Liberal Attack Machine Targets Firefighter

WASHINGTON — 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 litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he's dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.

The Middletown-area fire department was subsequently fined for safety violations, but the Connecticut Department of Labor dismissed Ricci's retaliation complaint.

No People for the American Way officials could be reached Friday to speak on the record about the press campaign.

"To go after so sympathetic a plaintiff as Frank Ricci . . . is a new low in the politics of personal destruction," said Roger Pilon, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. "If they were smart, they'd keep a low profile."

Ricci, though, has his own advocates, including conservative commentators such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox's Sean Hannity.

Nor is he the only Supreme Court confirmation witness to receive sharp elbows. In 1991, for instance, then-Senate Minority Leader Alan Simpson of Wyoming warned that witness Anita Hill would be "injured and destroyed and belittled and hounded and harassed" if she testified against nominee Clarence Thomas. Hill was preparing to testify that she'd been sexually harassed by Thomas.

Hill's subsequent testimony threw into question Thomas's confirmation, during a hearing he likened to a "high-tech lynching." A closely divided Senate ultimately confirmed him.

The 35-year-old Ricci was the lead plaintiff in the case Ricci v. DeStefano, challenging New Haven's refusal to promote white firefighters after African-American and all but one Hispanic firefighters failed to score high enough on a promotion exam.

Sotomayor and a majority of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the city's claim that it was justifiably concerned about a potential civil rights suit being filed by the African-American firefighters.

"Sotomayor and her panel colleagues were bound by long-standing precedent and federal law," People for the American Way executive vice president Marge Baker said in a June statement. "They applied the law without regard to their personal views."

Last month, however, the Supreme Court overturned the 2nd Circuit by 5-4.

"Once . . . employers have made clear their selection criteria, they may not then invalidate the test results, thus upsetting an employee's legitimate expectation not to be judged on the basis of race," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

With his awards for bravery, some 17 years of fire department service and history of overcoming dyslexia, Ricci has become a compelling human character in the Sotomayor confirmation drama. Senate Republicans have summoned him, along with Lt. Ben Vargas of the New Haven Fire Department, as two of their 14 witnesses next week.

Though even Republicans concede Sotomayor appears poised to win confirmation, the hearing — and Ricci's part in them — could be exploited politically. The case is symbolic of race-based preferences, which conservatives have long rejected.

"Affirmative action remains a potentially useful issue for the GOP," Rose noted, and "this case has the potential of perhaps mobilizing the Republican party again."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added that many Americans can identify with Ricci, making him an especially attractive witness for the GOP and potentially dangerous for Democrats.

"He took on a second job and worked hard, but was denied due to the same legal concepts" that were designed to protect people's rights, Graham said.

By Michael Doyle and David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

Court Rules “For” White Firefighters in Discrimination Case – Against Sotomayor

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a group of white firefighters in Connecticut were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision endorsed by high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor’s rulings have been looked at by the Supreme Court 8 times and the Supreme Court has ruled against her 7 times… Add that to her comments about race and this says a lot about her view of the law and her view of race!!!

The 5-4 ruling poses a potential complication to Sotomayor's nomination, with confirmation hearings set to start in July. Already, supporters and critics of Sotomayor are seizing on the decision in an effort to defend their stance.

In the high-profile, controversial case, white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., argued they were discriminated against when the city tossed out the results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough on it.

Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the opinion in favor of Frank Ricci and his fellow firefighters who sued the city of New Haven.

"The city's action in discarding the tests violated (federal law)," the Supreme Court majority wrote Monday, adding that the city's "race-based rejection of the test results" could not be justified.

The city argued its action was prompted by concern that disgruntled black firefighters would sue. But that reasoning didn't hold sway with the court's majority.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify the city's reliance of race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," the court ruled.

This decision, like many of the close cases before the high court, divided along its familiar ideological lines. Kennedy was joined by the four conservatives on the court in issuing the majority decision.

The court's more liberal members joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent which she read from the bench. "The white firefighters who scored high on New Haven's promotional exams understandably attract the court's sympathy," she said. "But they had no vested right to promotion."

The firefighters are expected to hold a press conference Monday afternoon in New Haven.

