case does not settle whether governments can ever be justified in requiring intentional discrimination to address disparate impact — can ever be justified, that is, in picking winners and losers according to race rather than merit — given the Constitution’s command of equal protection. It was proper for the justices to sidestep that question this time. But as Justice Scalia pointed out in his concurrence, the question can’t be sidestepped forever.
Reckoning with Ricci [NRO Staff]
Our editorial this morning:
The Supreme Court ended its term on Monday by ruling that the City of New Haven’s intentional discrimination against 20 mostly white firefighters — denying them promotions after they had received the highest grades on qualifying examinations — violated federal law. Honoring the principle of equality under the law, the Court’s much-anticipated decision in Ricci v. DiStefano awarded judgment in favor of the firefighters, reversing lower court rulings that had peremptorily dismissed the case.
The Court also honored the principle of judicial restraint. The ruling, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the Court’s conservative bloc (Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito), resolved the case strictly under the governing statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1991. The justices left for another day the core constitutional question of whether the Civil Rights Act’s “disparate impact” provisions — which sometimes require race-conscious remedies — are valid under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
The decision is a sharp rebuke for Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter when the Supreme Court convenes in October. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion that was joined by the Court’s three other reliable liberals (Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer), and thus administration spinners are already whirring about how the 5-4 majority purportedly shows that Sotomayor’s handling of the case was in the mainstream.
That rhetorical sleight of hand, however, misstates both the facts and the nature of the complaint against Sotomayor.The only consensus the nine justices found was that the handling of case by Sotomayor’s three-judge appeals-court panel was shoddy. Even the four dissenting justices agreed that the Second Circuit applied the wrong legal standard.
The majority was less charitable, rehearsing the machinations by which the lower courts tried to bury the firefighters’ discrimination claims: While conceding evidence of intentional discrimination, a district judge disposed of the claims in an unpublished order, which Sotomayor’s panel then rubber-stamped in an unpublished summary order of its own. That maneuver prompted a withering protest from Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, a highly respected Clinton appointee, who was startled at his court’s cavalier treatment of such profound legal issues.
Judge Cabranes was prophetic. Even without reaching the constitutional question at the heart of the dispute, the case generated four opinions, totaling 93 pages, from the nation’s highest court. Sotomayor had not thought the claims worth discussing at all. Furthermore, that Sotomayor had reached the wrong result was never the main point of contention. It was her frivolous manner of addressing weighty issues — evidence that, as Edward Whelan observed at NRO’s Bench Memos, “the ugly flip side of [Sotomayor’s] selective empathy towards certain favored litigants is selective antipathy towards disfavored litigants.”
Obviously, the decision is bad news for both Sotomayor supporters and New Haven officials, who (as detailed in a hair-raising concurrence by Justice Alito) worked frantically behind the scenes to kill the promotional test results in order to appease influential agitators in New Haven’s black community. Regrettably, businesses across America will also be left unhappy. The ruling, at best, will merely refine future discrimination litigation, not end it. Thanks to the courts and Congress, this area is a morass.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 targeted intentional discrimination — that is, disparate treatment in employment opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It did not encompass disparate-impact-discrimination theory, the notion that illegal discrimination should be inferred, even in those cases in which illicit intent cannot be discovered, if employer actions cause outcomes that are uneven by race or the other suspect categories. Disparate-impact discrimination was concocted by the Supreme Court in 1971 and, unfortunately, codified two decades later when President George H. W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (over this magazine’s objections).
The act’s internal contradictions put employers in a pincer. The law mandates race-conscious remedies if disparate impact suggests discrimination, yet it also prohibits intentional discrimination in employment decisions. An employer must fear being sued both if he unintentionally discriminates and if he takes curative steps that are race-conscious.
Today’s ruling clarifies that the mere fear of being sued will not justify an employer’s intentional discrimination unless there is a “strong basis in evidence” to believe the employer will be liable under disparate-impact discrimination principles. But it won’t make such lawsuits much less frequent or less prohibitively expensive. And for many of these suits, it won’t make resolution any easier. It may be straightforward enough when, as in Ricci, an employer appears to be citing disparate-impact concerns as a pretext to avoid provoking a powerful political constituency. But in other cases, the employer will not be acting pretextually — he will be motivated to take race-conscious remedial action because he fears, in good faith, being found liable.
