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Fr. Matteo Ricci Related articles: Paul's Missionary Journeys & Last VoyageThursdayThursdayThursday Venice, Italy, Sep 12, 2009 / 06:13 pm (CNA).- A new documentary on the life of Fr. Matteo Ricci, a pioneering Jesuit missionary to China, was screened at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday. The film is part of a revival of interest in Ricci, whom Pope Benedict XVI has called a model for a “fruitful meeting” between civilizations.The movie, directed by Italian filmmaker Gjon Kolndrekaj, was shot in China and Italy.Political and religious dignitaries from both countries attended the screening, ANSA reports. They included the Patriarch of...

After the Ricci ruling, President Obama said that any hiring or school admissions practices based solely on race are unconstitutional, and he condemned the use of quotas. the nation's first black president stressed that the Supreme Court did not completely "close the door" on affirmative action, if properly structured and in certain circumstances, but he conceded that the court had moved "the ball" away from such efforts. Obama also asserted that affirmative action "hasn't been as potent a force for racial progress as advocates would claim," ... Essentially, Obama delivered a eulogy for affirmative action. Of course, efforts to breathe...

Lindsey Graham is going to feel awful lonely on the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee dais during next week's Sonia Sotomayor confirmation vote. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who admitted he was very conflicted over his vote, has just declared that he will oppose Sotomayor's confirmation. None of these Republican "no" votes will make a difference, as Sotomayor still may get upwards of 70 votes for confirmation before the full Senate. Hatch just issued a long statement, but here's the key passage: "After thoroughly reviewing Judge Sotomayor’s record and being able to hear her testimony and responses during the hearing...

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWSJuly 16, 2009 – 5:42 p.m. Firefighters to Senatos: ‘We Were Devastated’ By Seth Stern, CQ Staff Two firefighters whose reverse discrimination claim was rejected by Sonia Sotomayor criticized her handling of the sensitive case on Thursday.“Americans have the right to go into our federal courts and have their cases judged based on the Constitution and our laws, not on politics and personal feelings,” said Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in the case, Ricci v. DeStefano, at Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Ricci was joined at the Senate Judiciary Committee witness table by Ben Vargas, both whom...

Here is video of New Haven, Connecticut firefighter Frank Ricci, of the Ricci Supreme Court Case, beginning his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor ruled against Ricci in a lower court decision that was recently overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Firefighters involved in the Ricci case are about to appear before the Senate committee.

Supreme Court nominee returns for a third and final day of questioning Thursday, having avoided saying much on a range of hot-button issues, including guns and abortion.As witnesses prepare to take the stand Thursday in Sonia Sotomayor's last day of confirmation hearings, the chairman of the Senate Juduciary Committee said their testimony will matter little. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday that he may not ask any questions of the witnesses present at the Supreme Court nominee's hearing. Among the witnesses requested by the committee to testify are New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Connecticut firefighters whom the federal...

At the beginning of the film, The Paper Chase, the somber professor tells his classroom of first year law students that they would have to learn to think like lawyers. He meant the need to cultivate the skill of analytical thinking that is required to understand legal issues. Understanding basic contract or tort law isn’t the great struggle in law school. Figuring out how to spot an issue, understand the rule of law and apply it to a given set of facts is the mission. Next is grappling with the Weltschmerz of not being the smartest one in the room...

Firefighter Ricci protected from discrimination; “that totally misses the point” says group organizing smear campaign

LIVE THREAD, AND ONE PERSON IN THIS STORY HAS A CONNECTION TO FREE REPUBLIC!!

No doubt the liberal Journo List of bloggers, reporters, and columnists thought this up. It's just their speed - smearing a private citizen who gets in the way of their agenda. In this case, the victim is firefighter Frank Ricci from New Haven, CT who sued after he was denied promotion when test results were thrown out because no minority fire fighter passed. This case was going to be a prime topic of testimony during the upcoming Sotomayor confirmation hearings and the liberals want to make sure that Ricci can't damage the far left judge's chances.

People for the American Way, the left-wing smear machine, is (In the words of McClatchy press service) quietly targeting Frank Ricci, the Connecticut firefighter whose successful lawsuit for racial discrimination has proven to be so inconvenient for Judge Sotomayor. Specifically, People for the American Way, along with other such drive-by hit artists, is urging reporters to scrutinize Ricci's allegedly "troubled and litigious work history." So far, the lefty blogosphere, at least, has taken up the call. Ricci is on the list of witnesses Republican Senators will call at Sotomayor's confirmation hearing. But does this make his "litigious work history" an...

