Tuesday, July 14, 2009
What Ricci Says About Sotomayor - and Obama
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Many people have been concerned about Judge Sotomayor since hearing her comment that a wise Latina woman would make better judicial decisions than a white male. They've wondered whether her willingness to judge people by the group to which they belong and her stereotypes about that group will affect her judicial decisions once she's on the U.S. Supreme Court and no longer subject to any oversight.
Ricci indicates that it will.
When New Haven firefighters took the lieutenant promotion test, only whites scored high enough to fill the eight current vacancies (for details about these exams, see Justice Kennedy's opinion). The specific legal question in Ricci was: May an employer disregard the results of a promotion exam because too many individuals of one race had the best scores?
All nine Supreme Court justices ruled it was wrong for New Haven to discard the test results merely because there was a racial disparity in test scores.
Did Judge Sotomayor agree with any of the Supreme Court justices?
No. Instead, she decided that an employer can disregard test results whenever a test disproportionately favors members of one race over another, even though the employer has no "strong basis in evidence" or "good cause" to believe any discrimination occurred.
President Obama's selection of Judge Sotomayor should disappoint white supporters who saw his election as absolving them from the sin of racism. His selection of Judge Sotomayor shows that he still considers whites to have unfairly benefited from racism and that it's still okay to discriminate against whites to remedy past sins.
[This is a life time appointment, occuring this week -
READ MORE
FLASHBACKs >
- Sotomayor Ruled That States Do Not Have to Obey Second Amendment
- Sotomayor, Ricci and White Male Privilege
- Sotomayor Failed to Disclose to Senate Memo in Which She Argued Death Penalty Is 'Racist'
- Media Ignores Obama's SCOTUS Nominee's Membership In Radical La Raza Organization
- Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor: You Read, You Decide
Sotomayor: 'Task of a judge is not to make the law'
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[Just policy >
Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor: You Read, You Decide"All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is - Court of Appeals - is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know. [laughter] Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know. [laughter]"
hysterical. And why should she 'never say it'?
Once appointed, she's there for life with NO oversight/recourse whatsoever.
This week.]
"OPPOSE SOTOMAYOR CONFIRMATION "
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
contact template
The cornpone Arlen Specter
For the first time in the memory of most, we have a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a Supreme Court nominee in which Sen. Arlen Specter is not participating as a Republican.
Unfortunately, the Republican committee membership still includes Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Arlen Specter of the South. And in his opening statement, Graham served up a cornpone rendition of Specter.
Graham opined that, barring a meltdown, Judge Sotomayor wil be confirmed.
READ MORE
"OPPOSE SOTOMAYOR CONFIRMATION"
Sen. Lindsey Graham : CALL (ask for Graham's office): (202) 224-5972 http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=contact.emailsenatorgraham
and please, pass it on...
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Obama Threatens to Veto His Own Defense Bill Over F-22 Funding
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It's not every day that a president threatens to veto his own defense spending bill.
But that's the rare position President Obama finds himself taking after senators made an 11th hour addition of $1.75 billion to buy seven F-22 fighter jets ...
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But that's the rare position President Obama finds himself taking after senators made an 11th hour addition of $1.75 billion to buy seven F-22 fighter jets ...
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[Working together. Reaching across the isle. Compromise. Seven jets?
No. Scuttle the whole budget.]
READ MORE
FLASHBACKs >
Axing the Air Force
“This budget guarantees that the oldest Air Force in the history of our nation will get even older" ... “B-52s, built in the 1950s, will have to be kept on duty for a minimum of another 15-20 years.”
Killing the F-22
The F-22 is very expensive, but delivers air superiority in return. Imagine US {or any military's} capabilities without air superiority. We cannot do without it. The F35 does not provide it. This is a foolish decision at any time - with the obvious intentions of China and Russia it's lunacy..
Obama wants investigation of 2001 Afghan massacre
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Obama goes for the easy applause rather than standing up for American interests"
President Obama has ordered his national security team to look into an apparent massacre of Taliban prisoners by an Afghan warlord back in 2001, according to Jake Tapper of ABC News:
Human rights groups applauded President Obama's remarks.
Of course they did. They are not responsible for the security and strength of the Afghan government. Apparently, Obama doesn't believe he is either.
