It's the white man's right, once he has extended his hand of "equality" to non-whites, to openly and ruthlessly try to humiliate the non-white so he or she doesn't get too, you know, uppity.

The thinking is ugly, naturally, but then think about what white men have done on the earth……quite a few ugly things stand out.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a white man. He is not only a white man, but also a conservative Republican white man, and not just a conservative Republican white man, but a conservative Republican white man from South Carolina. It's been a tough period for white men who are conservative Republicans. The nation they once ruled the way they wanted has changed and continues to change. All things being equal, whites in the U.S. will slip into minority status sometime this century. Women and people of color are rising up to leadership positions more than ever before.

White men, like Lindsey Graham, have become bitter about changing America. White men now consider themselves to be victims of an unjust society that discriminates against them, the majority.

Watch Huckleberry condescend to Judge Sotomayor as he spits out his bitterness towards the "Latina" woman…..

Graham knew that the context of Sotomayor's comment about a "wise Latina woman" was racial and gender discrimination. The Reverend gave the clear and indisputable context of Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" in it's context here. Huckleberry knows that context full well. But he's, you know, a white conservative Republican male, living in tumultuous times of change, when a black man can become president and a Hispanic woman can be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Even though Graham knows the context of the "wise Latina woman" comment, he misconstrues it anyway and acts as if he cannot even hear Sotomayor's response. That's because he doesn't want to hear it. What Graham is doing is extracting the bitter conservative white man's pound of flesh from Sotomayor.

Graham may as well have said this…."We bitter white-male, conservative Republicans realize we can't block your confirmation. What we can do though is seek to please other bitter white-male conservative Republicans by openly humiliating you and misconstruing your words and your life so that those bitter dead enders can praise me later and say, 'ole' Lindsey told that uppity Latino woman, didn't he?'"

Here's some proof of the dishonesty and double standard of bitter white conservative Republicans who realize their future as the dominant ones is slipping away. When it's a white conservative man up for confirmation, like Sam Alito in 2006, then according to Huckleberry, all is right in the universe…..

Republicans are destroying their own political party with their bitterness, their own self-pity party of imagined victimization. Having lost black voters because of the "southern strategy" which appealed to southern racist voters….now it seems that Republicans are intent on losing the Hispanic vote as well. Hispanics are the largest minority in the country and the fastest growing voting block…..yet all Huckleberry Graham can do is toss a few bitter and snide bones out for the sake of his bitter white conservative base.

Truly, today's Republicans are pathetic.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), GOP ranking member of the Senate Judiciary

Watch Senator Clown's opening act here.

Connecticut firefighter, Frank Ricci, will testify on Thursday in the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. What he knows about Supreme Court Justice qualifications, I have no idea. But he'll make a good prop for the circus Republicans are hoping to run in the Senate hearing room this week.

Read on….

Frank Ricci is a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter, who is one of the GOP's showcase witnesses on Thursday. His reverse-discrimination suit against the city of New Haven was rejected by a three-judge appeals court panel that included Sotomayor.

Liberal groups and bloggers are noting that Ricci, who has dyslexia, got his firefighting job in New Haven "by claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects Americans from discrimination over disabilities."

Marge Baker, People for the American Way's vice president, says: "I don't think Mr. Ricci thought that his being hired was a case of reverse discrimination against those who weren't disabled … You can't have it both ways; these laws can't be good when you use them to protect yourself and bad when they're used to protect someone else."

Republicans and conservatives are calling this a smear campaign. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said: "it is beneath both contempt and the dignity that this process demands." Conservative bloggers and at least one conservative group, the Judicial Confirmation Network, are trying to rally conservatives behind Ricci.

It's interesting to note that Republicans, like Hatch, are complaining about the potential "smearing" of a witness, a witness who is testifying for the purpose of smearing Judge Sotomayor.

Meet the real…… Mr. Ricci….

According to local newspapers, Ricci filed his first lawsuit against the city of New Haven in 1995, at the ripe old age of 20, for failing to hire him as a firefighter. That January, the Hartford Chronicle reported that Ricci sued, saying "he was not hired because he is dyslexic." The complaint in that suit, filed in federal court, alleged that the city's failure to hire Ricci because of his dyslexia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Frank Ricci was one of 795 candidates interviewed for 40 jobs. According to his complaint, the reason he was not hired was that he disclosed his dyslexia in an interview. That case was settled in 1997 with a confidential settlement in which Ricci withdrew his lawsuit in exchange for a job with the fire department and $11,143 in attorney's fees.

That was just the beginning….