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's backers are reportedly urging reporters to probe what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci.

WASHINGTON — Republicans may have a window of opportunity to turn public opinion against President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, but a new poll finds that such a campaign could hurt their party's already weak standing with Americans, especially Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing voter group. Fully 55 percent of Americans said they hadn't yet heard enough about Sonia Sotomayor to have an opinion of her, according to a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll. That could be the opportunity that Republicans can exploit by attacking her. Even so, 54 percent said the Senate should confirm her, while only 21 percent said it...

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling. On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci. This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill. "The whole business of getting Supreme Court nominees through the process has become bloodsport," said Gary Rose, a government and politics professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and...

For all the publicity about the Supreme Court's 5-4 reversal of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's decision (with two colleagues) to reject a discrimination suit by a group of firefighters against New Haven, Conn., one curious aspect of the case has been largely overlooked.That is the likelihood that but for a chance discovery by a fourth member of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the now-triumphant 18 firefighters (17 white and one Hispanic) might well have seen their case, Ricci v. DeStefano, disappear into obscurity, with no triumph, no national publicity and no Supreme Court review.

The Supreme Court tweaked the edges of discrimination law in its New Haven firefighters decision last week, but otherwise left the evasions and euphemisms of that hoary edifice largely intact. This is probably as it should be. It is not for the Court to deconstruct our official legal discourse about race unless it is explicitly asked to do so. But the political branches need not be so constrained. Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s upcoming confirmation hearings are the perfect occasion to question the assumptions that underlie the race industry, since Sotomayor, with her history of launching racism accusations, has been, and promises...

We wonder what Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has to hide. Her confirmation hearing starts Monday, but the White House refuses to turn over boxes of documents for review about her past. Republican senators requested board meeting minutes of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, where Ms. Sotomayor served on the board of directors from 1980 to 1992. White House Counsel Greg Craig contends that all documents deemed "responsive" already were sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Contrary to White House dodging, these board meetings may be important in evaluating Ms. Sotomayor's legal and policy reasoning because the...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg.com, story here .

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate's top Republican is lashing out at Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for ruling against white firefighters who alleged reverse discrimination. Sen. Mitch McConnell says Sotomayor's decision as a federal appeals court judge suggests she allows her own agenda to cloud her judgment and favors certain groups.

Justice Ginsburg’s Racial Hypocrisy in Ricci She Never Met a Black She’d Hire in 1993 By Michael P. Tremoglie Tremoglie’s Tea Time Blog During Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s July 1993 confirmation hearing, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, asked her about racist hiring practices. He wanted to know if she thought that an employer, located in a city that was predominantly black, would be suspected of racism if there were no blacks on the payroll. Judge Ginsburg replied it would be. Hatch then reminded her that her own payroll did not include blacks even though she was in a city with...

Colin Powell Attacks Critics of Sotomayor Colin Powell, one of the nation's most prominent African-Americans, is going after people who attacked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor because of her stand in favor of affirmative action. Powell, who's from the same Bronx neighborhood in New York as Sotomayor, said she should face "a spirited set of hearings" in the Senate. But he said the federal appeals court judge, who would be the first Hispanic justice, shouldn't be condemned for ruling against white firefighters who contended they suffered reverse discrimination. "What we can't continue to have is to have somebody like a...

Last Monday, on the final day of its 2008-09 term, the Supreme Court decided its most controversial recent case, Ricci v. DeStefano. This concerned the now-famous claim by a group of firefighters--17 white and one Hispanic--that New Haven unlawfully discriminated against them on the basis of race. A majority of five justices, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing, held for the firefighters, reversing a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to succeed Justice David Souter. The four dissenting justices, meanwhile, made plain their belief that the Ricci decision...

In its editorial marking the 233rd year since the founding of our nation, The Washington Post notes; “The men who produced the Constitution were preoccupied with the abuse of power. They talked in terms of restraint, division of powers, limits on government. They were ever mindful of the ways in which a majority could impose its will on a minority.” But as Ricci v. DeStefano demonstrates, sometimes the abuse of power occurs when the government seeks to impose its will on a majority.

Because I posted the news diggs so late for yesterday, tonight's list is going to be relatively short. And we're going to take a holiday for the 4th of July weekend, so this will be your last digg list until Monday. Happy independence day, and God bless those who fight to keep this country safe and free! http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/

NEW HAVEN — The two dozen firefighters who packed into Humphrey’s East Restaurant were celebrating a coming marriage, drinking and jawboning in the boisterous style of large men with risky jobs, but Lt. Ben Vargas spent the evening trying to escape the tension surrounding his presence. During a trip to the bathroom, he found himself facing another man. Without warning, the first punch landed. When Lieutenant Vargas awoke, bloodied and splayed on the grimy floor, he was taken to the hospital. Lieutenant Vargas believes the attack, five years ago, was orchestrated by a black firefighter in retaliation for his having...