Would it have been better to prosecute the warlord rather than protect him? In a perfect world, of course. But war is about making bad choices sometimes and Bush made the right one. Those who do not have the responsibility - or, like Obama, who refuse to accept responsibility - can get on their moral high horse and feel very good about themselves and their superior position above the rest of us cretins.
But risking the stability of the Afghan government in order to get human rights groups to praise us is a little too high a price considering all the blood and treasure we have expended in Afghanistan to bring stability to that country.
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CBS Commended for Having Honesty, Guts to Air Video That Broadsides Media
[Credit where due.]
CBS’s “Sunday Morning” yesterday aired a remarkable segment that broadsided the national media for refusing to give our nation’s fallen soldiers the attention they deserve. Martha Gillis offered an uninterrupted, 3-minute monologue sharing the pain of losing her nephew, 1st Lt. Brian Bradshaw, who was killed on June 25 by an IED in Afghanistan. Gillis faulted the media for its virtual non-coverage, which, as NewsBusters reported last week, amounted to just 1/20th the broadcast network evening newscast airtime given to Michael Jackson's death.
In a statement released today, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell applauded CBS for the tribute (click here to view it online):
Congratulations to CBS News. This is nothing short of remarkably candid journalism. The raw emotion of 1st Lt. Bradshaw’s aunt Martha Gillis is heartbreaking. It moves the audience to see undue suffering – caused by the media – for a family that has already been crushed by the death of one of their young.
I commend CBS News for having the courage to air such honesty, and hope other networks take note of their editorial strength. There are consequences to bad journalism and some bear greater consequences than others. The media should have looked past the temptation of ratings to do what was right and honor our nation’s heroes. CBS has now done that.
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UPDATE:
CBS Video, Aunt of Soldier Killed in Afghanistan
Obama Rewrites the Cold War
The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies
There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way:"The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose."
The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom.
The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.
It is irresponsible [and damaging to our future interests] for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor.
Perhaps, and most concerning of all, Mr. Obama may believe what he said...
[Recommended > ]
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Medvedev defies West with South Ossetia visit
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Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew to the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia on Monday for his first visit since last year's war, ignoring a plea [?] by Washington to respect Georgia's borders.
Medvedev held talks with regional leader Eduard Kokoity, inspected military hardware at a Russian military base and promised economic and military aid...
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EUROPEAN HOT AIR
Restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions involve huge costs for uncertain gains and are just what economies in recession don't need.
Western European leaders are the latest to discover that climate-change talk is cheap, but carbon-emissions regulation is expensive. That might be bad news for green activists, but it could be very good news for Europeans worried about their jobs and their economy, says the Wall Street Journal.
Governments in industry-heavy countries are now less willing to sacrifice jobs for cooler temperatures:
- Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted on exemptions for her country's industry from December's European Union (EU) climate package, which pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
- Germany also plans to build several dozen coal-fired power plants in the next few years.
- Italy insisted on a clause in the December climate deal that requires the EU to renegotiate its climate policy after the United Nations summit in Copenhagen later this year. [I.e., get the good press, then renege]
- Any renegotiated EU deal is likely to contain even more loopholes and exemptions to keep from denting European competitiveness.
Before the December negotiations, the London-based think tank Open Europe estimated the EU climate package would cost governments, businesses and householders in the EU-25 more than $102 - billion - a year -.
A recent paper by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, said that since Spain started investing in "green jobs" policies in 2000, the country has lost 110,500 jobs in other parts of the economy. That amounts to 2.2 jobs lost for every new "green job" created.
A global slowdown and an increasing body of evidence is forcing a rethink on whether emissions control is worth the cost...
READ MORE
TAX OPPRESSION INDEX RANKS AMERICA IN BOTTOM HALF OF INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS
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A thorough new study of 30 nations from the Institut Constant de Rebecque in Switzerland reveals serious shortcomings in America's tax system. The study, entitled "Tax burden and individual rights in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): An International Comparison," creates a Tax Oppression Index based on three key variables: the overall tax burden, public governance, and taxpayer rights.
According to the researchers the United States is tied for 19th, behind the welfare states of Scandinavia.
The ugly news is that America has a very low rating for protecting taxpayer rights -- largely because politicians have tilted the playing field to favor the IRS, including the fact that taxpayers lose the presumption of innocence provided in the Constitution.
