Posted on 06/29/2009 7:06:51 AM PDT by Abathar
COURT OVERTURNS SOTOMAYOR; SIDES WITH WHITE FIREFIGHTERS
Sotomayor is dreck....that she is even considered for the SCOTUS is a travesty! That she is even a Federal judge is a mistake. Ahhh but it’s on par for DemWorld.
Thank God. Why someone who passed a test should be denied a promotion just because someone else DIDN’T pass the test...well, it was beyond ridiculous.
This is part of the legacy of George W. Bush.
FR still is not updated (refreshing) for me. Does everyone need to empty out their mail box or what?
Let's see, that would be a Catholic guy of Irish and Scottish descent, an English-Czeckoslovakian Catholic guy, a black Catholic guy descended from slaves and two Italian Catholic guys in favor of not discriminating on the basis of race. That left an English Protestant white guy, a white Episcopalian New Englander rumored to be gay who lives with his mom, a Jewish guy married to a member of the British aristocracy and father of a female Episcopal priest, and a Jewish woman for the dissent. Interesting line-up of people who are probably not as wise as a Latina.
Out of the 110 justices who have served on the SCOTUS, only 12 have been fully or nominally Roman Catholic; and almost half of those serving today, with an all-Catholic majority on this opinion. If Sotomayor is confirmed, the hand-spanking nuns will have their due -- fully half of sitting Justices of the Supreme Court of the U.S. The idea of stereotyping judges is repellent, and it doesn't work, anyway: given the long history of discrimination against Catholics in this country and the long history of working-class Democrat and union ties among Catholics, ethnic reactionaries would have voted the other way; but the Justices for the majority in this case rose above tribalism to the level of strict construction and blind justice. It's worth noting also that one of the most radically liberal abortion-cultist justices in the past was Irish Catholic William J. Brennan -- biology isn't destiny for the Supremes.
I find it ironic that Hispanics were among the men who passed the test but were denied promotion. There have been Hispanics in this country and in New York since the beginning -- among the Top 100 Names in the U.S. were Garcia, Martinez, Rodriguez, Hernandez, Lopez, Gonzalez, Perez, Sanchez, Rivera, Torres, Ramirez, Gonzales and Diaz, as of the 1990 Census, which was before the recent spike in illegal entry. Were the ones in the lawsuit just too white?
There's no inherent advantage or disadvantage to race per se while you are fighting a fire, only a teamwork advantage of being able to see beyond race to the other guys who have your back. But there is a great advantage in studying for a test, practicing the use of the equipment, and learning the techniques for various types of fires, victim rescues and building collapses. Are the minorities who sued saying they just couldn't learn without a handicapping, or they just shouldn't have to do the work to pass the test? Where's the shame?
There may have been de facto discrimination in the past, because the NYCFD has resembled a guild, with son following father and grandfather into the Department, and the Scots and Irish traditionally forming the backbone of paramilitary and military work in this country. Urban firefighting is hard, dirty, valiant work -- it's a craft and an act of devotion, not just a job -- and being exposed to its stories around the dinner table from birth probably helped the "legacy" entrants' store of understanding. If you're coming from outside these groups, it's hard to break in. But it's not impossible; and if you earn your way, no one can hold affirmative action against you for the rest of your professional career.
Wouldn't she have had to recuse herself?
Ping for your interest!
BUSH’S FAULTY.
The fact that it was a 5-4 vote concerns me. One more Ruth Bader on the court, and this goes the other way. Glad for the outcome, but scary still.
The left doesn't give a damn about the Constitution. They only study the Constitution to find loopholes, and tricky rhetorical ways to subvert it.
Agreed. We actually have four Justices on the Supreme Court who willfully render decisions that directly contradict the wording of Amendment XIV and the Civil Rights Act.
“But the war between disparate impact and equal protection will be waged sooner or later, and it behooves us to begin thinking about how—and on what terms—to make peace between them.”
[Note to Scalia - only one of those is in the Constitution: equal protection. But you knew that!]
Ginsberg's dissent is laughable - talk about considering facts not in evidence! It is so obvious she made a decision first and then tried to find something, anything, to justify it.
I got question how mess up of justice applicant if one of your ruling get over turn by same organizaton you try get job with
Just to make affirmative action look respectable they have to let slow white guys who can't jump win one once in a while.
Reprehensible can be applied to most if not all of these 5-4 decisions.
I can't agree. I think it's a twofer against her.
The core problem is that it's a case where almost no one in the general populace—say, 30 percent—would agree with her side of the case. Only the hard Lefties agree with her, and that's for the cause of advancing Stalinism, which is a rarefied taste. The dilemma is that if you speak of her as having stood up against "racism" or something, people then ask to be told the soap-opera story of the case. And that's a deal-killer, just about any way you tell the tale.
Mention the word "affirmative action" next to "fireman" and the vast majority of people, even Democrats, start remembering an appointment across town. It has been shown in the heart of New York City that even feminists, other than a couple of their lawyers, no longer stand up for girl firemen, because they only trust burly Irishmen to carry them out of their burning walk-up apartments. This is the city where the first girl fireman, who was initially rejected (in the 1970s) on the grounds that she wouldn't be able to do things like carry ladders, sued the City once she was admitted to the FDNY. It seems she hurt her back trying to carry a ladder. No one wrote stories about her after that, even in the Times.
Then there's the matter of status. On a primitive, non-verbal level, it's a blow to be overruled, and it comes at a bad time for her. She had her long publicity run in our Bolshevik press, who pretty much ran out of things to say. Then she broke her ankle, which made her look unlucky. Nothing in reality against people who break their ankles, but this is how the masses think. And now her lazy, one-paragraph opinion gets shot down, and she starts to look like a real loser—not the "strong horse" the Dems are longing for.
The result will be less energy, less attention, and less creativity devoted to the defense of this uninspiring legal bench-warmer, even on the part of her partisans. The fact that the Dems have moved up the hearings makes things even worse, because that means now—when she's just been shot down. And it's summer, when the Democrats will have more trouble than conservatives in mobilizing their pressure groups. Not good for Souter-meyer, and not good for Obummer.
The 5-4 decision proves once again, it’s no longer about the Constitution and what is right or wrong. It’s all about party affiliation and taking sides. It’s a war between 2 sides and the divide grows each day that passes. Our government isn’t working. This is a tiny battle in a very large war and it is a victory, but a very small one. A victory would have ocured had they all chosen to side with the law and not politics.
It’s important to note that Kennedy’s opinion specifies that this was decided strictly within the realm of Title VII - Kennedy makes it very clear that the underlying constitutional question of the equal protection clause was NOT considered, since the case could be decided strictly within the law as written without addressing the constitutionality of (the probably unconstitutional) Title VII.
4 justices thought it was OK to screw whitey.
Please tell me the Republican party will use this gift they were handed to fight her nomination.
They need to grow some gonads and use it the way DemoRats would use it against a Republican candidate.
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