The 20 firefighters — 19 white and one Hispanic — who were denied promotions claimed city officials discriminated against them because they were more concerned about potential complaints of Civil Rights Act violations than their performance on advancement exams. The white firefighters argued discrimination is discrimination no matter what color it takes, and therefore, the city did violate the Civil Rights Act in not promoting them.

Sotomayor was one of three appeals court judges who earlier ruled that New Haven officials acted properly.

The reversal could be used as ammunition by some senators who don't want to see Sotomayor confirmed. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill swiftly issued statements on the ruling Monday and scheduled media appearances to discuss it.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, applauded the decision and suggested trouble ahead for Sotomayor.

"The Supreme Court today reminded all courts and governments that equal justice under the law means refusing to tip the scale in favor of one race over another," he said in a written statement. "The Senate Judiciary Committee should carefully examine Judge Sotomayor’s role in the Second Circuit’s opinion on this case. Discrimination and racial preferences have no place in our courts, let alone on the highest court in the land.”

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said "it would be wrong" to use the decision to criticize Sotomayor and that her panel's decision exhibited "judicial restraint."

He said the Supreme Court's ruling is "likely to result in cutbacks on important protections for American families."

"This is a cramped decision that threatens to erode these protections and to harm the efforts of state and local governments that want to build the most qualified workforces," Leahy said in a statement.

Sotomayor's views on race have been the focal point of criticism as she seeks a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. She has also been scrutinized for her statement outside the court that a "wise, Latina woman" would come to better conclusions more often than a white man.

Sotomayor's confirmation hearing is currently scheduled to begin on July 13. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told "FOX News Sunday" that her nomination must have a full airing before a vote, and that could mean delaying the hearing scheduled by Democratic senators, a scenario that is unlikely to happen.

"Just a day or so ago, we discovered that there are 300 boxes of additional material that has just been discovered from her time working with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund," McConnell said. "The committee needs to have access to that material and time to work through it ... so we know all the facts before we vote on a person who's up for a lifetime job."

If confirmed, Sotomayor will replace Justice David Souter, whose retirement coincides with the end of the court's session on Monday. In April's oral argument of the firefighter case, Souter described it as a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Souter joined the minority in Monday's decision.

Souter said he'd retire when the court rises for the summer recess. He was named to the court in 1990.

As Souter retires to New Hampshire, four justices are heading to Europe for summer teaching jobs, including in Austria, Ireland and Italy.

FOX News' Lee Ross and Caroline Shively and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Taxes... People Speaking Out and Standing Up

Ghandi said withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest ways of overthrowing a government. Hmmm. Let’s go Galt!

Video Glenn Beck Above on Taxes

Not that they are advocating it....

“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” ... Peter Finch

Video Above of Craig T. Nelson on Hannity...

New to the blogging scene, Albany Conservative has a similar idea. Stop the withholding from your paycheck, invest the money and then pay your taxes in April. Not only will it hurt the Treasury (which has no treasure, by the way) but you’ll earn a little interest on your money. I would also add, if there were no tax withholding Americans would really get a taste of what the federal government takes from them every year. It would be much more visible, which is a good thing.

As a side note: In my day job I’m paid for my billable hours. I worked it out that way because, as a working mom, I didn’t want to make up time if the kids get sick, etc. Anyway, last year I had some family issues to deal with and during a two week pay cycle I worked seventy instead of eighty hours. The difference in my paycheck was a mere three hours. Since then, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking maybe I should cut back my hours. An extra five hours a week to to get things done in my personal life would be huge, much more than an hour and a half of pay. I haven’t done it because I like my employer, and things are busy now so it’s not a good time to ask. But my husband recently started a small business. If I don’t cut back my hours, we could be hit with a much higher tax bill. We took the risk, we put up the money. He put in the time and even created a job for someone else during a recession. Why should we, and our children, be punished? Should I go Galt? - The Lonesome Conservative

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Ben Stein’s Final Column

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.' (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column... How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long! I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..? I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails…

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. Soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. Soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament... The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

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Ask Marion – Knowledge Creates Power

New Haven, Ct. Firefighters Claim Reverse Discrimination

U.S. Supreme Court Hears New Haven Reverse Discrimination Case

Firefighter Frank Ricci listens to a reporter's question outside U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on Wednesday. (WTNH / April 22, 2009)