That is, this case does not settle whether governments can ever be justified in requiring intentional discrimination to address disparate impact — can ever be justified, that is, in picking winners and losers according to race rather than merit — given the Constitution’s command of equal protection. It was proper for the justices to sidestep that question this time. But as Justice Scalia pointed out in his concurrence, the question can’t be sidestepped forever.
Honduras "Coup" - Obama, Hilary quickly line up w/ Castro, Chavez
Really revolting if you ask me. Obama is very quick to "meddle" in Honduras (or Israel), as opposed to, say, Iran. It is so obvious that the man at the very least has very strong leftist empathies that are troubling, to say the least.
Comments:
newtgingrich Having castro call for defending democracy should convince any reasonable person that honduras was on the edge of a leftist dictatorship.
newtgingrich Sadly the obama administration has joined castro and chavez attacking honduran supreme court and congress for defending their constitution
Comments:
newtgingrich Having castro call for defending democracy should convince any reasonable person that honduras was on the edge of a leftist dictatorship.
newtgingrich Sadly the obama administration has joined castro and chavez attacking honduran supreme court and congress for defending their constitution
Honduras [Andy McCarthy]
IBD has a great editorial, and Pete Wehner makes characteristically keen observations about Obama's selective meddling at Contentions.
I have a couple of questions. Now that the president has decided it's okay to meddle in Honduras (where they are fighting to keep preserve their democracy against the Chávez-style thug who Obama wants to re-install) but not Iran (where thousands of Iranians who seek democracy are being killed, maimed and jailed by a regime which has been at war with the United States for 30 years), the president's tack is to say that Honduras's action in removing Zelaya is "not legal."
What on earth makes Obama think he knows better about what is legal under the law of Honduras than the Supreme Court of Honduras and the law-writing legislature of Honduras?
The Honduran military acted after Zelaya defied an order by that nation's highest court which pronounced his coup attempt illegal; he has been replaced under a Honduran legal process by that nation's Congress, which essentially impeached him and democratically voted in a successor.
That sounds pretty legal to me. I am the first to admit I am not an expert in Honduran law, but I'd bet the Honduran Supreme Court has a better grasp on it than President Obama. On the issue of what is legal in Honduras, as between Hugo Chávez and the Honduran Supreme Court, our president has decided to go with Chávez.
Secondly, as IBD notes, the Obama administration is now "threatening to halt its $200 million in U.S. aid, immigration accords and a free-trade treaty if it doesn't put the criminal Zelaya back into office."
Can someone explain to me how it is that Obama is willingly giving $900M to Hamastan (i.e., the jihadist-controlled Gaza strip) but would pull back a comparative pittance of aid in order to penalize a poor country in our own hemisphere for trying to preserve its democracy against a would-be left-wing dictator?
Charles Krauthammer:
Well, the president has a knack for getting all of these big decisions wrong. Two weeks ago, he refuses to meddle in a country where peaceful demonstrators are getting shot by a theocratic dictatorship. He doesn't want to choose sides.
And now he's eager to meddle on behalf of the president in Honduras who is a Chavez wannabe, who is strong-arming his way to a referendum—that has been declared illegal by his Supreme Court—as a way to...establish a constituent assembly which will establish a new constitution, which will be a Chavez-like dictatorship.
That's what everybody understands in Honduras, and that's why the Supreme Court had ruled the referendum illegal. Only Congress has a right to call it, not the president. Congress had denounced it.
The Supreme Court had told the military not to assist in the referendum because it's illegal. So Zelaya fires the chief of staff of the army. The Supreme Court orders him reinstated; he fires him again.
This guy is acting extra-constitutionally. Yes, he was elected, but Hitler was as well, and Chavez also was. It's easy to dismantle a democracy if you're president and if you are intent on doing it—-and [Zelaya] is intent on doing it.
So our decision ought to be: Yes, a coup isn't a nice thing, but it's preferable to having Zelaya dismantle the democracy. And we should insist on the elections of a president as scheduled in November, so it is a temporary situation.
Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions.