THE Supreme Court's deci sion in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals. While five justices flatly rejected Sotomayor's ruling, even the four dissenters wouldn't have let stand her ruling allowing the results of a promotion exam to be set aside because no black firefighter had a top score. Ricci is also something else: a riveting lesson in political sociology, thanks to the concurring...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court's ruling on the Ricci case -- that white firemen suffered illegal discrimination when a promotional test on which they did well was thrown out because not enough blacks did well -- will have no effect on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. While overturned on Ricci, she is protected by the four dissenting justices who upheld the side of the case she had taken as a Circuit Court judge. Sotomayor was additionally helped by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's insistence on reading her dissent from the bench, as if to emphasize the legitimacy of her...

The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. While five justices flatly rejected Sotomayor's ruling, even the four dissenters wouldn't have let stand her ruling allowing the results of a promotion exam to be set aside because no black firefighter had a top score. Ricci is also something else: a riveting lesson in political sociology, thanks to the concurring opinion...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Thursday the Supreme Court was "moving the ball" on affirmative action in this week's decision favoring white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., but he added that the court had not ruled out the use of racial preferences in the future.

Examiner Columnist | 6/30/09 5:55 AM News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher. President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, announced today she may sue her potential future colleagues for racial bias over yesterday's 5-4 ruling that overturned her own decision in the New Haven fire fighters discrimination lawsuit. The Supreme Court ruled in Ricci v. DeStefano Monday that an employer could not throw out the results of a promotion exam simply for fear of a lawsuit from racial minorities who fared poorly on the test. Sotomayor accused the high court's "Constitutional literalists" of bias and an "abject lack...

The implicit message, delivered by the Supreme Court majority in two of the most important decisions of the term that ended this week, is that racial discrimination is no longer as big a problem as we once thought. Neither the voting rights case out of Texas nor the affirmative action hiring case out of New Haven, Conn., said that explicitly. But the link between the two is the assumption or assertion that this society has largely healed itself and does not need the race-conscious remedies that the previous generation of politicians thought necessary. If that reading of the court's majority...

SO MUCH FOR WISE LATINASJuly 1, 2009 With the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano this week, we can now report that Sonia Sotomayor is even crazier than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To recap the famous Ricci case, in 2003, the city of New Haven threw out the results of a firefighters' test -- which had been expressly designed to be race-neutral -- because only whites and Hispanics scored high enough to receive immediate promotions, whereas blacks who took the test did well enough only to be eligible for promotions down the line. Inasmuch as the high-scoring white and Hispanic...

The high-profile reversal of Sonia Sotomayor’s judgment on Ricci has taken the momentum away from public support. A new Rasmussen poll shows that a previous eight-point plurality favoring her confirmation to the Supreme Court has turned into a two-point plurality of opposition. The real risk is to Barack Obama’s efforts to paint himself as a reasonable moderate on the judiciary:

A heavily publicized U.S. Supreme Court reversal of an appeals court ruling by Judge Sonia Sotomayor has at least temporarily diminished public support for President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the two nights following the Supreme Court decision, finds that 37% now believe Sotomayor should be confirmed while 39% disagree. Two weeks ago, the numbers were much brighter for the nominee. At that time, 42% favored confirmation, and 34% were opposed. Rasmussen Reports has been tracking this question every other week, and it is not possible to know at this time...

I heard this audio clip on the Roger Hedgecock show yesterday. posted here: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Test was racist?

Instead of rejoicing over the outcome of the Ricci case, the fact that four justices signed on to GInsubrg’s dissenting opinion fills me with both anger at liberals and dread that the liberal viewpoint will eventually triumph over reason and sensibility. Ginsburg writes, “The Court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power.” I translate this as meaning that Obama is going to be president for another seven and a half years, so the liberals are only one heart attack away from reversing Ricci and imposing their will. It’s an unusually unsportsmanlike statement and demonstrates a disrespect for...

