Of course Sotomayor is a looney-fringe-socialist-communist-fascist-breathing pig! She didn't rule the way conservatives wanted! That's why she's on the fringe!

Get it?

I've no doubt that any decision the Supreme Court had made would have prompted Sotomayor's defenders, including Greenwald, to position her as "mainstream." Whether she actually is mainstream remains to be seen. Here is what we do now know, thanks to this case:

- She, along with the rest of a three-judge panel, not the full Second Circuit court, as the judicial "mainstream" would have dictated, was either intentionally biased against the petitioners, or she was too intellectually lazy to review the actual precedents and apply logic. Either is troubling, and while she was one of three, as a Supreme Court nominee, you would have expected her to at least write an opinion.

- She seems to accept the bizarre notion that prima facie evidence can be accepted as ultimate proof, regardless of that fact that the term literally means "on the face of it," not "open and shut case." When the petitioners contradicted her own sense of how things should be, e.g. affirmative action, it was not worth it to her to dig below that surface. She felt that the city required no more than the mere intention to obey Title VII, regardless of whether they had violated it in fact. What do we say about good intentions?

- Sotomayor did not follow precedent, no matter how much her sheep-like supporters bleat so, which would have required both an en banc hearing - an in-depth review by the entire Second Circuit - and a finding that the city of New Haven had not followed the book on Title VII in validating (or not) the test in question, following the initial results. Disparate impact, unlike disparate treatment, is not in and of itself a violation, though it should increase the scrutiny given to the process that produced it. She allowed New Haven to violate the rights of the firefighters that scored highest on the job-specific exam (as specified by Title VII) based solely on the fear of a lawsuit, which clearly would not have had merit.

Sotomayor may yet prove smart and capable enough to sit on the SCOTUS, but until she does, she should have to explain to the ordinary Americans who will have to live with her "empathetic" decisions why she abandoned sound jurisprudence in this case, and deferred instead to the District Court, which, as her colleague José Cabranes passionately pointed out, was an error. She should explain any other such rulings, as well, to alleviate any concerns about a pattern of behavior. The gravitas of the lifetime appointment to the highest court demands that we take the time to do so, and a rush to judgment is neither necessary nor prudent.

I'm so tired of people being in the tank for Sotomayor. The lady said "a wise Latina." That will never go away, regardless of how many attempts are made to distract attention away from it. Ricci does not prove her fitness, nor does it render her comment harmless.

One, the "financial sacrifice" of being a Supreme Court Judge is almost laughable. Once you have that title, any book deal would be worth at least a million dollars. Not to mention speaking engagement fees for the rest of your life. There are some things salary doesn't buy, like lifetime employment, secret service security for you and your family, the respect and admiration and immortality of being a United States Supreme Court Justice. Sacrifice? Maybe they can't jet around the world and do cocaine off of whore's asses, but then again.....

And B,

rrheard:

Here's an easy solution to all of this--civil service laws should require a civil "servant" to live in the community and send his/her children to the public schools in that community as the one condition of accepting a taxpayer "subsidized" salary and benefits package. Keeps the bulk of taxpayer funds in the community and ensures the people who are taking "public service" positions actually have a stake in the community they are "serving".

This idea has been floating around for decades, and was a main platform of community-based activists all throughout the 70's and 80's. It never was accepted by the Establishment because it more often than not applied to the local police force, and the local police force is used to intimidate, terrorize, and oppress minority and poor neighborhoods, not to "protect and serve." So there is no f-ing way this will ever be a policy. It's a good idea, but it goes against the raison d'etre of municipal police forces.

Spin it any way you want.

She was wrong.

Reversed

Oh yes, I normally go along with the opinons of a group of right wing extremists as my guide of "right" and "wrong" and anyone who disagrees with the Roberts court, well, I don't even want to know them!

I would submit that Sotomayor is on the fringe, not because of of which way she ruled on Ricci, but the perverse manner in which the ruling was delivered. Producing a single unsigned 134-word paragraph for a plainly important case is what got her in trouble in the first place. She acted like the case was so open-and-shut, such a total no-brainer, that it required no explanation. That is not mainstream. How many appeals judges would be so dismissive of a complicated case of this import? Not too many, I hope. Even among judges who agreed with her decision, I assume most would have recognized that some elucidation was needed. A one-paragragh decision was just intolerable.

As a man who studied the great AMERICAN, Martin Luther King Jr., I believe he would be happy with this verdict. All he wanted is for ALL men to be judged by the content of their Character; and in the end-that is all these men wanted.

Also, Sotomayor is not (I believe) as liberal as the person she is going to replace; so this proud neocon is fine with her selection....

my bad. I forgot for a moment you're a big fan of the National Review so attempting to argue reality, or the law, or the history of Title VII, or human empathy, or simple human hygiene with you would be a foolish endeavor. I'll go back to ignoring you.

And for all of you who say "because the Supreme Court issued a decision" that that necessarily makes the decision "the right one" and any lower court justice who saw it differently "wrong"--I guess that means Roe v Wade, Kelo v City of New London and Dredd Scott were all "rightly decided" (I'm guessing you'd only agree with the latter two examples). Right? Or are the "right" decisions of the Supreme Court only those that comport with "right-wing" political ideology all others being by definition "wrong"?