WASHINGTON - Twenty white New Haven firefighters who claim the city denied them promotion for racial reasons urged the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to fundamentally overhaul the way government is allowed to consider race when making personnel decisions.
All 20, wearing crisp blue dress uniforms, listened attentively from the packed court gallery, as the justices closely questioned lawyers who argued their 6-year old reverse discrimination case.
The case, Ricci V DeStefano, attracted an over flow crowd of observers, many of whom hope the case will provide guidance to public and private employers trying to balance the need to diversify the workforce with the prohibition against race-based hiring and promotion.
If the court rules for the firefighters, who have argued that "race-conscious" government decisions should be subject to strict review, the ruling could impact government choices on issues from sitting public schools, to allocating educational resources to minority outreach recruiting efforts.

Related links

• U.S. Supreme Court Hears New Haven Reverse Discrimination Case Photos

• New Haven reverse discrimination case

  Is New Haven's decision to discontinue its promotion exam for firefighters because too few minorities passed a case of discrimination against top-scoring white applicants?

  Yes/No

  • View current results

The firefighters, 19 white men and an Hispanic man who is also classified for racial purposes as white, sued New Haven in 2004 claiming they were racially victimized a year earlier when the city invalidated an examination that qualified them for promotion to lieutenant or captain.

The city said it threw out the test results because black fire department test takers did not score high enough to qualify for promotion. The city said at the time, and repeated the argument again Wednesday, that it was obligated to reject the test under federal law prohibiting tests that produce substantially disparate results between test takers of different races, Gregory S. Coleman, a Texas constitutional lawyer who argued the case for the firefighters, called the city's invalidation of the test "pernicious" and "regrettable racial politics." He old the court that "strong safeguards are needed to smoke out the improper use of race" in formulating municipal hiring and promotional policy.

Christopher J. Meade of New York, who argued the case for the city, told the court that governments should be allowed to act as New Haven did when confronted by the promotional examination's "adverse impact" against black promotional candidates. He said the decision to toss out the test results harmed no one - white or black - because the decision was made before any promotions were made. He argued, as the city has in the past, that firefighters would be harmed only if promotions were awarded and later rescinded.

"There was a severe adverse impact here," Meade told the court. "Employees should be able to act when confronted by severe disparate results and suggestions of improper testing."

Karen Lee Torre, the New Haven lawyer representing the firefighters, attended the hearing and replied angrily outside the courthouse to Meade's implication that the test was biased against black candidates. She said there is no evidence in the case's long record to show the test was flawed.
"The only thing wrong with the test is that it didn't suit the political agenda of the Mayor of New Haven," Torre said.

She was referring to allegations the lawsuit that Mayor John DeStefano invalidated the test to bolster political support from influential black, New Haven power brokers who were demanding more black representation in the fire department officer ranks.

Firefighter Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in the case, was the only firefighter who would speak with reporters after the arguments and he wouldn't discuss the merits of the case.

"The only thing that I'll say is that we're all happy to have our day in court," Ricci said. "If you work hard and you study and you apply yourself well at your job, you can succeed in America."

By EDMUND MAHONY | The Hartford Courant

Source:  Hartford Courant

• White, Hispanic Firefighters' Claim That City Favored Blacks

When firefighters battle a raging blaze, they can be sure that at least one thing will treat them all equally:

In Conn., white firefighters say promotions denied because of race.

"The fire isn't going to discriminate against a person whether he's black, white or Hispanic" Connecticut firefighter Ben Vargas, 40, said. "It's going to treat that person the same way."

But in the city of New Haven, Vargas, who is Hispanic, and 19 white firefighters say that is where the equal treatment ends, and discrimination begins. They allege that they were denied promotions because the city gave preferential treatment to blacks.

Matt Marcarelli, who is white, got the top score on a promotion exam in 2003 and was first in line for captain. But when the city reviewed all the test results, it found that the pass rate for black candidates was about half the corresponding rate for white candidates. None of the black firefighters scored well enough for an immediate promotion. As a result, the city threw out the test results.

By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG and ARIANE de VOGUE