August 11, 1998, Ricci was dismissed from the Middletown fire department after only eight months. He promptly appealed his dismissal, claiming that fire officials had retaliated against him for conducting an investigation into the department's response to a controversial fire. A story in the Hartford Courant dated Aug. 9, 1997, has Ricci vowing "to pursue this to the fullest extent of the law."

In August of 1998, a state Department of Labor investigation cleared Chief Wayne S. Bartolotta of any wrongdoing in the firing. The Aug. 3, 1998, letter from the state Department of Labor indicated that the case was closed with a finding of no violation. "After a thorough investigation, it was determined that the South Fire District did not discriminate against Mr. Ricci." Ricci's response? According to the Courant, Ricci contended "Their decision was political, it has nothing to do with who was right and who was wrong." He told the paper he would "pursue the matter in civil court."

And all of that led to the New Haven case in which Ricci along with other firefighters sued again. This time because Ricci thought he was entitled to a promotion, and the only reason why, he thought, he didn't get promoted, was because he was discriminated against. Four Supreme Court Justices led by the Activist Chief Justice Roberts agreed to write new law from the bench justifying the Ricci complaint.

Here's a guy who will whine this week that Mean Old Sotomayor didn't make New Haven discriminate in his favor. Wah,wah wah, he studied and he bought books, and did he tell you he was dyslexic? Here's a guy who is the quintessential victim, who will call Sotomayor a discriminatory judge because she wouldn't discriminate in his favor because he was "special." Sotomayor insisted, instead, on following the law, which 5 Supremes then went on to rewrite, you know, all on their own.

Frank Ricci will undoubtedly point to the New Haven case to "prove" that Sotomayor will discriminate against majority whites while favoring minorities. No matter what Mr. Ricci says, Sotomayor violated no one's rights when she agreed with her fellow judges in confirming New Haven's dismissal of the firefighter-promotion test scores. It's clear, to all but 5 activist Supreme Court Justices, that New Haven was attempting to follow Title VII's rules on disparate outcomes. No one who took the test was promoted. No one was discriminated against, including Mr. Ricci.

But I'll guaran-goddamn-tee ya'……Mr. Ricci will make a good stage prop for the GOP show this week. The show is being led on the minority side by ringmaster, Goober in Chief, and former(?) racist, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), perennial circus clowns Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jon Cornyn (R-TX)…..oh yeah, and Golly Gee and Gee Whiz Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) has brought his bag of special morality tricks.

All sides agree Sotomayor will be confirmed. But, hell…..might as well put on a little soap opera political theater so's the mushroomheads watching, you know, the CNN, will stay entertained.

I can hear the freaking chant immediately after Ricci talks on Thursday challenging Judge Sotomayor. McCain will probably blurt out, all crazy-like, "I think it's safe to say, we're all dyslexics now."
__________

The Beacon printed a very good E.J. Dionne (Washington post) column today dealing with the radical nature of the Roberts Court.

If you were to accept the thinking of the 5 Supreme Court Justices who overturned the Appellate Court ruling yesterday in the so-called Ricci Case, you would think that America's open sore of two plus centuries of enslaving and discriminating against blacks had healed itself completely in the last 45 years…..and now it's majority whites who are suffering mightily under reverse discrimination.

I spent about 30 minutes yesterday reading the ruling and dissent. It's worth a read, if only to see how activist judges make their politically seasoned sausage.

Ricci ruling plus Ginsburg dissent….

What I took away from the Kennedy-written decision is that, to conservative Justices, laws can be stood on their head to serve the political purpose of defending or supporting the majority or the powerful.

Chief Justice John Roberts' previous ruling in the Lily Ledbetter case was a prime example of how the intent of a law is twisted by 5 conservative Supremes to fit the needs of the powerful.

The Ricci case is now another example.

The city of New Haven, Connecticut threw out the results of a firefighter promotion test because blacks who took the test were disparately impacted. According to what is known as Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, when testing of employees demonstrates a clear disparity where minorities all do poorly, in order to avoid violations of federal discrimination laws in hiring or promoting, the employer must throw out the test and find a test that won't have such a disparate impact.

In the Ricci case, the above is New Haven's defense in a nutshell. They were following the law the best they could. Even the majority ruling by Kennedy agrees that the test scores did, indeed, demonstrate disparate impact. The original District Court's ruling AND the Appellate Court ruling (which included Judge Sotomayor) both agreed with the city's explanation of why the test was thrown out. The city was trying to abide by the law, the law called for action in case of obvious disparate results in testing, New Haven's test produced disparate results, New Haven had the duty to start over.