NRO Editorial: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Njg4MTU5NzU0OTNkYWZlZjk2ZWZkYzcwNDc0Y2ViMjY=
http://blog.american.com/?p=2619
Honduran Cowboy Populist Falls Out of the Saddle
By Roger NoriegaJune 29, 2009, 5:20 pm
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a clownish caudillo (strongman) and acolyte of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, has been riding for a fall in his clumsy campaign to amend the constitution to allow him to seek a second term. Alas, this weekend, he fell out of the saddle—arrested by the military and sent into exile after the Supreme Court declared his efforts unconstitutional.
Zelaya was determined to replicate Chavez’s power grab, using populist rhetoric to sow class conflict and incite the mob. He demanded a referendum this past Sunday that he hoped would bless his second term. Before the vote, the Honduran supreme court, congress, electoral tribunal, attorney general, and human rights ombudsman declared the referendum illegal, and the military chief refused to order his forces to distribute the ballots. In response, Zelaya fired the general, causing all the military chiefs and the civilian defense minister to quit. The supreme court ruled that dismissal illegal, but Zelaya led a mob of his supporters to confiscate the ballots and vowed to go forward.
On Sunday morning, Zelaya was arrested by military forces and flown to Costa Rica. The supreme court blessed this move, and the congress appointed a successor, in accordance with the constitution. Last night, the Organization of American States (OAS), joined by vigorous support from the United States, demanded Zelaya’s restoration to power.
My guess is that the Hondurans—who ignored the U.S. embassy’s warnings in ousting Zelaya in the first place—will stand by their interpretation of their own constitution and go it alone until November presidential elections. The details will be debated by legal scholars and diplomats for months.
But the following is clear:
• Zelaya—consumed by personal ambition and egged on by his mentors in Caracas and Havana—provoked a confrontation that he did not have the wit to win.
• Honduran institutions rose to the challenge and applied the rule of law as they saw it: the military appears to be defending those institutions and not advancing its own agenda.
• Unwilling to cross Chavez, the OAS’s leadership turned a blind eye when Zelaya was violating the Honduran constitution as well as the region’s Democratic Charter (which explicitly blesses “separation of powers”).
The OAS has refused to act as leftist caudillos shredded their constitutions and stole elections in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Having ignored these abuses, the OAS cannot pretend that it has any moral authority to second-guess the people of these nations when they move to defend their democracies.
My Question for US News Organizations: Wassup w/ Obama and his obvious sympathies for leftist dictatorships ? And why are you covering for him in your sorry coverage of this situation ?
From a Honduran (courtesy of NRO):
I was born in Honduras and my maternal relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins) all live there.
The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite. The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November's presidential election takes place. What happened was not a "coup" but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.
It is heartbreaking for me to see President Obama throw Honduras under the bus. He did not speak out when Zelaya was attempting to stage a sham "constitutional referendum" with ballots printed in Venezuela.
My mother immigrated from Honduras and is a registered Republican because she remembers how the GOP stood up to communists when her countrymen were afraid of Fidel Castro. Now, Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade her beloved homeland and an American president is not standing up for a free and democratic Honduras.
Honduras and Meddling [Michael Ledeen]
Andy is quite right to point out Obama's willingness to meddle in Honduran affairs, but not Iranian ones, and to put it alongside his meddling in Hamastan — to which we can add Israel (the settlements).
The basic pattern seems to be ideological. Meddling on behalf of causes that the Left supports is fine (especially, it seems, if by so doing he supports anti-democratic regimes and leaders).
And then there's the personal component: He was annoyed when the Iranian people interrupted his incipient love affair with Iran's tyrant. And he's annoyed when the Honduran people have the nerve to hold their would-be tyrant — a guy he seems to like — to the standards of their Constitution.
Beholding a Mindset [Jay Nordlinger]
Some readers have written me expressing bewilderment at our government’s stance toward Honduras right now. (One of them is Honduran.) And I was reminded of something I wrote about in Impromptus very recently. Down at the meeting of the Organization of American States, Secretary Clinton was asked about Cuba’s political prisoners — what that meant for possible Cuban admission back into the OAS. In her answer, Clinton did not talk about prisoners.