With President Obama promising to raise tax rates and increase the power of the IRS, it may just be a matter of time before the United States is competing for the world's most oppressive tax regime...
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Small-town cops in coastal Maine face a big problem
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Reporting from York, Maine -- The obituary in the York Weekly was heartbreaking. (snip)New England may be thousands of miles from the producers and brutal drug enterprises of Mexico and Colombia.
But a busy pipeline from Mexico resolutely moves heroin and cocaine to emerging markets as far away as coastal Maine, where more and more addicts fill courtrooms, jail cells, treatment facilities and morgues.
[If only we'd control our borders, before the bombs come across as well {if they haven't already}]
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D.C. COUNCIL WANTS VOUCHERS
Why does the national Democratic Party have such fierce opposition to a program that successfully helps poor children to escape failing inner city schools and get the education they deserve?
The life and death saga of the D.C. voucher program for low-income families continues, says the Wall Street Journal. A majority of the members of the D.C. Council recently sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressing solid support for continuing the program.
"We strongly urge you to stand with us in supporting these children and continuing the District's Opportunity Scholarship Program," ... "We believe we simply cannot turn our backs on these families because doing so will deny their children the quality education they deserve."
Earlier this year Illinois Senator Dick Durbin added language to a spending bill that phases out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program after next year:
- The program provides 1,700 kids $7,500 per year to use toward tuition at a private school of their parents' choosing.
- Durbin's amendment says no federal money can be spent on the program beyond 2010 unless Congress reauthorizes it and the D.C. Council approves.
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GAG THE INTERNET
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AN OBAMA OFFICIAL'S FRIGHTENING BOOK ABOUT CURBING FREE SPEECH ONLINE
When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.
In Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done," considering the prominence with which Sunstein is about to be endowed, his worrying views are fair game now. Sunstein is President Obama's choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It's the bland titles that should scare you the most."Although obscure," reported the Wall Street Journal, "the post wields outsize power. It oversees regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Obama aides have said the job will be crucial as the new administration overhauls financial-services regulations, attempts to pass universal health care and tries to forge a new approach to controlling emissions of greenhouse gases."
Sunstein was appointed [I.e, no congressional approval required, thank you), no doubt, off the success of "Nudge," his previous book, which suggests that government ought to gently force people to be 'better' human beings.
Czar is too mild a world for what Sunstein is about to become.
How about "regulator in chief"? How about "lawgiver"?
He is Obama's Obama... [snip]
Sunstein also believes that - whether you're a blogger, The New York Times or a Web hosting service - you should be held responsible even for what your commenters say. Currently you're immune under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. "Reasonable people," he says, "might object that this is not the right rule," though he admits that imposing liability for commenters on service providers would be "a considerable burden."
Sunstein dreams of an impossibly virtuous America:"We could also imagine a future in which those who spread false rumors are categorized as such, discounted and marginalized . . . people would approach rumors skeptically even they provide comfort and fit their own biases."
But if his chilling wind doesn't work, Sunstein may try to make good on the implicit threat that runs through his book: that he would redefine libel as the spread of false information and hold everyone up the ladder responsible.
If this happened, the blogosphere would turn into Pluto overnight. Comments sections would slam shut. Every writer would work on a leash shorter than a shoelace.
Sunstein is an enemy to every news organization and blogger. We should return the favor and declare war on him.
[Yet another extremely-radical appointment.]
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Maybe Lawmakers should read what they are voting on
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby highlights a phenomenon that has made Congress something of a laughingstock in recent months.
But according to Steny Hoyer, lawmakers should refrain from reading what they are to vote on:
At a news conference last week, he was talking about the healthcare overhaul being drafted on Capitol Hill, and a reporter asked whether he would support a pledge committing members of Congress to read the bill before voting on it, and to make the full text of the legislation available to the public online for 72 hours before the vote takes place
That, reported CNSNews, gave Hoyer the giggles: The majority leader "found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question.
‘I'm laughing because . . . I don't know how long this bill is going to be, but it's going to be a very long bill,' he said.''
The cap and trade bill and health care monstrosity will fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the governors and Steny Hoyer doesn't think our representatives should read how that is going to occur before voting on it?
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