Unlike some of my predictions, this one proved out. In fact, even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 39-page dissent for the four more liberal justices quietly but unmistakably rejected the Sotomayor-endorsed position that disparate racial results alone justified New Haven's decision to dump the promotional exam without even inquiring into whether it was fair and job-related. Justice Ginsburg also suggested clearly -- as did the Obama Justice Department, in a friend-of-the-court brief -- that the Sotomayor panel erred in upholding summary judgment for the city. Ginsburg said that the lower courts should have ordered a jury trial to weigh the evidence...

The United States Supreme Court on Monday overturned the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Ricci v. DeStefano case raising further concerns over Judge Sonya Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination. Many have raised serious concerns over the way she handled the case, including fellow 2nd Circuit Court Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee and the Obama Justice Department which filed a brief arguing that Sotomayor’s panel had incorrectly dismissed the case. In the Ricci case, Sotomayor held that a group of white firefighters had not been subjected to discrimination when they were not promoted even though they had the...

It isn't often that the justices of the US Supreme Court publicly rebuke a pro spective colleague on the eve of con firmation hearings. But that's essentially what the court did yesterday, as it narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who argued that they'd been the victims of reverse racial discrimination. For, in so doing, the high court reversed Sonia Sotomayor and her colleagues on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, who had found against the white firefighters. Even those justices who didn't support the firefighters' claim implicitly questioned why Sotomayor, et al., disposed of...

JUNE 30, 2009 Firefighter Justice The Supremes, Sotomayor, and racial jurisprudence. The Supreme Court closed an otherwise unremarkable term on a high note yesterday, rejecting the notion that one kind of racial bias can be remedied by another. On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination. The effect was to take an important step away from the practice of divvying up jobs by race. Writing for a 5-4 majority in Ricci v. deStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the...

Martin Luther King can rest easy. His dream is being protected by the Supreme Court - against and over the opinion of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The high court's landmark decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case, is a dramatic stride toward the cherished goal of achieving a colorblind society. In Ricci, the court told us that people of ability can succeed regardless of skin color, and government bureaucrats seeking racially biased outcomes can be thwarted in their racist designs.

The Supreme Court yesterday restricted how far employers may go in considering race in hiring and promotion decisions, a ruling that puts workplaces across the nation on notice that efforts to combat potential discrimination against one group can amount to actual discrimination against another. The court ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said city officials violated their rights when it threw out the results of a promotions test on which few minorities scored well. The case drew outsize attention because President Obama's nominee for the high court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, had been part of a unanimous panel...

The Supreme Court ruled today that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge. New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said today in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities. The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when...

Although New Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly — 5-4. The egregious behavior by that city's government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court's four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning. The undisputed facts are that in 2003 the city gave promotion exams to 118 firemen, 27 of them black. The tests were prepared by a firm specializing in employment exams and were validated, as federal law requires, by independent experts. When none of the...

The Supreme Court's rejection of a decision against white firefighters endorsed by Judge Sonia Sotomayor gives Republicans a renewed chance to attack her speeches and writings but is not expected to imperil her confirmation to the high court, political and legal sources said yesterday. The decision that the New Haven, Conn., firefighters were unfairly denied promotions because of their race comes two weeks before Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings and is an unwelcome distraction for the White House from what had seemed like a relatively smooth confirmation process. It is also somewhat of an embarrassment, forcing administration officials to explain why...

On Monday’s Newsroom program, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin couldn’t find a consistent argument about the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of New Haven firefighters who accused their city of reverse discrimination. Toobin first reported that Justice Kennedy, “the swing vote in this case, as in so many others,” wrote the decision, but minutes later, he labeled it as a ruling by “the five conservatives on the Court.”

There is no doubt that prior to the announcement of the Ricci decision, the panel would be terribly circumscribed in questioning Sotomayor about her views on affirmative action which led her to join in the now reversed opinion. They are freer now to ask more direct questions. And prior to today, her chances of confirmation were insurmountable. Sotomayor’s views are at odds with those of most Americans, and the panel is now free to highlight that fact and remind the voters that one more vacancy in the majority of this panel under the Obama administration and we will be certain...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday, in a case with enormous implications for workplaces across the country, that white firefighters in New Haven suffered unfair discrimination because of their race when the city scrapped the results of a promotional exam. “The city’s action in discarding the tests violated Title VII,” the court held in a 5-to-4 decision, referring to a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The majority said the city’s fundamental arguments were “blatantly contradicted by the record.” Monday’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, came on the last day of the court’s term...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Spinning a Supreme Court decision in its favor, the White House said Monday that the justices' reversal of a ruling that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge proves that she follows judicial precedent. The high court ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race. Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said the ruling should put to rest claims by Sotomayor 's Senate critics that she's an activist judge