Instead, she said,“The United States, under the Obama administration, is committed to reengaging in Latin America, to working with all countries, and we have begun doing that. We believe that lifting people out of poverty in our hemisphere, narrowing the intolerable income gap that exists between the rich and the poor in our hemisphere, working for greater social inclusion, improved education and health care — these are our goals.”
Yeah, but what about the political prisoners? What about those who are in dungeons, often tortured, because they wish for a democratic way of life? Health care and “social inclusion” are fine. But what about simple freedom?
Then Mrs. Clinton made a most remarkable statement. She said, “Some might say President Obama is left-of-center. And of course, that means that we are going to work well with countries that share our commitment to improving and enhancing the human potential.”
So, under conservative presidents, America is not committed to improving and enhancing the human potential? What a statement! Our government is indeed bewildering right now. If I can wax just slightly demagogic (but only slightly): Are we intent on being approved by Chávez, Ortega, and the Castros? Or are we standing up for U.S. interests, principles, and values? Come on!
One Other Honduras Thought [Andy McCarthy]
I got a little grief last week for arguing (here and here) that Obama is a man of the hard Left who is perfectly comfortable with dictators and who, in Iran, would prefer to see the mullahs prevail than see them deposed by people who want to establish an actual democracy. Now, in Honduras, we have a would-be tyrant squaring off against people who want to depose him in the hope of preserving their democracy. On whose side has Obama come out?
Our Take on Honduras [Rich Lowry]
Here.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Supreme Court overturns Sotomayor decision in Ricci firefighter case ... will it matter for SCOTUS ?
well, it should, as it shows
The White House and its allies are already spinning "it doesn't matter"; "she's in the mainstream" and "Souter dissented, and she's replacing him". All of which are pathetically poor arguments.
Ricci and Sotomayor [Peter Kirsanow]
The Supreme Court in Ricci held that before an employer can engage in intentional racial discrimination (i.e., throwing out the results of the promotional exam in which the highest scorers were white) for the claimed purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, it must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability (not just sued) if it fails to take the race-conscious discriminatory action.
Since Sotomayor and her colleagues summarily dispensed with the white firefighters' arguments, the Supreme Court's opinion provides senators with a host of questions for Sotomayor during the confirmation hearings, starting with whether the nominee even considered arguments pertaining to the promotional exam's job-relatedness.
Given that the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for New Haven in relatively cursory fashion, the Supreme Court's Ricci decision is a significant rebuke to how Sotomayor and her colleagues dispensed with the case.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/supreme-court/2009/06/ricci_decision_provides_rallyi.html?hpid=topnews
Ricci Decision Provides Rallying Point for Opposition
By Jerry Markon and Michael D. Shear
Conservatives are jumping all over today’s Supreme Court decision that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, using it to attack high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s earlier ruling against them.
But White House officials are fighting back, and they spent the morning reaching out to Senate Judiciary Committee members to make their case that the ruling should have little bearing on Sotomayor's nomination.
"The issue from the Sotomayor perspective is, does this call into question anything about her judgment? And it doesn't," said one senior White House official. "The majority made it clear they are making a new rule. No one has really questioned that she did what she was supposed to do.’’
The court overturned an earlier order that Sotomayor had endorsed as an appellate court judge, that upheld New Haven’s decision to throw out a promotion test it had given the firefighters when no African Americans and two Hispanics qualified for advancement. The 134-word order has been the flash point of much of the legal debate over Sotomayor’s nomination.
While it is unclear what affect, if any, today's decision will have on Sotomayor's ascension to the high court, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a senior Judiciary Committee member, said the ruling "in no way undercut" her prospect for confirmation. The committee will begin confirmation hearings July 13.
In a conference call with liberal legal scholars, Schumer argued that Sotomayor and her colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had followed four decades of labor law precedent. "The 2nd Circuit's opinion was clearly in the mainstream,'' Schumer said. [Bull !]
At a minimum, however, the decision provides an unwelcome distraction from what had seemed like a relatively smooth confirmation process for Sotomayor, and it opened up a renewed line of assault for conservatives.
They wasted no time today in using the decision to paint Sotomayor as a liberal judicial activist.
“The Supreme Court decision repudiating Judge Sotomayor’s legal position in this discrimination case raises important questions about Judge Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. He encouraged senators to explore “the nominee’s views on judicial activism” and her views of the Constitution at the confirmation hearings.
