Steele the First:

What some here are trying to say is that racial injustice should not be remedied by practicing racial injustice.

If any attempt to ameliorate and correct (as opposed to ignore) a prior racial injustice is itself racial injustice, what exactly is racial justice?

I won't hold my breath for a coherent answer.

Look at poor Bill Clinton - being president is the greatest financial sacrifice of all.

We should send them money in the mail. Those poor dear public servants!

I did. Well, I did before he was elected in 2008. I should have ask to see his refund policy first, but that's looking backward so never mind.

Don't worry, that was in Honduras, not that it is any concern of US, but doesn't that remind one of a certain election we had in this country in the year 2000?

The reason I asked for a definition of "judicial activisim" was that I don't know how you are using the term.

Apparently you tried to answer my 2nd question with; "to note GG's observation that "The Court split along standard ideological lines (Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy in the majority) ...."

Nope, no activism there.

Are you saying that a "split court" constitutes "judicial activism"?, . . . which side was engaging in the activisim? . . . and what evidence can you provide?

You forgot the "b".

Below is the original 134-word Ricci decision delivered by a 3-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit, of which Sotomayor was a member.

Plaintiffs appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Arterton, J.) granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment on all counts.

We affirm, for the reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion of the court below. Ricci v. DeStefano, 554 F.Supp.2d 142, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73277, 2006 WL 2828419 (D.Conn. Sept. 28, 2006). In this case, the Civil Service Board found itself in the unfortunate position of having no good alternatives. We are not unsympathetic to the plaintiffs' expression of frustration. Mr. Ricci, for example, who is dyslexic, made intensive efforts that appear to have resulted in his scoring highly on one of the exams, only to have it invalidated. But it simply does not follow that he has a viable Title VII claim. To the contrary, because the Board, in refusing to validate the exams, was simply trying to fulfill its obligations under Title VII when confronted with test results that had a disproportionate racial impact, its actions were protected.

CONCLUSION

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Besides the distressing brevity of the document, what leaps out at me is the claim of "disproportionate racial impact," stated in such a perfunctory manner that is clear the authors considered the claim so plainly indisputable that it required no further clarification. Can somebody tell me how this is mainstream judicial thinking? Can somebody tell how it doesn't reflect the thinking of an affirmative action extremist?

It's perfectly reasonable and mainstream to debate whether there was disproportionate racial impact in the New Haven testing process, but it is neither reasonable nor mainstream to treat the question as a no-brainer deserving of zero deliberation.

Can somebody tell me how this is mainstream judicial thinking?

http://www.hr-guide.com/data/G702.htm

without noting in horror the implied acceptance that a partisan SCOTUS bench is now the standard? Are we so jaded as to have no hope of impartiality?

Well, I can't speak for Glenn, but Bush v. Gore pretty much settled that for me. Why would we expect an impartial Court today when the ideological slant has only gotten worse since then?

Spin it any way you want.

She was wrong.

Reversed

So because a perfect storm of freakish events allowed George W. Bush to occupy the White House and appoint two conservative Supreme Court Justices, that makes her wrong?

If the voters’ will had been honored in 2000, and President Gore had nominated two liberal Justices, and the Supreme Court upheld Ricci 5-4, would you be saying that she was right?

There are Supreme Court decisions, and there is what is right. They don’t always agree.

Good afternoon Eris23. The test was designed by a third party, Industrial Organtizational Solutions, which specializes in designing these types of tests to eliminate possible racial bias to protect the agencies from potential civil rights complaints; you can call them if you like and address any of your specific concerns about test bias with them. I can attest, they are pretty good at what they do. You can get their number from their website www.iosolutions.org.

I think too many assume that this was some test designed by some goverment bureaucrat, but that is not the case. By soliciting a reputable specialist to create the test, it would appear that the city of New Haven did the correct thing; they relied on professionals to minimize the risk of bias.

I must be getting on with my day. I wish to respond to all of you who responded to me, but it might be several hours before I can do so. In the meantime, several pages of Letters will fill up, and I will have to spend about 45 minutes tonite reading them all in order not to miss anybody and to participate fully.

Please copy and paste the following to all of your Letters responses from now on, until Salon.com updates their antiquated Letters sections.

-----------------------------

Dear Salon,

As active and sometimes paying members of your esteemed internet magazine, we hereby order you to update the technology on your Letters sections. The current architecture from a user point-of-view is time consuming, inefficient, horribly antiquated, and a major hindrance to our active, lively, engaged, and often spirited comments and discussions. Please, please, please fix the Letters. Our page clicks and paid membership subscriptions pay your bills. Now do this favor for us.

Signed,

Your readers.

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A disproportionate number of poor folks are filling the prisons. We need to fill those prisons up with an equal number of middle class and rich criminals to provide balance.

May I suggest incarcerating Congress, the Executive Branch and all the CEOs and Boards of Directors of any and all corporations that have either shipped jobs overseas, avoided paying taxes, scammed the government, cooked the books, engaged in unfair trade practices, defrauded investors or cheated the public.

I know, we will have to build MORE prisons.

That is a small price to pay for equal treatment under the law.

Supermax for torturers their enablers, apologists and their lawyers. We should put pundits in supermax also.