Here's New Haven's position in the matter…..

The city held that"…they cannot be held liable under Title VII's disparate-impact provision for attempting to comply with Title VII's disparate-impact bar."

In a nutshell, heres' what the District Court found in it's previous ruling for the city…..

District Court ruled…"it is not the case that the City MUST certify a test where they cannot pinpoint its deficiency explaining its disparate impact…simply because they have not yet formulated a better selection process." "motivation to avoid making promotions based on a test with a racially disparate impact….does not, as a matter of law, constitute dicriminatory intent."

Judge Sotomayor, who will be savaged by ignorant and hate-filled conservatives over it, joined two other appellate judges agreeing with the District Court's ruling. Sotomayor voted, not in a judicial activist manner, but just the opposite. She followed the law.

However, yesterday's 5-4 decision reversed both the District and Appellate Court's findings. In Kennedy's ruling, it now seems like the 5 conservative judges believe they have godlike powers of discernment. Here's what I mean….

"Whatever the City's ultimate aim…however well intentioned or benevolent it might have seemed…the City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white. The question is not whether that conduct was discriminatory but whether the City had a lawful justification for its race based action."

The ruling turns the entire disparate impact intent on it's head. The City had results that demonstrated disparate impact of the test for blacks. The Supremes ruling says that that's not good enough and that they discriminated by even acknowledging the disparate impact…."without some other justification".

The intent of the law in question, just as the intent of the law which was turned on it's head in the Lily Ledbetter case, is clear. For a very long time white majorities, particularly in police and firefighter outfits have discriminated against blacks through the sly use of tests meant to marginalize minorities. Title VII's intent was to attenuate this discriminatory practice.

Instead, 5 Supremes agreed that the Title VII rule was really written to discriminate against majority whites….and in effect, they scrapped the whole deal.

And this is no small deal. In effect, and I don't care what some double-talking conservatives will say about this matter, public employers now will be under pressure to protect and favor majority whites. Written tests will now be put together and weighted in order to protect the employer from being accused of favoring minorities…..which was the very intent of the Title VII rule in the first place.

If nothing else, go to the link I supplied at the top and scroll down to Justice Ginsburg's scathing dissent of the ruling by those 5 activist judges.

The Akron Beacon Journal loves them some George Will. Will's Washington Post columns appear regularly in the Beacon. Recently, the Beacon reprinted one of Will's columns on global warming that included his total distortion of research findings. Will, alleged to be an intellectual, often distorts the facts as he did in his screed, also reprinted by the Beacon, about how card-check (Employee Free Choice Act) would eliminate the secret ballot for workers organizing into a union. Something that EFCA clearly does not do.

Will is back in this morning's Beacon…..and this time he's spreading stuff already disproven yesterday in those, you know, detestable blogs. (Here and here) Quoting the odious Stuart Taylor from the rag, National Journal, Will joins Daddy Limbaugh in suggesting that Obama's Supreme Court choice, Sonia Sotomoyar, will rule on the basis of her racial and gender preferences…..

Taylor has also noted this from a Sotomayor speech to a Hispanic group: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion (as a judge) than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Says Taylor, "Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: 'I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life' — and had proceeded to speak of 'inherent physiological or cultural differences.' "

Context is everything here and that's why Will doesn't include it. The lifted Sotomayor quote was from a symposium speech….

The fall symposium is host to the Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Memorial Lecture….established by friends, family and associates in memory of the late Judge Mario G. Olmos '71 to honor his commitment to social justice. The endowed lecture addresses issues of justice for people of diverse national, economic, racial and cultural backgrounds.

Sentences leading up to what Will implies is racist….

I intend… to talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench….

[O]ne of my former colleagues on the Southern District bench, Judge Miriam Cederbaum….rightly points out that the perception of the differences between men and women is what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively."…

I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that–it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others….

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences…our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure….that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group…. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown [v. Board of Education.]

You can see why Will, quoting Taylor, left the context out of his predetermined distortions. The context didn't fit the conclusions.

But it's even worse. Consider again this from Will's piece….

"Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: 'I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life' — and had proceeded to speak of 'inherent physiological or cultural differences.'

Just f*cking imagine the reaction…..if a white Catholic guy said something about his unique personal experiences and the empathetic approach he would be bringing to the court as a result of those experiences…..

Can you even imagine the reaction to what Judge Alito said? Yeah, crickets. But he's a white male.

The Beacon does a great disservice to it's readers by including the slanted and error-filled columns of the Washington Post's George Will.