Wendy E. Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, issued a statement saying that the firefighters “who protect the public safety and worked hard for their promotions did not deserve to become victims of racial quotas.’’
Casting the decision as a repudiation of Sotomayor, Long added: "Usually, poor performance in any profession is not rewarded with the highest job offer in the entire profession.
White House officials had put in place a plan to deal with the ruling, which they clearly expected. One of their planned talking points was to point out that retiring Justice David H. Souter, whose slot Sotomayor would take, joined the dissent in backing her ruling.
"I think its going to be hard for people to explain why this really should be a confirmation issue for her," the senior White House official said. [Really, now ??]
Washington Post staff writer Paul Kane contributed to this item.
The White House and its allies are already spinning "it doesn't matter"; "she's in the mainstream" and "Souter dissented, and she's replacing him". All of which are pathetically poor arguments.
Ricci and Sotomayor [Peter Kirsanow]
The Supreme Court in Ricci held that before an employer can engage in intentional racial discrimination (i.e., throwing out the results of the promotional exam in which the highest scorers were white) for the claimed purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, it must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability (not just sued) if it fails to take the race-conscious discriminatory action.
Since Sotomayor and her colleagues summarily dispensed with the white firefighters' arguments, the Supreme Court's opinion provides senators with a host of questions for Sotomayor during the confirmation hearings, starting with whether the nominee even considered arguments pertaining to the promotional exam's job-relatedness.
Given that the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for New Haven in relatively cursory fashion, the Supreme Court's Ricci decision is a significant rebuke to how Sotomayor and her colleagues dispensed with the case.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/supreme-court/2009/06/ricci_decision_provides_rallyi.html?hpid=topnews
Ricci Decision Provides Rallying Point for Opposition
By Jerry Markon and Michael D. Shear
Conservatives are jumping all over today’s Supreme Court decision that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, using it to attack high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s earlier ruling against them.
But White House officials are fighting back, and they spent the morning reaching out to Senate Judiciary Committee members to make their case that the ruling should have little bearing on Sotomayor's nomination.
"The issue from the Sotomayor perspective is, does this call into question anything about her judgment? And it doesn't," said one senior White House official. "The majority made it clear they are making a new rule. No one has really questioned that she did what she was supposed to do.’’
The court overturned an earlier order that Sotomayor had endorsed as an appellate court judge, that upheld New Haven’s decision to throw out a promotion test it had given the firefighters when no African Americans and two Hispanics qualified for advancement. The 134-word order has been the flash point of much of the legal debate over Sotomayor’s nomination.
While it is unclear what affect, if any, today's decision will have on Sotomayor's ascension to the high court, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a senior Judiciary Committee member, said the ruling "in no way undercut" her prospect for confirmation. The committee will begin confirmation hearings July 13.
In a conference call with liberal legal scholars, Schumer argued that Sotomayor and her colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had followed four decades of labor law precedent. "The 2nd Circuit's opinion was clearly in the mainstream,'' Schumer said. [Bull !]
At a minimum, however, the decision provides an unwelcome distraction from what had seemed like a relatively smooth confirmation process for Sotomayor, and it opened up a renewed line of assault for conservatives.
They wasted no time today in using the decision to paint Sotomayor as a liberal judicial activist.
“The Supreme Court decision repudiating Judge Sotomayor’s legal position in this discrimination case raises important questions about Judge Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. He encouraged senators to explore “the nominee’s views on judicial activism” and her views of the Constitution at the confirmation hearings.
Wendy E. Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, issued a statement saying that the firefighters “who protect the public safety and worked hard for their promotions did not deserve to become victims of racial quotas.’’
Casting the decision as a repudiation of Sotomayor, Long added: "Usually, poor performance in any profession is not rewarded with the highest job offer in the entire profession.
White House officials had put in place a plan to deal with the ruling, which they clearly expected. One of their planned talking points was to point out that retiring Justice David H. Souter, whose slot Sotomayor would take, joined the dissent in backing her ruling.
"I think its going to be hard for people to explain why this really should be a confirmation issue for her," the senior White House official said. [Really, now ??]
Washington Post staff writer Paul Kane contributed to this item.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
